At Long Last, Instagram Will Arrive for Windows Phone

Oct. 22, 2013 — -- It might just be one app, but it's an app that 150 million actively use on their iPhone or Android phones to snap photos, apply filters and then share their shots with their friends. And soon Windows Phone owners will be able to join in on all the Instagram fun.

At its Nokia World Conference in Abu Dhabi today, Nokia confirmed that the popular photo sharing app owned by Facebook will be arriving for the Windows Phone operating system in the coming weeks.

"Our ultimate goal is to bring Instagram to everyone who wants to use it," Kevin Systrom, the CEO and co-founder of Instagram, said in a statement. "We're looking forward to watching the Windows Phone community use Instagram to capture and share beautiful moments in the coming weeks."

The app has been one of the most anticipated by those with Windows Phones, and especially those with Nokia's Lumia devices, which have higher-end cameras than many other smartphones on the market. The Lumia 1020 has a 41-megapixel camera and its latest 6-inch Lumia 1520 has a 20-megapixel camera.

Instagram might be the main event, but Nokia also announced that Vine, Twitter's popular six-second video sharing app, will be available soon in the Windows Phone app store. Temple Run 2 and My Talking Tom will also be coming soon.

The announcements are great momentum for Microsoft's platform, which has struggled to attract the top apps at the same pace as Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating systems. While analyst firm IDC reported that Windows Phone was the fastest-growing platform among the leading operating systems for the second quarter of 2013, Android and iOS still hold a combined 92 percent of the global smartphone market.