Apple has managed to clinch the number one position in the Q2 global smartphone market as Nokia's shipments declined to 16.7 million units, down from 24.2 million in the previous quarter.

According to IHS, Nokia posted the "worst performance" amongst leading smartphone brands in Q2 2011 as it faced fierce competition from Apple, Samsung and HTC.

"With the announcement of the transition in early 2011, Nokia eliminated any incentive for consumers and developers to buy into its existing smartphone products, which are based on its Symbian and MeeGo operating systems," said Teng.

All the old reasons a WP7 commitment was a bad idea remain problems under the new order. WP7 has bombed in its first quarter; there’s actual evidence that it’s not competitive. This means that the alliance does nothing to address Nokia’s historic weakness in the North American market. Then, too, it’s going to take time to get WP7 to market on Nokia hardware; one of their press releases describes 2011 and 2012 as “transition years”, a pretty strong hint that Nokia thinks both business units will have to struggle through a valley of death and shrinking Symbian sales before the new plan starts to bear fruit.

(Would an Android port take less time? Yes. Judging by current product cycle times for Android handsets, port time for the handset makers has to be bounded above by 90 days. My bet is that Android port time is actually down to two weeks and change. History matters; the Android codebase is designed to be ported in ways Microsoft is probably culturally incapable of even imagining.)