After dominating the desktop operating system market with its various versions of Windows OS, Microsoft is now aiming to capture 40 percent market share in the smartphone category by 2012.

This target is considered to be somewhat ambitious as Microsoft is relatively a smaller player in the smartphone market and has to compete with other players like Symbian, Blackberry, Palm, Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platform.

The sales of Microsoft’s windows mobile powered devices reached 11 million in the year 2007. However the company expects this year sales to touch 20 million.

Around 118 million smartphones sold last year out of which Symbian accounted for 67 percent of the OS market while Microsoft captured 13 percent, according to market research.