Of course Nokia shouldn't have gone with either Android or WP7.
Right now, it's crystal clear that their best possible path would be to keep their rising plan of a Symbian->MeeGo transition. Not losing all their 3rd party developers through Qt, most of their loyal customers, and pumping out hundreds of thousands of smartphones weekly through their own factories for a low price would have been the most obvious choice.
Many can regurgitate the american tech-news' flawed theories all they want, about Symbian already being in the toilet when the transition was announced. Up until February 11th, Symbian was still the most sold mobile O.S. by a fair margin, and the number of sales was
rising.
They were losing marketshare to Android obviously as did every other mobile O.S. to Google's explosion, but it doesn't mean it was already going through a
slow death, not with MeeGo in the horizon at least.
Sales were rising with Symbian^3. Profits were rising with Symbian^3. MeeGo was coming.
Even if all MeeGo handsets were terribly delayed as some might say, they would have loads of high-end/high-margins handsets with U8500 and Medfields to sell, by now. Plus, they wouldn't have to put their latest and best camera tech into a dead-on-arrival Symbian model either.
Right now, I think the only hope for Nokia is to get lots of Windows RT handhelds out in the market before they spend all those ~$7 billion of cash on losses and resort to selling even more assets.
I think if the time comes when they have to sell Navteq to in order to keep functioning will be the point of no return from a complete sell-out (to Microsoft, of course).
Regarding the reactions from the European carriers:
Sceptics among operators say the sleek, neon-coloured phones are overpriced for what is not an innovative product, cite a lack of marketing dollars put behind the phones, and image problems caused by glitches in the battery and software of the early models.
(...)
"No one comes into the store and asks for a Windows phone," said an executive in charge of mobile devices at a European operator, which has sold the Lumia 800 and 710 since December.
(...)
"Nokia have given themselves a double challenge: to restore their credibility in terms of making hardware smartphones and succeed with the Microsoft Windows operating system, which lags in the market," the executive said.
(...)
"If the Lumia with the same hardware came with Android in it and not Windows, it would be much easier to sell," he said.
(...)
Operators are also frustrated that cash-rich Microsoft is not spending more on marketing Nokia Windows phones.
"The operators say to Nokia: 'We will try to bail you out if you and Microsoft come with the marketing money,'" says telecom consultant John Strand. "But even if the operators start to give away the Nokias for free, it will not make Nokia a success," said Strand, who works with many of the top European carriers.
(...)
"Ultimately, Nokia and Windows are challengers and they either need to come to market with a really disruptive, innovative product or a huge marketing budget to create client demand. So far they have done neither."
What was that about everything being ok in the long run because
Microsoft has their back?
Maybe the Nokia+Intel Qt/MeeGo alliance was as much of a threat to Microsoft as Apple or Google ever were... as it was certainly Microsoft's first
demand in this
transition.