Specc, only you are trying to conflate Android and HW. Nokia has always been capable of competing on equal footing with any of the other Hardware players by including an Android offering any time it wanted to. It is only Elop that has driven the mandated WP8 strategy which is always going to be more costly than an equivalent Android combination due to OS costs. Android + HW vendors can improve their customer facing offerings with the money saved from the raw OS cost over any proprietary offering such as WP8 + Nokia HW. It is for this reason that Microsoft et al have been engaged in patent disputes worldwide (starting with SCO many years ago) to try to raise the cost of ownership of Linux based systems such as Android simply because they know they can't compete on a level playing field. The sad thing is, Nokia hardware with Android would have been a truly superb offering and could have been delivered by largely the same team presenting Maemo/Meego etc. Similar skills etc. Well the dice have been rolled, time will tell, either way Microsoft have little to lose, they can't compete currently and Elop has successfully removed several mainstream competitors to Windows in one fell swoop. If Nokia come out of this at all it will be a miracle. Good luck rgds