First Phone Out of Microsoft-Nokia -- and It's an Android

An anonymous reader writes BBC reports that the first phone resulting from the Microsoft-Nokia merger has been announced: the Nokia X2. And foiling everybody's ability to guess what OS it would run on, the answer is Android. But this being Microsoft, do expect some embrace-and-extend — the user interface is similar to the Windows phone. And it is being offered as a way to hook users into its cloud-based services, several of which come pre-installed as apps. Is this the first Linux product being offered by Microsoft? Can we upgrade Microsoft's social rating from CCC to CCC+?

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the best tool for the job.

Re:So what?

[clarkn0va]

I don't think I can fault MS/Nokia for going with the winner, but I might question the user that seeks his Android fix from this company. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

Re:Seems like a 180 from their previous views

[alvinrod]

It seems more likely that Microsoft is so large that parts of the company are on different wavelengths and act inconsistently with one and other. Also, no one brings a phone from conception to market in a few months. This was probably something in the pipeline from before Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia. Microsoft could have axed it (and under Ballmer they probably would have) but I think they've realized that doing things like that for purely ideological reasons is poor business sense and that while they might have been able to get away with it in the past, the times have changed. Given that they recently made Windows Phone free for manufacturers (at least certain ones anyway) it's not like they're potentially losing out on revenue either.

Re:So what?

[Tough Love]

Android already have ~80% of the market, this move seems to destroy one of the only competitors left ... empirically, that kind of monopoly has historically never been a good thing in the software industry.

Being able to grab the source and play with it, including doing whatever you wish without license fees kind of takes the sting out.