Talk about losers! This from Engadget's interpretation of a Phone Scoop interview with Nokia VP Savander: So Nokia is free to do R&D that it then gives to Microsoft, which, of course, would have absolute discretion about including it, and which is then on every manufacturer's Windows phone. I think the Engadget interpretation may be off the mark (maybe Nokia gets to put stuff on top of Windows Phone, unlike other licensees?), but if it's accurate ...
Ballmer said that Nokia will work with Microsoft to "push hardware advances" that will apply to new versions of the base Windows Phone platform spec. But Nokia will also do its own unique hardware advances--and software services--that will help the company differentiate its products from competitors (which are other Microsoft partners). So this isn't like open source. Not everything Nokia does is being driven into the core platform. Nokia-based Windows Phones will instead be a superset of the basic Windows Phone experience. This is true of all phone makers, it's just that Nokia is all channeling some changes back into the core product too.