Nokia All Smiles & Hugs As Windows 7 Phone Calls
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But could we see a Nokia on Android in the not-so-distant future?

Well, Nokia CEO refused to rule it out when talking to journalists at CommunicAsia event this week.

Saying its recent link up with Microsoft, announced in February, to develop smartphones represented a “swing factor” for Microsoft, Nokia Chief Stephen Elop implied the power was in it’s corner.

“If we had gone Android or invested in Android or taken significant market share to Android then we would have significantly shifted the market in that direction,” Elop said, thus shoving it’s new best friend Microsoft into oblivion.

“When we describe the relationship with Microsoft we laid out four pillars of the relationship … the fourth pillar was the recognition that we represented a swing factor for Microsoft.”

And although troubled phone maker Nokia are professing their undying love for Steve Ballmer’s software giant at the moment, a cagey Elop refused to rule out a Nokia Android handset in the future, when quizzed by journalists.

“We don’t know but I do know” he said before bursting out in a ‘hearty laugh’, The Australian reports.

“There’s all sorts of complexity and obligations on both directions so there’s no simple answer to it so I wouldn’t want to answer glibly anyway.”

But the troubled maker, who recently let 4000 staff go and has binned its Symbian platform, recognised the huge monetary value attached to the deal with Microsoft, said to be worth $1billion to Nokia, whose market share has slid in the high end smartphone sector, lost to rivals like Apple iPhone and Android OS.

And it looks like Nokia’s Windows 7 gamble might be paying off with the number of software developers moving to the Windows platform booming by more than 300 per cent – jumping from 6000 pre February to 20000 currently.

 

It’s “now number three in terms of the platform for which new applications are being developed,” Elop revealed.

“And yet as part of this relationship we’ve made the unambiguous decision to focus on Windows Phone in exchange for which Microsoft is transferring to us a very large amount of value measured in the billions as how I’ve characterised it in the past,” Mr Elop said.

But whatever about Android, Elop also revealed, somewhat mysteriously, it is not just phones or even tablets the new Nokia and Microsoft Windows meeting of minds is concerned with. 

“It may be tablets but it may be television sets, gaming platforms, automobiles” and a whole “family of devices,” he said.

“We have the opportunity to take advantage of the Windows 8 touch environment which looks remarkably like the design language for Windows Phone.

“There’s clearly a form of common development, common user experience being stretched not only across the phones, across tablets, across PCs now … that’s clearly an opportunity. 

 

“I would actually elevate it a step beyond tablets; it may be smartphones, it may be mobile phones, it may be tablets but it may be television sets, gaming platforms, automobiles … your digital experience as an individual,” he added.

At CommunicAsia this week, Nokia debuted its N9 handset on MeeGo OS, its stopgap solution while it works on its first W7 handset.

Read New Nokia WP7 A No Show As Nokia Launch MeeGo N9