Marmalade, the cross platform development tool maker, is putting resources into Tizen and Windows Phone technology in the belief that they will provide significant opportunities for developers in the future.

Harvey Elliott, CEO of Marmalade (pictured), told Mobile World Live that the company saw “hundreds and hundreds of apps” developed through its Tizen incentive programme, showing there is an appetite for the platform.

“We’re fully geared for Tizen development. It’s a new platform and developers love new technology,” Elliott noted.

However, the Marmalade CEO acknowledged that there isn’t yet a significant user base for Tizen, with a digital camera and recently-announced Gear smart watches from Samsung the only devices using the OS.

“It does need a phone in the market to make that work,” he noted.

NTT Docomo, Orange and Samsung failed to deliver on a promise to commercialise Tizen handsets in the second half of 2013, although US operator Sprint and its parent SoftBank Mobile, along with Chinese vendor ZTE, recently added their support for the platform.

And Elliott showed optimism that Tizen will offer a revenue opportunity once smartphones using the technology arrive, with initial growth likely to be in Asia.

He added that the mobile games built by early adopter developers on Marmalade technology is “not wasted work” as they will be able to offer the titles on other more mainstream platforms.

Although Windows Phone “hasn’t really blossomed yet”, Elliott was also bullish about the Microsoft platform.

“I actually think Windows Phone is a very credible platform, especially as it is supported by Microsoft. And Microsoft doesn’t back down from a fight,” he noted, adding that Microsoft has done a good job in backing developers.

In addition to its work on Tizen and Windows Phone platforms, Marmalade is enhancing what it can offer to Android and iOS developers.

Just this week, it broadened the availability of the Marmalade Juice technology which enables iOS developers using the Mac-specific Objective-C programming language to make their apps available for Android devices.

First announced a year ago, the technology is now part of the standard Marmalade SDK, meaning any developer using Marmalade can take advantage of the technology. A BlackBerry version remains limited to certain professional customers for the time being.

As Juice is open source, developers can add more APIs — such as GPS, camera and social capabilities — as time passes. “We’re feeling good about the technology. We’ll never have 100 per cent API coverage, but we can get close,” Elliott noted.

“We hope the community will support itself as they bring projects for iOS to Android,” he added.

Marmalade already offers cross platform development tools for different programming languages via its SDK (C++), Web Marmalade (HTML5) and Marmalade Quick (rapid scripting language Lua).