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Until now, Nokia's leading handsets have been built on the Symbian operating system, but the company will now join Vodafone, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung Electronics, Huawei and LG Electronics in strengthening its Linux alliances.

Nokia does have previous experiences using Linux. Its Internet tablets; large phone-like devices used to access Internet on the go, have been around for a while but lacked calling functionality. Nokia spokesman Kari Tuutti disclosed that the phone manufacturer has been developing the next generation of Linux-based products, which are set to come into the market.

"We will expand that range, and we believe that the role of Linux will grow," he said.

"It's going to be terribly important," offered chief financial officer Rick Simonson at an investor conference, when asked about the role of Linux-based tablets.

As Linux has an open source community, owing to its increasing popularity in IT, it is more mainstream than Symbian. By shifting towards Linux, Nokia stands to benefit from applications developed from within the open source community.