• E-mail this page
• |  Print this page
• | 
• | 
• | 

Nokia: What? Us? Build An Android Phone? LOL!

The big buzz over the holiday weekend was a report from the Guardian in the UK, which asserted that Nokia was going to ditch its Symbian-based smartphone operating system and build new phones using Google's Android instead. This morning, Nokia flatly denied the story.

The Guardian ran a piece in the wee hours of the morning of July 6. It reports, "Nokia is understood to be developing a mobile phone that runs on Google's Android software platform in a strategic U-turn for the world's largest mobile phone manufacturer. The new touchscreen device will be unveiled at the Nokia World conference in September, say industry insiders, as the Finnish handset giant tries to revive its fortunes in the smartphone market."

That's a nice piece of fiction.

A number of mobile bloggers were chatting up the theory last night and we all pretty much came to the same conclusion: The entire report is a bunch of bollocks. Nokia has invested hundreds of millions in Symbian. Symbian will continue to play a vital role in the company's future. Nokia's shareholders would go bonkers if the company gave up on Symbian completely. It has invested a massive amount of resources developing the platform.

On top of that, why would Nokia pick up Android when it has a mobile Linux platform of its own? Maemo Linux has been used in Nokia's Internet Tablet devices for years. It is widely believed that Nokia will transition to Maemo for some of its smartphones. Maemo just needs a little bit of tweaking for it to be a solid phone platform. So, it makes no sense for Nokia to side with competitor Google.

To be clear on the matter, a Nokia spokesperson told Reuters today, "Absolutely no truth to this whatsoever. Everyone knows that Symbian is our preferred platform for advanced mobile devices."

« Will FriendFeed's New Search Equal More Real-Time Spam? | Main | What Sarah Palin Teaches Us About Social Media »