Nokia going full steam ahead on Android until Microsoft’s shareholders approve the purchase

BY Stefan Constantinescu

Published 19 Sep 2013

When Microsoft announced that they were going to buy Nokia’s handset division, the internet started crying. It didn’t exactly help that a few days after the deal was announced, information started leaking out about Nokia’s secret Android experiment. Turns out that Nokia could have switched to Android once their deal with Microsoft expired at some point in late 2014, but a Microsoft acquisition would surely stop such a plan dead in its tracks.

Which brings me to today’s news, which technically isn’t news, but more of a rumor. According to a Weibo account that’s proven itself to be reliable in the past, Nokia is still working on Android. The company has ordered 10,000 phones to be made that use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 200 processor. These phones are prototypes, of course, and they’re code-named “Mountain View”, the city that Google calls home.

What’s the probability of Microsoft’s shareholders rejecting the Nokia deal? That’s a tough one to call. If you’re a Microsoft shareholder, you probably know that mobile is the future. And if the one company that makes 80% of the phones that run your operating system wants to switch to Android, chances are you want to buy that company just to prevent that from happening.

Anyway, what I want to see are photos of these so called “Mountain View” prototypes.

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