Rumours that primary Windows Phone OEM Nokia has been two-timing Microsoft by keeping an Android phone project on its backburner have been doing the rounds for a while now. And yesterday the Wall Street Journal tipped more fuel on this fire, citing “people familiar with the matter” confirming that Nokia will unveil an Android powered device at the Mobile World Congress tradeshow in Barcelona later this month.
On the surface, it sounds like madness. And yet, as others have previously speculated, there is potentially method to this madness — being as Windows Phone has failed to challenge Android’s reach at the lower end of the smartphone market whereas, switching to Android for budget devices would be one way for Microsoft to slice itself a larger portion of a very large (and growing) chunk of the smartphone pie.
Or a plucky landing on the shores of occupied territory, if you will.
The device would also not resemble vanilla Android in terms of its UI, but would rather be a fork of Android — just as Amazon has forked Android for its Kindle Fire tablets and to further its own ends, not Google’s — with Nokiasoft apparently dressing the interface to make it look like Windows Phone.
Doing that would mean the budget Droid could acclimatize first time smartphone users to a Windows Phone world — i.e. in the hopes they will upgrade to a full-fat Windows Phone Lumia smartphone in the fullness of time.
According to the WSJ, Nokia engineers have been developing the Android device before agreeing to sell its mobile making division to Microsoft last fall. But up to now it hasn’t been clear whether Nokia planned to move ahead with the project or not.
The newspaper’s sources confirm the handset will be unveiled later this month — so presumably the project has been okayed by Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella.
