With the clamours for a new operating system growing louder by the day, Nokia is denying reports it is working on a new smartphone or netbook running on Android software to be unveiled at the Nokia World conference in September.

The Guardian reported “industry insiders” saying the new touch-screen device is an attempt by the Finnish mobile phone giant to recapture its still dominant, but rapidly slumping market share.

However, there is no hard evidence or confirmed specs this is true, and a Nokia spokesperson said there was "Absolutely no truth to this whatsoever."

Google's Android is an open-source rival to Nokia's Symbian software.

"Everyone knows that Symbian is our preferred platform for advanced mobile devices", the spokesperson said.

While Nokia makes about 40% of all mobiles sold, the total mobile phone market is rapidly contracting, with smartphones the only growing sector.

Nokia’s market share of that sector has dropped from 47% of the global market in 2007, down to 35% last winter, and 31% at the end of last year, according to HSBC analysts.

Needless to say, Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry have been the primary benefactors of Nokia’s slump in smartphone market share, in large part due to a highly intuitive user-interface (Apple) and streamlined enterprise applications such as push-email (RIM).

Nokia’s aging Symbian software platform has arguably lagged behind Apple and RIM’s for the last three years, with even late-to-the-party Android having surpassed Symbian in phone OS popularity.

Nokia bought Symbian in a bid to create its own open source mobile phone OS standards; if this rumour of an Android device is true it’s an implicit admission of a fairly hefty defeat, but what’s even more puzzling is that Nokia is also quietly working on another open source mobile platform: Maemo.

Endgadget makes the point that if Nokia is now working with a common platform adopted by dozens of companies large and small, the million (or maybe billion) dollar question is: “all things being equal, can Nokia outdo HTC and Samsung on the same platform?”

Nokia’s recently announced alliance with Intel has also fuelled speculation of a new netbook or Mobile Internet Device.