Nokia, Microsoft pump $24m into Windows Phone app development.

Last week, Rovio Mobile made a statement with Angry Birds Space that could have potentially left Nokia and Microsoft shuddering in their shoes. Rovio's Chief Marketing Officer, Peter Vesterbacka said that the company had no plans on releasing Angry Birds Space for the Windows Phone platform. He said that they want to be on all screens, but Windows Phone takes a lot of work to technically support the platform. While Mikael Hed, the CEO of Rovio later contradicted Vesterbacka's statement by saying that Angry Birds Space will indeed come to Windows Phones, Nokia and Microsoft want to encourage application development for their new platform.

According to TechCrunch, the two companies are now pushing 9 million Euros, which amounts to about $12 million into a mobile applications development program at Aalto University in Finland. The program will be called AppCampus and will focus specifically on funding application development for the Windows Phone platform. The program will also develop apps for some Nokia specific platforms, like Symbian and Series 40. Aalto University will also provide significant funding towards the program, which will begin on the 12th of May. Windows Phone currently has 70,000 apps and about 5 percent of the smartphone platform market share. It competes, of course, with Android and iOS which have about half a million apps each and have been around for a lot longer.