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A Bloomberg report has claimed that Nokia is close to announcing a partnership with Microsoft which will see he firms collaborate on smartphone products.
The report adds weight to previous rumours of high-level meetings to discuss the possibility of Nokia using the Windows Phone 7 operating system with Finnish phone maker’s famously high quality mobile hardware.
New Nokia Chief Stephen Elop was said to have held talks with Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer on the subject. Such a bold move would amount to an admission of failure of the firm’s existing software development of MeeGo and Symbian.
Elop pulled no punches in a recent all-company memo in which he said that the firm stood on a ‘burning platform’ and expressed dismay at the slow pace of software development which looks likely to deliver just a single MeeGo-powered product this year.
"Our competitors aren’t taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem," said Elop in the memo.
"This means we’re going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem."
If the Bloomberg report turns out to be accurate, it would seem that Nokia has indeed decided to ‘join an ecosystem’ by adopting Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7.
