You know Nokia would be doing fine if all they did was to release the OnePlus One 64GB for $349 and relied on Foxconn and Google's Android.

Although, they would have to come up with their own services, and monetize it.

Think of what Xiaomi is doing. They've got competitive flagships on big discount. Barely any brick and mortart stores. And the surprisingly big profits come through the services people are a part of.

Why?
Because there comes a time where the hardware sort of hits a limit, and it plateaus.
Remember when the OG NOTE was revolutionary?
It had a sub-5in display, HD resolution, ICS, largest battery, latest SoC, decent cameraphones.
In 3 years those specs became low-mid range!
In fact, people wouldn't complain too much about them... but poor software or poor services, people will !

And in my opinion, its harder to build software and services than it is to build hardware.
You can always source hardware like:
- Qualcomm for the SoC
- LG for the display
- SONY for the camera
- China for the housing/boxing/accessories
(hell you can even source the software from AOSP, CM Inc, UbuntuPhone, FirefoxOS, webOS, Nemo, Windows, Blackberry etc etc)