Honestly, I can't believe how narrow minded some of the folks are on this board. I can understand resentment from anyone in Finland. I really can, and for obvious reasons. However, asks yourselves this: Would it have been better to let Nokia stay on it's old current path and fade away, or is it better to have a big shake up now, and return the company to it's former glory?

There has always been a lot of hate towards MS on these boards, but realistically to compete with iOS and Android, you need money, lots of it. Because that is the only way you're going to be able to pay engineers to build you a winning eco system. Also devs need faith the system is going to be in place for a while. Anyone who developed anything for the N900 knows exactly what I mean. Make an app for the iPhone and you can be assured your product will have a long life cycle. Android is likewise.

So its not about personal agendas, its about making a company produce a winning product again. In retrospect had Nokia embraced the N900 more we might not have been here today.

I'm sadden by the marginalization of Meego. I was really looking forward to it, and the N9. The changes in Nokia are vast and wide spread, yet I really didn't see any other way out.

If it wasn't Microsoft, it was Android, and THAT market is already super saturated with handset manufacturers.

This makes sense, no matter how much it sucks.

I'm looking forward to seeing what Nokia can do to WP7. I look forward to buying their next phone as well. Until then I'm rocking the N900 for as long as it works.

2d

In light of this, I revise my earlier opinion to he may or may not be a selfish bastard, that he had sold most of his MS shares makes it more likely he is putting Nokia's interests first, but I still can't be sure there aren't are backroom deals between MS and Elop that would result in him making this deal even if it isn't in Nokia's interests.

At the moment Elop joined Nokia, MS was consider a competitor. There's no way a corporate like Nokia would allow its CEO to hold huge amount of MS shares.

@2disbetter
Why not support Meego and WP7? Like HTC is doing with WP7 and Android... Ahh Durrrrr Durrrrrrrrrr See you think we hate MS which is not the case. We are angry mostly cause of lack of support for Maemo and Meego. I want you to keep in mind shitty Symbian3 sold 6 million phones in a shorter time then WP7 took to sell 2 million WP7 phones on different manufactures.

I am quite possibly the furthest you can get from a Nokia fanboy; however Nokia has plenty of money.

It's their lack of a future that the board of directors agreed upon that's forced this situation.

Not a lack of money.

"personal intrests" people, dont be so damn naive. This is bigger than one person.

This plans was probadly done halfyear ago before elopedntered Nokia. remember that. He cant do this decisions himself thats not how a board works..

Nokia had a nice vision, but maybe their strategy was not realistic. Qt is really nice idea, but building a cross-platform development framework sloooows you down. Meego is a really nice idea, but building an OS that fits everywhere really sloooows you down. In my opinion they tried to to do everything at once, and it seemed to be the wrong way. This is definitely hindsight, I thought they were going to succeed.

They do seem to have allowed it. Not suprising really. Nokia has been bending backwards on everything related to Elop. For example, Nokia still continues to break rules of Helsinki Stock Exchange by not revealing Elop's salary (Link).

No. Nokia responded that Elop was registered as insider for both MS and Nokia. You can't do any trading when you're an insider. News (in Finnish) tell that he sold 60% of his MS shares until he had to stop selling.

Nokia's problem is execution in software. Nokia's software skills are rubbish, and MeeGo has become part of the problem, instead of the solution.