Nokia Was Working on an Android Phone While Microsoft Was Working on a Surface Phone

Nice scoop by Nick Wingfield:

And now, it is clear that a Nokia Android phone was more than a possibility. It was real.

A team within Nokia had Android up and running on the company’s Lumia handsets well before Microsoft and Nokia began negotiating Microsoft’s $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia’s mobile phone and services business, according to two people briefed on the effort who declined to be identified because the project was confidential. Microsoft executives were aware of the existence of the project, these people said.

And Tom Warren reports for The Verge:

While Nokia was testing Android in a variety of different ways, Microsoft was busy experimenting with a Surface Phone. Sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans have revealed to The Verge that the company built a number of prototype devices to test the viability of such a phone. We’re told that Terry Myerson, who now heads the Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox operating systems, was in charge of the secret Surface phone project. We understand the company had originally considered the idea of its own phone devices as a “Plan B” if Nokia wasn’t successful with Windows Phone.

Think of all the wasted and duplicated effort between these two companies; if they were going to get married they should have done it two years ago.

★ Friday, 13 September 2013