As demand for smartphones grows, Microsoft sees its Windows Mobile growing as well to the tune of a 50% increase in global unit sales in the next two fiscal years, Reuters reports.

Chatting with Reuters at a news conference, Eddie Wu, the managing director of OEM embedded devices for Microsoft in Asia, said the software giant expects to sell 20 million copies of the Windows Mobile software in its current fiscal year, which ends next month. In its fiscal year ended June 2007, Microsoft sold more than 11 million units of the operating system and forecasts growth of at least 50% a year for the next two years, Wu said.

The fastest-growing markets for the smartphone software are Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Brazil, Russia and India, he said.