Microsoft has successfully lured a number of China- and India-based handset vendors to join the Windows Phone (WP) camp, which may help ramp up the ratio of the WP8 phones in the global smartphone market, according to industry sources.

　　To expand the ecosystem of the WP phone, Microsoft reportedly has lowered the hardware specifications and licensing conditions for those handset makers who are willing to launch WP8-based smartphones, said the sources.

　　Under the relaxed terms, handset makers are allowed to roll out WP8-phones supporting dual-SIM, TD-LTE, higher memory capacity as well as adding software interfaces of their own, revealed the sources.

　　Additionally, Microsoft has also teamed up with Qualcomm to launch reference design for WP8 phones to shorten time to market.

　　Members of the WP camp now include Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, Gionee, Lava, Karbonn in addition to the existing HTC, Samsung Electronics and Compal Communications.

　　Among them, Karbonn is also likely to release dual-OS models supporting WP8 and Android soon, the sources noted.