I haven't really followed how Microsoft is doing business wise, but i thought that they are doing better now than for long time?
W7 is selling like hot cakes, Xbox 360 is doing great and as a whole it feels like Microsoft is doing very well right now, or?

Good to remember that Windows mobile was peanuts compared to rest of it's business. They had at best 18% of the smartphone market and smartphone market was nothing like it's today in it's size. WP7 actually looks very promising imo.



And for the actual topic? Why in world would Microsoft buy Nokia!
Nokia is very big on the manufacturing side with 9 factories totally owned by them that produce 1.4 million phones a day.
They also spent second most to R&D in Europe and got huge patent portfolio.

Nokia's next years are tied to Qt that's tied to Symbian and linux based MeeGo primary. Nokia got over 130 000 people working for them, where's 60 000 people work for Nokia Siements Network and over 24 000 people work in Finland.

Does that really sound like a software company or company that Microsoft usually goes and buys, and i'm not talking about the size, but the type of the company.