It's been a long process. Nokia could purchase Palm (and WebOS) as the major share holders wanted, but they didn't, they decided to go for MeeGo, and that is why the old CEO was replaced with Elop. Elop was given one main task, to sort out the smartphone OS. Never mind the fact not purchasing Palm was the right decision.

Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong for Nokia and their development of a future smartphone OS. Symbian proved to be too complex, it needed a major overhaul not just a face lift, but no one at Nokia could architect an OS more or less from scratch. Maemo needed Qt to have some future proof, but it would be a waste of money without Qt also on Symbian. Qt on Symbian without a complete overhaul of the core OS, proved to be a waste of time anyway. MeeGo wasn't getting anywhere, full stop, and as Maemo it would only work on high end, while Nokia needs an OS working for devices much lower down the scale. The future was just a mess, a patchwork of hacks, old and new and nothing fitted as it should.

WP will be fine on Nokia. It is the modern and secure OS Nokia need. It is what Symbian would have been if Nokia was able to renew it from the bottom up. The only loss here is Qt, but if it really is as good as some think it is, we will see it soon on some devices.

MS was even more brain dead. They thought in their simplistic minds that people were loyal to OS brands instead of phone brands. Only geeks are loyal to an OS, not the other 95% of the population that MS is aiming for.

Even though WP will be an excellent OS for Nokia, I'm not convinced that Nokia and MS really get it this time around either. They seem to be somehow out of touch with reality. This talk about ecosystems and beating Android. Why should Nokia beat Android? and who cares anyway?