We opined on the basis of a certain ” 2014 recommitment date” mentioned in slides posted by MS when they announced Nokia acquisition plans that,
Now, a new report corroborates what we guessed. Nokia was indeed working on Android powered Nokia smartphones. According to sources of NYTimes,
Before Microsoft reached a deal to buy Nokia’s phone business, there was a possibility that Nokia could have switched its smartphones to Google’s Android operating system sometime after late 2014. And now, it is clear that a Nokia Android phone was more than a possibility. It was real.
The sources also confirm that Nokia Android phones existed even before MS started negotiations with Nokia about acquisition.
A team within Nokia had Android up and running on the company’s Lumia handsets well before Microsoft and Nokia began negotiating Microsoft’s $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia’s mobile phone and services business, according to two people briefed on the effort who declined to be identified because the project was confidential. Microsoft executives were aware of the existence of the project, these people said.
For MS it may have been sudden death of its aspirations, had Nokia gone Android, but why Nokia Board agreed to sell the devices division? So, not only MS even Nokia Board needs to share the blame of selling Nokia’s consumer facing business. The reasons may be many from “making business sense to investor’s pressure“, but none can deny the fact that perhaps “Nokia’s decision of going solo windows phone” has brought Nokia to such stage where it needed to sell its “Device division“.
[embedit snippet=”madsr”]
