As I said above, judge him after 3 years. Every change brings anxiety, and pessimism.

Where did I write "I wont be wrong"?

You haven't. Was wanting to avoid that as an answer to get a real answer as you had graciously provided. Thanks.

Three years though?

a better chronology would be "judge him once the first wave of devices have been given a legitimate chance in the marketplace"

Not sure i see the issue with question 1, as i think the carriers are primarily a issue in USA. If we let carriers dictate, thing are heading for "acoustic couplers" very quickly...

I think the main problem is that the tech news sphere is overly focusing on what is happening in USA, and so everyone thing they need to get a US foothold to have success.

Three years is reasonable. He has a plan. Let him execute it.

Another impotent, ineffectual, non-doer?

Too imprecise. A "legitimate chance" can mean anything and nothing. 3 years on the other hand, is a precise measure that makes sense.

Actually I think that too is off target. The point is that Elop has done and is doing seriously drastic measures. A complete tear down, and a re-build of Nokia smartphones. This is done and Nokia is still making money on the "old" technology. He obviously is being very successful in what he is doing, at the moment (things may get much worse though, but worse is better than dead in any case). If WP-NOKIA becomes a success depends on how they measure success. 20% market share in 3 years may bee a success, 5% may be on the low side, who knows? but Nokia going back to its former glory wrt smartphones is an unreasonable goal. WP may climb up to 40%, but Samsung and Nokia will split equally the greater 80% or so of that.

S40 is also becoming smarter. It may not be viewed as a smartphone, but will have all the capabilities from a user point of view (apps and a vast ecosystem). And there is Harmattan. No matter how you look at the N9, it is a wild card. Out of the box it is probably the most complete experience ever in a smartphone, Apps are sparse compared with all competitors, but the capabilities are larger than all of the competitors put together.

Symbian is still extremely capable, but Nokia is crippling it with stupid hardware options (E7, edof, small batteries, poor res screens and so on) and poor software. Even though I like my E6, edof is a real PITA,and the default browser and e-mail is not good enough. To be more precise: EDoF is excellent in everything but macro, but I really want macro, so EDoF is the wrong technology (EDoF with macro would be perfect). Symbian (Anna) itself is really a pleasure to use. But the Symbian phone package has been so crippled by insane Nokia decisions (in which Elop had no say) it is hard too see how it ever will be competitive again.

No plan B if WP fails. This is probably true, but when looking closer at it, it only means no plan B for WP-Nokia if they should fail. A failure will kill Nokias short term plans for a high end ecosystem. Nokia still have two other options though; S40 and Harmattan, and they could always make a couple of Androids. So there is no plan B, but plan C and D and F exist.

Makes zero sense to not have a Plan B as they've pitched it thus far, especially for a company that hits multiple price points in multiple regions. WP7 doesn't hit all of those price points nor territories.

Of course you don't see the problem - therein lies the biggest problem. No solution for their cheaper phones once phased out. No solution for areas that don't have the Zune marketplace quite yet - necessary for WP7.

Surprisingly though, there's a N5 coming, Symbian based - remember when the N8 was to be the last N-series Symbian phone? - and other Symbian phones in the meantime. They can deliver those now.

This waiting game on the N9 and the Nokia WP7 phones means that Nokia loses more share per day. Once it gets low enough, they'll not be able to sell enough to dig themselves out of a hole, be it 3 years, 5 years or one blockbuster iteration of their WP7 phones (not likely).

I don't think much thought has been put into this plan. Nokia doesn't have time on their hands. Nor will they have all of the pieces to salvage their prior position in place in the next few years.

It will be interesting to watch what happens. So far, it's all speculation.

There should never be a Plan A, or Plan B. There just needs to be a damn good plan and that's missing from what we, mere mortals know.

I'd like to object to the title "Sir" being used in some people's names! Ooo... deja vu!

Is three years a magic number or is there some sort of sense to it? Seems like you picked an arbitrary number and method upon which to judge bad decisions. Do you mind elaborating on how your magic method works? Here I thought that the intended outcome of locking Nokia's lips to Microsoft's anus was both unsanitary as well as repulsive--I'm pretty sure I don't have to wait three years to make that call.

You'll notice that Microsoft STILL hasn't won any such patent cases even against HTC regarding Android, nevermind Linux and kernel. Microsoft often likes to strike up the war drums and litigate about patents and that sometimes leads to licensing settlements whether they're authentic or not.

I think the point he was trying to make is that if MeeGo ever does get popular enough, even THOSE handset makers would be similarly threatened.

I guess zune will be replaced with nokia's own service on nokia phones.

Well symbian has been killed now. It still eludes me how they could abandon the reasonable strategy to bridge symbian and meego with Qt. Developers could start making apps for meego and continuing improving the ones for symbian. I mean they worked for years on this and stopped before the finish line, how stupid.