Ajey Mehta, Microsoft Mobile Managing Director, talked in an interview about Redmond’s mobile efforts locally and worldwide, explaining that Windows Phone, despite its rather small market share, is a clear challenger for Android, which continues to hold the leading position in the mobile OS battle.

In India, Windows Phone is growing stronger, and statistics provided recently do show an important increase in sales for devices running Microsoft’s mobile operating system.

Data provided by analysts at Canalys earlier this year revealed a growth of 34 percent in the second half of 2014, as compared to the first half, with a total of 3.8 billion Windows Phone devices sold in the country in the last 2 years. Windows Phone currently sits at approximately 3 percent in India.

But that doesn’t mean anything for Microsoft, and Mehta says that Redmond’s strategy should soon pay off in India, especially because it aggressively tackles the developing ecosystem with new affordable and mid-range devices that can compete with Android.

“We are clearly a challenger to Android. Microsoft Mobiles in India is planning to aggressively grow the ecosystem, especially the Windows phone one. And we have seen a lot of success with the launch of new devices over the last few months,” he says in an interview with The Hindu BusinessLine.

“Some competitors are doing better than us”

And yet, Mehta admits that there’s still a lot of room for improvement as far as Microsoft is concerned, and despite all these efforts to conquer the Indian mobile market, some competitors are still doing better, including companies selling Android devices.

“Our focus is on growing the business. There are a large number of players in the market and some competitors are doing better than us. Yes, it is a competitive market. And, we believe that we have a strong consumer offering. However, I can tell you that our market share has been growing,” he explains.

Undoubtedly, India has become a key market for Microsoft, and living proof is a new online store that Microsoft has recently launched locally to make its devices available to more buyers across the country.