Nokia Is Said to Be Near Software Partnership With Microsoft

Not exactly surprising considering Elop's background.

It's a bit surprising that Nokia wouldn't go for another Linux-based platform (Android), but I guess that anything is better than their current strategy.

I guess that WP7 will allow them to provide an alternative to all the Android devices out there, and unlike Android, they could potentially be the premier WP7 vendor if they execute correctly.

So, Nokia is said to prefer a 'partnership' with Microsoft, as opposed to being just another hardware vendor working with Google's Android. That means Nokia would have a special status with Windows Phone 7.

Would the other hardware vendors Microsoft has been working with be kicked out, leaving WP7 to run only on Nokia hardware? I find it hard to think of any other 'special status' Nokia can have, if other vendors also offer WP7 phones. Or would other vendors be forced to offer ones with severe limitations, to differentiate Nokia's? If so it seems to not make sense for the other vendors.

Also not sure why it makes sense for Microsoft. Giving Nokia special status means limiting the amount of hardware vendors. Perhaps Microsoft just wants to do the iPhone thing - tightly integrated software+hardware - but they could have done that in-house, like the did with Zune. Why have a single hardware vendor that isn't themselves?

For Nokia, I can see how this might make sense - they have had lots of delays while developing their software platform, and Microsoft has a viable one now. However, it seems it would make much more sense for Nokia to just fork Android, which is also a viable platform, and a more popular one at that. Also, it is free of cost, unlike WP7.

So overall this is very odd, but I guess the details will come out soon, and maybe it will make more sense.

If this pans out it may prove to be one of the most interesting changes in the mobile landscape for awhile. Nokia has the hardware capabilities and while I don't personally like it, MS has come up with a pretty good OS which I'm sure is only going to evolve rapidly. Don't think anything I've seen yet will pry my Android out of hands but I would love to see his pan out and form another big mobile player. I think the market can easily support 3 solid platforms.

If Nokia were to do this, then they had better find a way to make developer migration/adoption as frictionless as possible.

We're talking about smartphones here, which are going to be driven by developers to some extent. A whole scale migration from Symbian/MeeGo to something else is going to be a messy one for sure, one that's definitely going to anger the current crop of developers.

With frameworks like Qt in place, which makes it easy for developers to build for all Nokia platforms, I tend to think that Nokia would not to go down the path of an OS overhaul.

Then again, anything is possible when you've got billions of dollars in revenue. It could be anything from an OS switch, to a new version of Qt which natively compiles Python, Ruby, JS, etc

EDIT: this - http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/09/nokia-cancels-meego-phone/

seems to make one wonder even more about Nokia is up to