1. Nokia was on the verge of non-existence. Honestly, Meego and Symbian were not going to cut it. Nokia just didn't have the chops to do it and that was obvious.
2. MSFT was aching to get in the game w/ something/someone other than HTC and this was a real opportunity.
3. Nokia hand Android available to it or this partnership w/ MSFT. By choosing MSFT they got cash infusion and also got to outsource dev to MSFT (which I'm assuming from what I read is the arrangement).
So far, so good. Given those parameters it actually seems to make strategic sense for Nokia to choose MSFT and this route. But wait..that isn't all.
5. Who is going to write the apps for this? Had Nokia chosen Android, they would have literally gained hundreds of thousands of apps instantaneously. Does anyone know the number of people writing WP7 apps? It is not a huge number and most of the apps are not good. Sure, it is early and this announcement will likely boost the numbers but still...it isn't android numbers and it certainly isn't iOS numbers.
Given #5 all of the sudden the decision looks quite questionable.
I guess, what I don't see, is who is Nokia really going to call a customer? If Nokia wants to capture the smartphone market, this is just plain dumb. If nokia wants corporate phones, it might be quite smart..being able to replace RIM/Blackberry just about a launch (really, it would be that easy if they focused). If they want to capture Corporate market AND capture ultra cheap entry cell phones....now it sorta makes sense.
Ok...so what am I missing? Anyone know their real strategy?