SAN DIEGO — Microsoft’s bid to become a player again in the mobile phone market is being helped along by chips from San Diego’s Qualcomm.

The Seattle software giant unveiled nine new smartphones for the worldwide market running on its new mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7. All of the new devices include Qualcomm’s top end Snapdragon processor chip to power the applications on the phones.

Qualcomm and Microsoft began working on integrating Windows Phone 7 software with Qualcomm’s hardware about 18 months ago, said Rob Chandhok, president of Qualcomm Internet Services.

The San Diego company’s 1 gigahertz Snapdragon processor has previously been used mostly in smartphones running Google’s Android operating system.