How's it not a big thing?
Nokia has killed it's biggest selling OS, so it won't sell very many this year - bye bye N8 and E7.
Nokia has already killed Maemo 5, so bye bye any chance of any high-end devices in the market at all.
Nokia has now killed MeeGo, the one thing that was seriously generating a lot of industry buzz, a lot of consumer hype, and had the capability to not just give us a new OS, but change how we use 'mobile' technology. That's the sort of thing that got Nokia to number one. It was precisely what it needed to retain that position.
Nokia has now joined Microsoft, a company that has repeatedly failed in the mobile phone market. A company that is renowned for mistakes, poor software, bad execution, bad security and so on. To top it off, WP7 isn't selling well at all, whatsoever, period. It is at the first stage of its infancy, without any of the basic features that we not only require, but that Nokia surpassed others with (like multitasking).

Worse still, Nokia aren't the exclusive manufacturers, so HTC etc can still make WP7 phones. They not only can, but are making them, so people will be developing brand loyalty already. Sure, Nokia's will have Ovi Maps and a few other things, but Elop said they won't change the design despite MS giving them permission, and that's the one thing Nokia should be jumping all over.

And to top it all off, not only has Nokia killed Symbian, Maemo and MeeGo, giving it no phones to release, Elop said we're looking at a year or two to actually see any Nokia WP7 phones. So what's that mean? Nokia with Symbian were selling countless handsets and, while losing marketshare, maintained their no. 1 position as handset manufacturer. But Nokia without any OS to sell means they will have nothing on the market. Or at least, nothing anyone will buy because hey, who wants a dead OS? So they're going to lose even more marketshare and much more rapidly than they are right now.

Then when they do get phones to market, who wants them? Look at this forum, the Nokia forum, the comments all over the internet, the share prices - everyone but Elop knows this is a bad idea. It's doomed to fail. If he could get phones to market next month, yeah, maybe it'd work. But in 2 years? Why would it? WP7 may have already failed by then, and if it succeeds, people will be happy with their HTC, Samsung WP7 phones. Nokia will have lost 12-24 months of marketshare and earnings, and how will they get that back? By offering the same system as the companies that stole it, but with Ovi maps? I doubt it. Elop should have demanded Nokia exclusivity to this, but MS wouldn't allow that because then it'd be 2 years before they saw any money on their OS. MS don't give a **** about Nokia, or who makes the phones for WP7, they don't need to.

MeeGo was set to arrive this year, and whether it arrived tomorrow or December 31st didn't matter, because it would arrive as a complete ecosystem, for high-end phones, in-car entertainment, set-top boxes and tablets. It would have finally allowed Nokia to say "Hey world, we're back, and look what we got with us!" and it would have given them a very, very strong position. People would have gone 'hey, look, that's a great UI, an open OS, and it can be used on my tv?! see ya Android, later iPhone.' Elop stressed the importance of an ecosystem, then ditched the one they're working on to join a system that doesn't have an ecosystem, has no plans to develop an ecosystem, and will take 2 years just to get phones out there.

This isn't bad?