Rumbling is still grinding in the rumor mill as people mutter about Nokia mulling over offering Windows Phone 7 in their lineup. We have heard this one before, but Larry Dingan of ZDNet thinks that they’ll bite this time, and they might as well go even further. It’s hard to disagree with the analysis, in fact, Nokia has all the current hallmarks of needing more offerings for market, and they just lost their primary OS.

It’s a perfect time for them to reach out into other markets, increase their spread, and recoup the losses that they’ve suffered while attempting to slim down for the rarified economy.

One quick thing to note: Desperation can sometimes work. Windows Phone 7 is a good mobile operating system in search of distribution. Nokia has scale, global reach and products for every price point. Nokia has everything but an OS. On paper, the Nokia-Microsoft thing could work.

Matthew Miller notes:

I am personally a fan of the new Windows Phone 7 operating system, I have always been a Windows Mobile fan, and also enjoy using Nokia devices. WP7 is obviously a much more modern and exciting operating system than the current Symbian OS found on devices like the Nokia N8, but Nokia is working hard on future versions of Symbian and their MeeGo OS with Intel so I highly doubt they are going to throw in the towel and adopt a Microsoft OS that is in its infancy and has a long way to go. If they were going to adopt another OS, it would make more sense to go with Android that is far more advanced and selling at a much faster pace than anything else at the moment.

Recently, Nokia did cut almost 800 jobs and they delayed the release of their E7 smartphone—this activity leads the market to assume that the company either isn’t doing too well, or they’re preparing for a major shift of operations. Most of the jobs they dropped, in fact, align with their work on their Symbian OS. Meaning here that Nokia may be focusing more on hardware than software and this is the perfect place to bring Windows Phone 7 into the fold.

Still, as Matthew Miller notes Nokia is “working hard on future versions of Symbian and their MeeGo OS” but they’re not working that quickly. For the here-and-now, WP7 might be the shining light.

If the smartphone developer does go with WP7 that might give them the market agility to complete work on Symbian and MeeGo OS for later releases. There should be a difference noted between throwing in the towel in the OS market, and swaying like a reed in the wind with the gale force of market trade winds. Of course, we don’t know if Nokia is actually debating Android vs. Windows Phone 7 at this point. Rumors only seem to mention WP7.