Nokia and Microsoft may be talking about forging a partnership to develop a line of Nokia devices running Windows Phone 7, Mobile Review's Eldar Murtazin said in his weekly op-ed.

Murtazin said these talks, initiated by new management at Nokia, are "a desperate measure for both companies," for which the partnership would be an attempt to thwart the momentum of the rapidly expanding Android OS.

"Joining forces with Microsoft is a bad idea," he said. "Nokia had a strong developers team, which the company somehow decided to disband. This suggested alliance shows the weakness of Nokia. They look desperate and cannot control the situation."

If the rumors are true, it says a lot about Nokia, said Unwired View, who picked up Murtazin's post on Monday. Nokia announced last month that effective April 2011, the Symbian platform will go back to being an in-house Nokia operation as the Symbian Foundation winds down its governance role. However, Unwired View said that a Nokia-branded line of Windows Phone 7 devices would undermine the confidence that Nokia has expressed in its own OS.

Although Symbian is the biggest smartphone platform worldwide, both Android and Apple have been growing aggressively. In September, IDC said that Nokia's platform would likely retain the top spot through 2014, but it also predicted an 18 percent drop in market share.

Meanwhile, Google's Android platform continues to gain steam. November data from comScore found that Android nabbed 14.9 percent of the global market in October, a 6.5 percent increase. Earlier this month, Google's vice president of engineering Andy Rubin said that carriers activate more than 300,000 Android-based devices every day

Sales figures for Windows Phone 7, which first hit U.S. stores Nov. 8, are still unknown.

Neither Nokia nor Microsoft could be reached for comment.