According to the article there are following candidates for takeover:
- Samsung
- HTC
- Huawei
- ZTE

After all paranoia about Chinese copying nokia phones, it would be very ironic if Huawei or ZTE takes over nokia.

Ironic? ...Or appropriate?

Pure speculation - and IMHO it's not going to happen. But still, Information Week tells Microsoft has a special acquisition deal with Nvidia. They claim, that in Nvidia's earnings report there are some hints of third party acquisition plans. And this would basically be Microsoft, based on their ten year old deal with Nvidia (Xbox1 GPU).

If the main target is to beat Google, then this would make sense. Google has been building it's future technologies on Tegra platform. With Nvidia chips and Nokia partnership Microsoft would be pretty well prepared to fight for it's market share during the coming years.

Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/...news/229900137 (retweeted by vivainio)

You are right, pure speculation.

However, Nokia is in really poor shape, and if they are not able to stop their downwards trajectory someone will either buy their pieces because there is inherent value (patent portfolio, (some) brand recognition), or MS needs to buy the handset business to have a fighting chance to become relevant in the mobile business.

Btw, I believe there are other suitors that might be interested besides the Asian ones. HP could make a play (biggest PC maker and stated interested in mobile after acquiring Palm) , or Oracle (is with Sun's acquisition going more and more into hardware and they have almost nothing on the mobile side). Intel could be another long shot. All three of these Silicon Valley companies have boat loads of cash on hand, and are aggressive enough once they see a potential strategic play to their benefit.

Nokia is MS' best chance to gain relevancy in the mobile segment. Due to horrendous management decisions on Nokia's side there is not much more for them left than to pray that WP turns out to be a winner, against all odds. Or get acquired and cease to exist as an independent ongoing concern.

Please elaborate on this viable ecosystem and what roadmap gets us there from today?

Elop is already using a working Windows Phone Nokia device.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...2056703101.htm

Second page

comscore reports that Microsofts Windows Mobile slipped from 8% to 6.7% market share in the U.S. AFAIK the U.S. is the only market where WP has any sales to speak of.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-...mScore-343772/

But here is the hammer:
"Patel seems concerned about Windows Phone’s ability to replace Symbian’s market presence as the latter transitions to the dustbin of dead technology: “We remain concerned that WP industry sales remain below 2mil units/quarter and that [Nokia’s] scale will not be enough to offset a faster than expected drop-off in Symbian phone sales.”

Until recently Nokia sold north of 20 Mio (Symbian) smart phones per quarter. If in the future Nokia and the other WP vendors sell less than 2Mio smart phones per quarter, then there is just no way that Nokia can survive in any meaningful manner.

Please prove me wrong.

As we now have seen demo of MeeGo on N9 as well as numerous WP7, do you feel like Elop is on the right track to focus on modifying WP7 and dropping MeeGo?

No. I don't.

(well, you asked)

Not sure if this has been posted on the forum anywhere but it seems to indicate meego's dead on Nokia phones.

http://flors.wordpress.com/2011/06/2...1-2-harmattan/