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Nokia has come out with an unusually definitive denial of reports that it was planning an Android smartphone, responding to a story in the UK newspaper The Guardian with the statement: "It's a well known fact that Symbian is our choice for smartphones and that's where it ends."

In fact, Nokia's OS strategy is looking more complicated than it did a year ago - it is expected to announce a Linux netbook later this year, and is working with Intel on a platform based around its own Maemo Linux (currently confined to the N8100 Internet Tablet) and Intel's Moblin/Atom architecture. However, despite rumors that the Finnish giant might run Android on its initial netbook and even a phone, its categorical denial is to be expected - Google is one of the few companies that could dominate the agenda and standards for the next generation of the mobile web, a position Nokia badly needs for itself. Since the main obstacle to Android is likely to be its absence from the platforms that command almost 40% of the world's handset market, support from Nokia would be a turnaround of epic proportions.

However, Nokia does aim to be more cross-platform in future, accepting the need to support - and preferably control - a major mobile Linux iteration. The Maemo/Moblin combination will be a powerful challenger to Android, even as Nokia also puts Symbian into open source. And it will bring the two OSs closer together too, using the important cross-platform toolkit, Qt, it acquired with Trolltech. The Qt developer framework will be used in a forthcoming version of Maemo rather than the GTK+ of current versions.

Qt will make its Maemo debut in the next release but one, codenamed Harmattan, making it easier for programmers to write for both Maemo and Symbian, bringing together Nokia's key MID and handset systems. This was the message from Quim Gil, Nokia's development platform product manager, speaking at the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. Harmattan will be the successor to the upcoming Fremantle, also known as Maemo 5 (in case you're interested, Nokia's Maemo codenames are called after winds).

The Gnome community, which supports GTK+, is being invited to work with Maemo so that Gnome apps will also work on Harmattan. Gil stressed that Qt will have community support in its new releases, rather than coming "out of the box" as prescribed by Nokia. He said his firm will continue to contribute to Gnome and told ZDnet: "There is an interesting possibility of getting a common API based on Qt for Maemo and Symbian."

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