Analytics firm Flurry has detected an increase in the number of new app projects for Windows Phone 7 after Nokia's comittment to Microsoft's smartphone platform. It's only a small increase - but when you are short of good news,,,

Flurry's analytics show that in the four days after the Feb. 11 deal, 4 percent of new app projects started were for Windows Phone, compared with 1 percent in the previous four days.

This is still far from impressive compared to 69 percent for Apple iOS and 25 percent for Android, but it does means that new projects for Windows Phone now rank third pushing Blackberry out of this slot - many commentators have predicted that Blackberry would be the only overall winner from the Nokia/Microsoft deal.

How much store can we put on these figures?

A Flurry new project start is recorded when a developer adds the Flurry SDK to its pre-release application and while 38,000 companies have created projects using Flurry it is unlikely to be a representative sample particularly as Flurry only added its analytics support for Windows Phone 7 five weeks ago.

A better indicator that Windows Phone 7 has been given a boost is that Crowdbeacon, whose iOS app released last week enables users to found out about nearby businesses with answers to questions such as where to get a haircut, is now planning to release a Windows Phone 7 version whereas previously they were not even considering it.

Further reading

Nokia goes Windows Phone 7