Said rise came as a result of a call by Berenberg Bank analyst Adnaan Ahmad for Nokia to drop support for the firm's project with Intel forthcoming OS MeeGo in favour of Microsoft's revised smartphone platform.
Rebel allianceHaving labelled MeeGo as "the biggest joke in the industry right now", news of an expected announcement by former Microsoft executive and Nokia CEO Stephen Elop on February 11 has added a certain frisson to Ahmad's otherwise unlikely stance.
Though nothing has been confirmed, the expectation is the Finnish firm may reveal it is to adopt WP7 as part of its strategy to win market share in the US.
Elop has already suggested he is willing to "create and/or join other ecosystems" as part of Nokia's smartphone approach, and it may be that US carriers would be more likely to push Nokia phones carrying WP7 compared to the unproven MeeGo, especially as its first devices aren't expected to ship in volume until the summer.
Feeding such speculation, Business Insider demonstrates such a partnership would technically hand Nokia and Microsoft 34 percent of the smartphone market a partnership that would put Apple's current 16 percent share (according to Canalys figures) in the shade.
However, an even more potent partnership could also be on the cards according to further speculation.
QNX is the key
With BlackBerry adopting QNX's PlayBook OS on its smartphone range in the coming months an OS that, according to reports, will run Android apps Android Market could be set to enjoy a huge boost in 2011, RIM and Google's smartphone share combined hitting 47 percent.
Though not a partnership in quite the same sense Android and BlackBerry would remain separate entities it nevertheless highlights how Apple's position could become severely weakened should its collective competitors see fit co-ordinate their strategies.
[source: New York Times/Business Insider]
