Nokia has been developing most of Harmattan behind closed doors, so unsurprisingly not many outside Nokia can tell you that. We'll be the judges when they get the "MeeGo related device" out. Certain is, that it wouldn't have had similar ecosystem around it as iOS and Android have, as it was to be only the first high profile MeeGo device announced. And it won't have the chance to develop one now that the wings have been cut already.

But I think that's an irrelevant question in the big picture. It's becoming clearer that this decision wasn't about which OS is the best or the fastest to roll out. This was about ecosystems. Basically came down to three options.

1) Continue with your own.. Ovi Services, Qt, own operating systems and control over them. Highest risk, highest potential gain.

2) Partner with MS.. Keep some elements of your own ecosystem (money from advertising, revenue from content sales etc.) and some control over the OS. Medium risk, medium potential gain.

3) Partner with Google. Probably wouldn't offer the same perks MS did with WP7 as Google didn't have as much to gain. Smallest risk, smallest potential gain.

The choice was number 2. Not confident they could out-do Apple and Google by themselves, and felt they'd give up too much with Google.

We'll now see what happens but we never know what would've happened had they continued with their own path. There are two possible outcomes. 1) They thrive with WP7 and the ecosystem and the world will remember Elop as the one who made the decision that saved Nokia. 2) They go belly up with WP7 and the world will remember Nokia as a company even Elop couldn't save with this decision.

Nowhere will it register that this decision may have been the one that pushed them over the edge and continuing pushing the old strategy could have saved them or earned them better gains than this deal. We will never know.