However, all of us here that are familiar with the landscape and with Microsoft's history thought this was a bad idea from the beginning. A lot of people freaking told them so. This is especially infuriating since their N9 was a success, limited only by Nokia's decision to discontinue it from the start, with many reviewers calling it "one of the most fascinating phones of the last few years".
And Nokia is not a startup, but a big company that should have the resources to branch out a little and test the water with an Android phone. That's how smart companies are doing it - they are A/B testing competing solutions. Take a look at Google - that's still working on Chrome OS, in spite of Android being a success.
And I get that Nokia wanted to focus on fewer products, to preserve resources, however they've gone to the extremes, throwing away years of hard work and even consumer goodwill, adopting an operating system that they don't and will never control - at least with Android, if anything had gone wrong with the Google partnership, they could have forked it, just like Amazon did.