Nokia on Google

Why it won't support the new Android.

Don't expect to find Google's new Android platform on a Nokia phone soon, if ever. Nokia's official stance is that it's open to any new innovation in the market, especially one that will drive mobile data usage as Android ostensibly would. But Bill Plummer, vice president of multimedia for Nokia North America, points out Nokia's Series 60 platform is already embedded in half the world's smartphones so it's not currently looking for any alternatives.

“We have a developer community that numbers in the millions, and last year we brought 40 million devices to market,” Plummer said. “At this stage the optimal solution for a phone is S60.”

Does that mean Nokia is remaining closed, while Google is the beacon of openness? Hardly, according to Plummer. “The changes that are taking place in the market — don't let anybody tell you it's about convergence,” he said. “It's about collision.”

Google and a handful of hardware and software vendors and carriers are promoting their own operating system (OS) solution at the expense of others, Plummer said. The core OS may be based on Linux and it may be open-source, but open-source or no open-source, throwing a new platform into a market that has already coalesced around several other platforms doesn't unify the industry — rather it fragments it further, he said. Plummer doesn't challenge Google's right to launch such a platform — after all, Nokia’s S60-Symbian platform is itself one of several competing OSs — but the feel-good vibes Google is attributing to Android are misplaced, he said.

Nokia, too, has been dabbling with open source. Symbian may be a licensed operating system, but Nokia took the S60 browser open source last year, using the same Apple Safari WebKit code that powers Android's browser. Nokia also uses Linux in its Internet tablet series, designed for Wi-Fi and WiMAX networks, but Plummer said that those devices are intended to be mobile computers and the OS won't be transferring to the handset.

So what's the difference between Google and Nokia's flavors of open source? Probably not much, said John Jackson, wireless analyst for Yankee Group. Google and Nokia may have widely divergent approaches to the Java virtual machine and access to the underlying code, but on the browser they appear to be in the same camp. Google has made it clear that its vision for the mobile Internet is very browser-centric. That Web-based service approach tied to the same basic browser likely will mean that many applications designed for Android also will work on S60, Jackson said.

“It's highly likely when Google talks about open-source browsing and Nokia talks about open-source browsing, they're really talking about the same thing,” Jackson said.

And ultimately that could resolve a very real problem for Google — that the world's largest handset vendor isn't getting on board with its plans.

GOOGLE'S ANDROID NOKIA'S SERIES 60