News

Nokia looks at Google Android with scepticism

"A platform has three to four million lines of code," said Niklas Savander, executive vice president of services & software for Nokia. "When Android has that many lines, we'll make an assessment. Until them it's just an announcement."

The quote was given to Ryan Kim blogging at SF Gate, and most of what Kim and Savander talked about was "strategy" - well worth reading. And it caught the attention of Nokia's own internal bloggers at Conversations, producing this comment: 

That might sound a bit biting, though I'm sure it isn't meant to. Savander is serious about software, it's his business. The number of handsets running the software he's responsible for run into the hundreds of millions so you can understand his caution.

There was a lot of speculation earlier this week about Nokia and Linux when a remark picked up at a conference was published out of context, sparking a flurry of reporting on Nokia dumping Symbian for Linux (not the case). That said, Nokia isn't tied to one single platform, despite the obvious connection with Symbian. It's still open enough to explore other operating systems and with Linux already in the mix for the Internet tablets, it's hard to see Nokia ruling out other possible options. Even Android.And the music / cinema side of the SFGate interview is specially worth following up:

Savander said the company's decision last year to launch Ovi -- an online service that provides music, maps, games and the ability to share content with friends from your handset or PC -- is a strategic decision that puts Nokia where its customers are. Nokia, for example, is trialing a new online music model outside the U.S. called Comes with Music that allows customers to subscribe to music from large labels like Universal and Sony BMG for free for one year.

.Ovi has been a bit of a damp squib so far, and one area where NewsWireless found it lacking was in access from Nokia handsets. It's a system much more friendly to PC users than mobile.

That's where iPhone and iPod Touch still beat Nokia; interesting to see that internally, they're apparently well aware of the importance of Ovi.