Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system has been chasing Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating system for years, but the Redmond giant could finally be on track to boost its shrinking share in the smartphone OS market by snatching Apple and Google users away. At its recently concluded BUILD 2015 conference held in San Francisco, California, Microsoft announced that it would make it easier for developers to port Android and iOS apps to Windows 10 so they can run on Windows devices, notably phones.

One of the key disadvantages of the Windows Phone platform has been its lack of apps in comparison to Android and Apples App Store. At Microsoft's annual BUILD developers conference, Windows division boss Terry Myerson announced that the company had developed an easy way for developers of iOS and Android apps to bring their apps and games to Windows 10, Microsoft's next operating system designed to run on Windows Phone, laptops and other devices.

Microsoft promised to release four new software development toolkits, which will allow developers to bring their code for iOS, Android, the Web, .NET, and Win32 to the Windows Store with "minimal code modifications." In order to rework iOS apps, Microsoft has developed an Objective-C compiler that recompiles applications written for Apple devices to make them work on Windows 10 mobile devices. For Android apps, developers who have created apps in C or Java will be able to use the vast majority of the code to bring their apps to the Windows Store.

By allowing developers to easily rework their Android and iOS applications on Windows phones, Microsoft has indirectly acknowledged that it has been unable to beat Google and Apple by coming up with a better mobile app ecosystem. Windows 10 is expected to be released this summer, though phones running Windows 10 will be launched only later in 2015.