Texas Instruments mobile phone chip executive believes Nokia's partnership with Microsoft is good news for the industry.
Nokia announced last week that it would use the Windows Phone operating system as the software platform for its future smartphones and netbooks.
"I believe this is very healthy from the point of view of the competitive landscape," Pierre Garnier, general manager wireless chip activities told Electronics Weekly at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
See also: Mobile World Congress News...
Ti prides itself on supporting most of the important mobile phone operating systems.
It is working with both Microsoft and Google to ensure their respective operating systems are optimised for TI's chipsets and processors.
"The power is shifting to the guy who masters the software platform and TI as a chipset supplier cannot ignore this," said Garnier.
"We have built relationships with both Google and Microsoft but also other proprietary operatings systems like RIM's qnx," said Garnier.
TI has also supported Symbian, Linux and MeeGo with its various generations of the OMAP mobile platform, the 5th generation of which was announced last week and will include two ARM Cortex-A15 processor cores as well as two Cortex-M4 cores.
"It was important for us that this platform would be transparent to the software platform," said Garnier.
TI has significanly increased its own software development tosupport both its siliocn and the various operating systems.
But is it sustainable for the company to continue to make the investment needed to support multiple mobile operating systems?
"If there were 10 it would be a problem but with only 3 or 4 it is sustainable," said Garnier.
"We have the engineering resources to support the work," he added.
Richard Wilson, Barcelona