the mere interface makes me cringe..

I don't understand why Nokia's shareholders haven't gone to the board with torches & pitchforks.

Without Elop constantly extolling a Nokia project and product independent of Microsoft, Nokia becomes more & more the Microsoft Mobile R&D and manufacturing arm.

Maybe the Nokia board thought it would be best to work toward such an inevitable merger, or even they could have been naive enough to think that a takeover would be the best support for Nokia shares. But Nokia's status to Microsoft if WP7 phones are successful is so component, that a takeover wouldn't be necessary. After Nokia becomes the MS Mobile phone development & manufacturing arm, MS will just hire any developers they wanted, & then like everyone else move manufacturing to China where it's cheapest.

The board couldn't have been thinking to take on a turnaround CEO. The question is were they naive enough to think they were going to have Ballmer steer a takeover/merger, or even a Kerkorian style breakup selling the pieces, when the obvious track is cherry picking existing R&D and temporarily manufacturing assets.

After an announcement that Nokia is not vigorously pursuing a product of its own independent of Microsoft, I would be astonished if share price didn't collapse almost completely. The for-now performance of base model phone sales is not going to bring investor confidence in the *future*, which is what's looked at by investors.

Nokia shares raised 6% when the N9 was announced, now it went down 3% when the WP7 phone was shown:

http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ANOK

http://www.investorguide.com/stock.php?ticker=NOK

22nd - stock goes up on the back of N9 and N950 press.
23rd - stock down on the back of the windows 7 thing and Elop's extremely ill-advised "don't buy the N9, it's windows or nothing" interview.

Stock is currently just 10 cents above the 52-week low of $5.79. (52-wk high is $11.75).

This was supposed to be Elop's big moment to reassure the investors. They do not look reassured to me.

Windows 7 was supposed to save nokia from a failing Meego project. From where I'm sat it looks like Meego, the N9 and the N950 are a lot more advanced and ready for launch than the windows 7 thing that I struggle to care about.


[edit] @verythrax - hehe jinx!

If that is really the only verifying quote -- it doesn't say anything about future meego devices, just future disruption.

Clarification: I was referring to the "there is not future for MeeGo phones" thing. Nokia claiming that WP is the future is not different than claiming that MeeGo is the future.

And if you believe that a partnership with MS is too big to screw, think of the partnership with Intel, the buying of Symbian and Trolltech, the scrapping of Maemo, .... enough said.

Screwing Intel and MS are two very different things. Especially if your future (current by now?) OS is pretty much dependent upon MS. With Intel it was pretty much a hardware issue, but with MS, their backsides are on the line. Literally.

Having said that, I'm sure Nokia will keep it's Maemo/MeeGo branch/department as it's technology RD pearl. I just doubt they will keep using the MeeGo platform (instead, they will probably concentrate on developing Maemo further), or release any phones to the public. They have made it quite clear to us now, which is a shame. It will probably be a testing ground for new innovative technology to be later adopted with WP7. If the new Nokia WP7 get haptics, that would certainly prove my point.

I expect to be looking for a replacement of my NIT quite soon. And for the first time in ages, Nokia won't be offering anyhting in that department. And that just makes me feel sad.

On the bright side, seeing as no support from launch really means people are gonna be put off buying it.

That should mean developers have no platform to develop for, meaning the N950 could appear on alot of websites for sale

Why wouldn't you all believe it? Just because you know better what investor want or how a company should run?

Look back 6-8 months ago. Everyone was throwing around the multitude of reasons why Nokia would NEVER partner with Microsoft. People even suggesting that such a thing was even possible were accused of spreading FUD and being labeled as trolls.

Now, here we are again discussing why something is wrong and wouldn't really happen. Deja Vu anyone?

As vi points out, you can't trust what elop says, as things and directions in the company are subject to change. Of course, the same would also apply to Peter. And as other have noted, Peter didn't say there were more phones on the way (it is implied, but not exactly something you could hold him to). Future disruptions could mean just about anything.

Perhaps he is afraid that his new invented iPhone like business model to sell as much applications as possible thru the ovi store wouldn't work at a open source mobile...