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Microsoft does not want a platform dominated by one hardware manufacturer. Their interest is for Nokia to be the Compaq of phones, or something along those lines.

There's no way that Nokia can really own the platform so that the same stuff that runs on their phones won't run on other phones in the future. Microsoft owns it, period. With Android, being open source, they would have had a bit more leverage.

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Android is already saturated with almost all hardware vendors jumping in and entry of low cost Chinese handsets. Microsoft may own it, but remember that they are an upstart now in the mobile business, not an established player. I am pretty sure this deal would allow them a lot more leverage to influence the OS design and software. Pretty much like the early WinTel era.

> Pretty much like the early WinTel era.

The company that got really, really rich off the early WinTel era was none other than Microsoft. Not Compaq, not IBM, not any of the other clones.

Well, it's actually Intel.

There is one non-disastrous way for this to work out. Nokia becomes the Dell of smartphones.

That could work, but I don't think they have it in their culture to be generic, low-margin, no R&D sorts of people, especially given labor and other costs in Finland.

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