This would be a stop gap money grab for Nokia. But luckily for people like me, they don't base their strategy on short term commercial success, but long term stability as well as a philosophy they seem unwilling to extinguish.

Nokia wants to connect people as well as connect people to TECHNOLOGY. Not just some people, or rich people, or people living in democracies with developed infrastructure, but ALL people.

Android alone won't address the massive low economic customers, which are where 98%+ of the next billion customers in wireless will come from. Symbian does that, at price points Android can only dream to mimick. If Nokia adopted Android, it would diminish their commitment to Symbian, since Symbian and Android are direct competitors in the mid to high end segment.

MeeGo will take the lion's share of that high end from Symbian, which will be pushed down market to absorb their large high end featurephone converts at similar price points. MeeGo runtime support and capabilites for developers will blow anything on the market out of the water, assuming WebOS doesn't adopt a similar architecture.

Android, iOS, WP7, and Blackberry OS aren't even close from a developer standpoint in terms of what is possible. It has manufacturer support from heavyweights like Dell, Fujitsu, and many others. It has a chance to dominate the high end and tablet market. Its shared Qt ecosystem with market dominating Symbian makes things that much more attractive to commercial developers eager to compete with Google on a more even playing field.

Both these OSes share core UI and application toolkits, which makes it a formidable ecosystem and a worthy situation to Nokia for massive investment. The short term profits gained and man hours wasted on Android instead of Qt and MeeGo/Symbian are greatly exceeded by the long term profits they stand to make spending that investment just as they have.

No other competitor has even close to the same opportunity. Google can't reach the low end with its thirst for Snapdragons and CPU cycles. Neither can Apple, and I doubt they want to. Microsoft abandoned it wiht its high system requirements. RIM hasn't attracted the high end well...

So what, Nokia should support THREE OSes?!? Of course not. They'll continue to improve Symbian's UI, with a new version coming this winter. Their lead over Android is safe, based on the time it took Apple to obtain its current state. Remember, Symbian has GROWN marketshare.

That is sound business strategy, and if executed well, can be considered a true revolutionary and daring success. My bets are on MeeGo/Qt.