Andrew Nimick Point Concept twitter.com/andrewnim

A few weeks ago I wrote about the new Windows Phone7 mobile operating system for smart phones and how it might effect the market.

I mentioned how Nokia was loosing ground in this area as its operating system called Symbian was getting long in the tooth and being left behind.

A few things have happened to make it interesting since then.

1. Nokia has closed down the foundation which looked after Symbian (it is an open source operating system).

2. Nokia has taken more control of the development of Symbian.

3. Nokia has teamed up with China Mobile to attract developers.

Of the three the last one may be the most significant. China mobile has its own operating system based on Google's Android and it in turn has just joined the Linux Foundation. In effect they are now supporting the people who write the core of Linux and the development of Meego which is a partnership between Nokia and Intel. It is a bit convoluted so please stay with me.

It means that Nokia has teamed up with the world's largest mobile carrier and has access to an ecosystem of developers which rivals that of the iPhone. It means that it has access to this market for its own phones and can improve the development of the software running on the phones. Whether it is Android, Symbian or Meego. This ecosystem included some 50,000 developers and 560 million users. Yes that is more than Facebook.

So while it is perfectly feasible for Nokia to concentrate on the China market and make a good profit. I would expect that some time soon we will see Nokia phones appearing with much better systems and able to run apps from Android and its own version of a marketplace. And what it learns in China will translate directly into its markets in Africa and the rest of Asia – areas its lower priced simpler phones still work very well in.

I have generally always liked Nokia phones in the past, so I for one will be interested to see how well this plays out.