If you happen to have heard of the N900, it's the team who made that one. They founded their own company after Nokia sold its soul to MS.
http://www.nokia.com/global/about-nokia/people-and-planet/st...
http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/re...
If only to force/guilt-trip companies to do better and be responsible to their workforce, customers, supply chain, country etc., I am going to talk about companies and their soul.
It's a business that has a fair degree of social responsibility in its business plans.
My point with this isn't to be pedantic...I'm trying to say that referring to them in this way plays into the larger picture where it is in all businesses interest to have us refer to them as a person. They aren't.
The Android app capability comes from an Android runtime. I have not tried it myself but the compatibility layer could come from Myriad's "Turbo Dalvik," which is something I heard rumored some time ago, or Jolla might have done it themselves.
If you want, is a maemo/meego fork, with a compatibility layer to run Android apps, and won't be surprised if it runs also Firefox OS, Tizen and Ubuntu Touch apps in some moment.