Nokia and Microsoft announce strategic partnership for Windows Phone

While Nokia and Symbian are closely tied together, it seems that Nokia will be looking beyond Symbian in the future. If you remember recent reports of Nokia’s CEO making a strong claim for change, it wouldn’t be too surprising to hear that Nokia and Microsoft have struck up a deal to see Windows Phone arrive on its devices. Such a move does make a certain amount of sense, since Nokia is facing a serious challenge from iOS, Android and other devices while Microsoft itself is having a hard time trying to dislodge rival platforms from the top. The latest announcement details plans for a broad strategic partnership to build a new global mobile ecosystem and we’ve got a video after the jump giving you an idea of What Stephen Elop and Steve Ballmer think about the partnership. In essence, you can expect major changes such as:

• Nokia will adopt Windows Phone as its main smartphone strategy, so expect Windows Phone 7-powered Nokia devices
• Nokia will help drive the future of Windows Phone, offering its expertise on hardware design, language support and more
• Bing will power Nokia’s search services, which is definitely news that will disappoint Google
• Nokia Maps will become a core part of Microsoft’s mapping services, and Maps will be integrated with Microsoft’s Bing search engine
• Nokia’s content and application store will be integrated with the Microsoft Marketplace