Instagram finally coming to Windows Phone

Nokia's CEO revealed during Tuesday's Nokia World keynote in Abu Dhabi that the popular image-sharing app will soon be on the Windows Phone platform.

Nokia's CEO revealed during Tuesday's Nokia World keynote in Abu Dhabi that the popular image-sharing app will soon be on the Windows Phone platform.

Though the Finnish phonemaker's latest products, which include phablets and a tablet, were meant to be the star attractions of the event, for most, the news that Instagram and Vine are finally coming to the Windows Phone 8 app store will be seen as the highlight of the show.

Since launching, Windows Phone 8 devices have won praise for design and features but attracted much criticism for the lack of apps. And, because Nokia devices are so focused on photography, any leading app that enables sharing images that is absent is seen as a huge problem.

Finally snagging Instagram will be seen as a huge coup and as proof that the platform has legs. Recent reports suggest that Nokia has shipped over 8 million Lumia handsets over the last quarter cementing the Microsoft operating system in third place behind Android and iOS.

Windows Phone owners will be hoping that Google will soon start offering its apps on the platform too. The company refuses to make Gmail, Google Search, Google Now or Google Maps apps for the platform until it is sure it will last the course.

Conversely, this lack of apps has forced Nokia in particular to really innovate and one of the most impressive showcases at Nokia World Tuesday was of a feature called Storyteller which creates photo and video albums and overlays them on Nokia Here, its location and mapping service, so that users can view a map of the world and their images on it or zoom in to street-by-street detail and access other geo-specific information such as the menus of local restaurants. And it plugs into Facebook so that images uploaded to the social network also appear on Storyteller.