After unveiling the very impressive N97 yesterday, Nokia Vice President of markets units, Ukko Lappalainen, made several comments that brought to our attention the fact that the Finnish manufacturer was thinking of using the Linux OS for its more expensive, upcoming smartphones.

“In the longer perspective, Linux will become a serious alternative for our high-end phones,” said Lappalainen in what can only be deemed his most relevant statement in this sense.

Such a development may become a reality also because of the fact that Google has now developed a Linux-based Android platform. This may be one of the solutions that Nokia will be employing, although more realistic is the theory that the world's biggest mobile phone maker could be developing its own Linux system for its smartphones. This theory rings true mainly because the potential clients of this kind of smartphones are very demanding, their needs being a bit special, so it’s understandable if Nokia didn't want to take too many risks in this respect.

Also, the Linux maemo operating system found on the niche line of Internet tablets has been performing quite well, and is seemingly in conformity with the demands of Nokia's presidents in all aspects. As Lappalinen stated, “I don’t see anything in Android which would make it better than Linux maemo.”

Even after considering this last declaration, there was no hint in the statements made as to this particular operating system being the one to be used on Nseries or Eseries devices. On the contrary, some would argue that such a discussion should not even be regarded as a theory since it has no actual percentage rate of success. The actual idea, as most believe, is that through this kind of statements, Lappalinen was only trying to reinforce the idea that, for the time being, the balance is tilting in the direction of the Linux OS.