It's only been months since Finnish phonemaker Nokia Oyj. (HEL:NOK1V), the world's largest maker of mobile phones, announced that it would be adopting Microsoft as its exclusive smartphone operating system provider, phasing out Symbian.  But for those inside the company it must have felt like an eternity. 

While Nokia's engineers were busy cooking up the ideal Windows Phone, the company was taking a nosedive in sales.  In fact, it's expected to lose its global lead to South Korea's Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (SEO:005930), when the latest quarterly numbers come out.

But in October Nokia will finally deliver a "Mango" powered Windows Phone 7 handset, just under a year after Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) launched the platform worldwide.  To support that handset, the company is preparing a $130M USD global advertising campaign, according to UK-based Marketing Magazine.  The campaign will help rebrand Nokia from a Symbian company to a WP7 handset maker.

Windows Phone 7 has struggled since its release last November.  As Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer puts it, sales went from "very small to very small", with Microsoft's tiny smartphone market share dipping 35 percent since the launch of WP7.

Still, with the support of a reinvigorated Nokia, WP7 could be headed for a meteoric rise.  Many analysts point out that Android struggled to find its way when it hit the market in 2008.  DailyTech predicted that Windows Phone 7 would eventually hit the second place spot in the smartphone market, a conclusion shared by analysts at top market research firm Gartner, Inc. (IT).   

Pyramid Research makes an even bolder prediction, speculating that Windows Phone 7 will enjoy an even more meteoric rise in 2012 than Android did in 2010, and will attain the market's top spot by 2013.  

That prediction is a bit hard to believe, but you never know.  After all, in a world of chiclet grid smartphones, Windows Phone 7 is really the only smart phone OS maker to have thought well outside the box.  That creative thinking has delivered an intuitive user interface that arguably is one of the best on the market today.