Call from Microsoft could perk up Nokia

NOKIA could be thrown a lifeline this week when the struggling Finnish mobile phone manufacturer signs an alliance with US software giant Microsoft.

The Finland-based mobile phones firm saw its shares rise more than 4 per cent in trading in Helsinki last week following fresh, but firmed up, analysts' speculation.

They believe that Nokia will abandon its Symbian operating system in preference to Windows phone software in the US.

Carolina Milanese, an analyst with Gartner, said: "It could be the big announcement we are expecting." But she added: "There is no guarantee this is going to be a successful alignment. Windows 7 has been disappointing and Microsoft is not sexy to the consumer from a mobile phone perspective."

The US is the world's largest and most competitive mobile phone market. Nokia was the market leader until 2002, but since then its share price has been cut almost in half as it lost out to Apple, Samsung, Research in Motion's Blackberry, HTC and LG.

According to research outfit Canalys, Microsoft needs a mobile phone hook-up deal badly as its software powers a mere 3 per cent of smartphones, trailing Android, Symbian, Apple and RIM.

Until last September Nokia's president and chief executive, Stephen Elop, was president at Microsoft.

n JOHN Chambers, chairman and chief executive of Cisco Systems, told Scotland on Sunday this week that social networking is making a major contribution to product development.

"I do not think we have ever experienced such a fast pace in terms of product development and delivery, and driving this is social networking which has the power to transform an organisation," he said. Chambers was in London to address "Cisco Live", the company's European networking get-together.

Cisco now has a single goal centred on getting products to market faster, he said. "We have turned out more new products in the last one and a half years than the entire previous decade."