look we can dissagree on that all we like, however you cant deny the burning platform memo was a complete reckless disaster, if you are going to change, do it gradually or at the very least dont publicly slate your current and immediate future products.
Nokia and Symbian were already a burning platform long before Elop came on board. That was the whole reason he was hired. He just happened to be outspoken enough to voice the reality that the board of directors knew about long before Elop was even considered a candidate for the job.
The memo may or may not have accelerated that, but the reality was that Symbian was already failing quite hard by the time he came on board. And Meego certainly wasn't going to turn that around.
Without Microsoft coming around in an attempting to keep the company solvent (like they did with Apple when they invested heavily in Apple), Nokia would be dead by now, either dissolved or bought out by one of the other players (like Samsung, LG, or a Chinese firm).
It was going to have to go up against and entrenched iPhone with a large app ecosystem with a LOT of people buying apps (something Nokia has never had) along with an incredibly user friendly interface.
Android only managed to be successful because Android devices were all sold to carriers at generally 1/2 the price or less of the iPhone. It wasn't until years later that Samsung would be able to sell an Android phone to a carrier for a price that was even within sniffing distance of what Apple was charging for the iPhone. That combined with the popularity of Google at least gave them a chance. How much of the world at the time didn't use Google search? Oh and getting started early enough and as someone else mentioned doing a complete 180 and changing Android to be more similar to iOS than what they had originally planned.
Their only chance at staying relevant in the mobile phone market was to either go Android (and go after the peanuts left over from Samsung) or bet the bank on Microsoft and potentially be the largest Windows Phone player.
Android meant they would be guaranteed to always be a marginal player if they managed to stay in business (HTC is struggling to do that even with starting from a dominant Android position and making a lot of critically acclaimed phones). Windows Phone means taking a huge risk where you'll either still be a marginal player or go out of business; but with a potential upside of becoming a whole lot more profitable if WP takes off. That isn't going to happen if you go the Android route. That isn't going to happen if you go with another phone OS (Firefox, Tizen, Meego, Blackberry, whatever...) without billions and billions of cash to throw at app. developers.
Any new player is going to require billions of USD in order to even crack the market. And billions more to have a hope of getting even 10-15%.
Regards,
SB