Recently we learned that Nokia was working on Android phones, at the very least as an insurance against Microsoft, but it seems it may have been more than that, because it seems Nokia already went ahead with ordering 10,000 units for their Android phone from Foxconn. Why would they do that, if they didn’t intend to actually launch it and sell it?
However, if you were hoping for high-end Android device from Nokia, then you’ll be disappointed, because it seems that it was intended to replace their Asha line of smartphones instead. For all Microsft’s fans comments that “WP is faster” on lower-end hardware, it’s Android that has been on the lowest end hardware so far, working even on 600 Mhz ARM11 (ARMv6) processors. But apparently Nokia intended to use a Snapdragon 200 processor, which includes a 1.4 Ghz CPU (Cortex A5), which is significantly faster than that.
Either way, I was afraid that even if Nokia decides to go Android, they’d probably use it as an afterthought, instead of putting it on its best and most high-end devices, and it seems that’s exactly what was going on. But that’s not what people have been asking from Nokia. If Nokia wanted to really compete against the Galaxy S4, HTC One and other such Android flagships, with Android, then they should’ve used Android with much better hardware.
Even though they’ve already ordered 10,000 units from Foxconn, I doubt they will ever see the light of day, as I’m sure Microsoft will put a stop to that now, and take the loss themselves. But until Nokia and Microsoft sign the deal in November, the project will not be canceled. At this point there’s little doubt that the deal won’t be signed, so the project is as good as dead. There will never be a Nokia-made Android phone on the market anymore, and people who were still hoping for one, should start getting used to that idea.
After the Nokia acquisition, Windows Phone is likely to meet more hurdles, instead of fewer, because I doubt either HTC or Samsung will want to create WP8 phones anymore, and Microsoft will likely meet the same opposition from smartphone OEM’s as they did from PC OEM’s after they announced the Surface tablets, with many of them wanting to break free from Microsoft after that, including Intel. In the mean time, Android should sail smoothly towards its second billion users.