The rumor mill began grinding after Adnaan Ahmad, an analyst with Berenberg Bank in Hamburg, Germany, urged the Nokia chief executive -- and former Microsoft executive -- Stephen Elop and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to form an alliance that would give Nokia full and exclusive access to the Windows Phone "intellectual property."

Fueling the speculation is a planned Feb. 11 speech that Elop will give in London to investors. Elop become Nokia's first non-Finnish CEO in September. On Jan. 27, in comments at a meeting with analysts, Elop said Nokia was willing to "create and/or join other ecosystems" in the mobile phone space, according to the Times story. The comment could indicate that Nokia is considering a partnership with the Windows Phone "ecosystem."

EXECUTIVE EXODUS:

The proposed software alliance would mean scrapping Nokia's MeeGo OS created for its high-end smartphones, an expensive effort with little to show for it. As Ahmad noted, Nokia's smartphone market share in the U.S. has dwindled to the low single-digits.

MeeGo is a joint, , -based software project originally launched by Nokia and Intel, and now overseen by the Linux Foundation. It merges code from two other platform efforts, Intel's Moblin and Nokia's Maemo. The WeTab tablet, which runs MeeGo and is already on sale in Europe, in the U.S. at the recent Consumer Electronics Show.