Crashdamage, what market are you talking about? The US market where Nokia has never had any market share whatsoever? Or the European/rest of the world, where there has never been an "upper market segment" like we are talking about now, not until the iPhone came along. Sure, there was the communicators and a few HTC devices along with some pimped up gold plated nonsense. But these devices were geek devices, and had a market share of zero in practical terms.

The iPhone was a game changer in the correct sense of the word. It changed the market, it changed the game, and created a market segment where no one has ever been before. Nokia has not lost market shares in that market, Nokia has never been there to start with. It is about time the US bloggers wake up now, open their eyes and look at the real world, the real terrain, not at some fictional map made by god nows who. It is way overdue, it is getting pathetic.

Maemo/MeeGo has never been a strategic decision by Nokia, it was an experiment. Qt on the other hand, was a strategic decision, but not for the reason they are claiming now. Qt was the best (by far) UI platform/library that already worked on Symbian long before Nokia came into the picture. The strategic decision to purchase Qt didn't have anything to do with Maemo, it was simply a positive side effect that was the very foundation of Trolltech to start with, more than a decade ago (code once, deploy everywhere).

Right now Nokia effectively has S40, S60, S60 v5, Symbian^3, Maemo and MeeGo. This is 6 different OS'es that needs to be maintained and developed in addition to all the different versions of RT OS'es Nokia uses. A couple of years ago they only had one, S40. Symbian owned Symbian and Maemo was a hackers wet dream made true by Nokias will to experiment when the influx of money was large. Nokia closed down SF and sacked some 1800 software developers. This is not something you do when you have 6 OS'es to maintain, and especially not when you don't have any experience developing (application) OS'es, other than S40.

Nokias problem is they have no idea how to make ends meet regarding their OS'es. Some deal with MS is probably the only way to do it, especially regarding Symbian. How much money and recourses MS is willing to put into WM7 may become evident soon. Even MS don't just pour money into things that does not work, and the current WM7 situation does not work, because people don't want it. The PC industry and the mobile industry are two very different things, and MS knows this too well with the previous version of WM. WM was a tiny player compared with Symbian during the whole last decade, and now iOS and Android is there as well. Something much more clever than pouring money is needed for MS to survive this time.

But OK, I'm mostly speculating here. Maybe the whole Nokia/MS rumor is only a new Nokia netbook. Nevertheless, as I see it Nokia has to do something drastic very soon, and so does MS. Nokia needs to regroup and (re)focus on core business, and MS needs to get WM7 out there in any shape or form along with services.