Nokia recently hinted its investors might be preparing to say goodbye to its past. The insiders speculate that the Finnish mobile phone giant is planning to switch to Android. Really? Yes, on a conference call following the company’s fourth-quarter report, Stephen Elop – new Chief Executive, Nokia, discussed about the company’s need to adapt to the rapidly changing market place, and considering “multiple ecosystem patterns”.

If the rumour is correct, we may see Nokia shaking hands with Google on their Android OS. It would be the end of the company’s vision of manufacturing its own smartphone around its homemade platforms– Symbian and MeeGo.

The switch to Android seems very likely if we consider the booming figures.

Google’s smartphone platform with global smartphone vendors like HTC, Motorola and Samsung, has acquired 26% share of the global market in the third quarter of 2010.

On the contrary, Nokia’s Symbian fell to a 37% market share in that quarter, as handset vendors Sony Ericsson and Samsung concentrated on Android as their new OS platform. 

The Australians grabbed the opportunity at CES 2011 as well, when they displayed their tablet- Evolve III Maestro at Intel’s booth. The tablet runs on dual-processors namely Android and Windows 7 with 1.83GHz Atom N475 CPU inside. The slate will graduate to a dual-core Oak Trail CPU, and add MeeGo to the stack for a grand total of three operating systems this Q2 2011. What we know is that both Windows 7 and Android are getting eight and sixteen hours of battery life on the Oak Trail chip respectively, and the tablet weighs less than two pounds.

The tablet supports 10.1-inch screen, 1024 x 600 capacitive touch-screen, 2GB of DDR3 RAM, up to 32GB of solid state storage, 3G and 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and a pair of full-size USB ports on one edge.

Insiders suggest the tablet will be priced at $500, and with the Oak Trail commanding expect an additional $100.

Watch the video below for a walkthrough of the slate.

Nokia and Intel will establish a new partnership to develop mobile devices on “meego” an open operating system. It is a Linux-based platform that combines Maemo Nokia (Google Android) and Intel’s Moblin systems.

“MeeGo will lead a broader range of Internet computing and communications experience for consumers with a variety of new types of mobile devices.”
Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (CEO, Nokia).

This cooperation will work across a range of hardware architectures and devices including mobile computers, netbooks, tablets, media-phones, connected TVs and in-vehicle infotainment systems.

The first release is expected in the second quarter of 2010 and contemplated to be adopted by device manufacturers, network operators, semiconductor companies, software vendors and developers. The first MeeGo-based device will be launched later this year.

Being evolved from the two best technologies, meego will deliver a range of experiences for users, including internet-based, computing, communications, multitasking and multimedia. Users will be able to easily move their applications from one device to another and use the same applications on a range of different devices.

“Our vision for seamlessly communicating between computing devices from the home, auto, office or your pocket is taking a big step forward today with the introduction of MeeGo. This is a foundational step in our evolving relationship with Nokia. The merging of these two important assets into an open source platform is critical toward providing a terrific experience across a variety of devices and gaining cross- industry support.”

Paul Otellini (President and CEO, Intel)