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Jul. 7, 2009

Nokia has publicly said it won't be developing a handset running on Google’s Android operating system.

It made that statement late yesterday after various reports surfaced that it was developing a new handset that would run on the open source operating system developed by Google.

“Symbian is our first choice for smartphones and that’s where it ends,” said Nokia spokesman Chris Morse.

The Guardian reported yesterday that Nokia would unveil an Android-based touchscreen device at its world conference in September. Morse said the report was nothing but a rumor and would not comment or offer other details.

Overall, Nokia has a pretty good market share in the worldwide mobile handset market and has based its N-series and E-series smartphones on its proprietary Symbian platform it developed in 2007.

A move toward the Android operating system would indicate a major change in strategy for Nokia. The handset maker has led the charge for the Symbian operating system and contributing them to the non-profit Symbian foundation, which unifies Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and MOAP(S) software.

Similar to Google’s Android platform, Symbian is going open source, which makes it available to outside developers.

Although adoption of the Android-based operating system is just beginning to accelerate, Nokia still faces stiff competition from Android-based phones such as the popular HTC.

T-Mobile USA is carrying HTC’s Android-based Google phones, the G1 and myTouch G3. In addition, Samsung executives said earlier this year that they would be releasing Android devices in the future.

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Source: Nokia.