It's a Nokia phone, not a Microsoft phone. It takes an average of 18 months to bring a phone to market. The Nokia acquisition was completed just two months ago, and the teams must be fairly independent right now. While the Nokia acquisition was being completed, Nokia was legally required to act as if the acquisition would fail.

China approved the Nokia acquisition only on April 8, what would have happened if they didn't? Without an Android strategy, Nokia would be left without any momentum for atleast a year in a fast moving market. Remember how FTC denied AT&T and Tmobile's merger?

The only interesting thing here is that Microsoft didn't immediately kill the X2 and lay off Nokia's Android team. They could do that anytime or sell that division to some other company. There would be a lot of people at MS calling for its head. The headline, story and most of the comments seem to be implying that it's Microsoft that conceived and implemented this idea which is wrong.

I've received an invitation from Opera for publishing/porting app on Nokia, which stated that Microsoft team will be contacting me should I choose to proceed... So it does sound like they seems to be taking some part handling Nokia store.

I don't know about the 18 months, the Blackphone started development in December or January and is coming out in a few days, which is a far cry from 18 months. Maybe that's an outlier, though.

> The Nokia acquisition was completed just two months ago

Do you seriously think there would be any other possible outcome for the burning platform memo?

"the Nokia X smartphone achieving top-selling status in Pakistan , Russia , Kenya and Nigeria,3 while earning the third-best-selling smartphone spot in India ," said Timo Toikkanen , head of Mobile Phones, Microsoft Devices Group.

This phone is not aimed at people who a power users. This phone is aimed at emerging economies where people are buying their first smartphones. Nokia X has all the basics (music, free messaging, email, Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp), all running on some reasonable hardware.

    >This phone is not aimed at people who a power users.

I think we have started confusing "power user" with "power app purchaser". A Pakistani cab driver that runs his business off multiple cell phones or a dual simmed phone is probably more of a "power user" in the context of a mobile communication device than your average 1st world iPhone wielding instagram-aholic that happens to have extra disposable income that can be trifled away on an IAP in Angry Birds.

I'm not suggesting it appeals to the Android user at all, it appeals to the prospective smartphone user. As long as you can install basic messaging apps on these things (which you can), this is a really good deal.

This is a market segment which can also easily be filled by Windows Phone - it's probably even better for that. That I also find baffling. Windows Phone doesn't seem to be compatible with the particular SoC used in this device, but that is a problem Microsoft should be able to fix...

This could hurt manufacturers, who produce Android smartphones. If MS produces the phone in a low-budget segment and with decent quality. Manufacturers could consider WP with a higher profit margin, but that's my first guess.

My second would be hurting Google by not providing their services as default, while increasing traffic to their own cloud services.

My third guess would be increasing their global smartphone marketshare by entering the Android market and it's massive apps marketplace.

And a fourth guess, if 200.000 app makers enter the Nokia store, they could easily email all of them to consider converting their app to the WP market... With some clever subsidizing in place (eg. 0% cut the first 6 months, instead of the default 30%), it could increase the WP Apps quantity in a very short period.

Will it be possible to flash the phone with a stock Android ROM, or some other ROM that has access to the play store?

I realize that's not relevant to the vast majority of the market, but I'm curious.

Microsoft has a competitive advantage in the Android market because they're the only manufacturer that doesn't have to pay Microsoft $15 in Android licencing costs for each device released. (Actually, does that still hold true...?)

Can one still load apks ? though ? I wonder.And is there a specific sdk for this phone?