This is a huge coup for MS. They bagged themselves the world's biggest mobile OEM for roughly zero dollars (presumably Nokia will pay MS for the privilege!), and eliminated two competing smartphone platforms at a stroke. I'm sure this is why Nokia's board brought Elop in to begin with, and it seems like an act of desperation on their part.
Nokia's value is going to be heavily damaged by this. Many of their "smartphones" were basically being used as feature phones, and I think they can hold on to a lot of those customers, but a lot of the power users are going to feel betrayed. Imagine your PC platform of choice being completely wiped out, and the next time you buy a computer you're going to have to replace all your software and figure out how to migrate your data over. Those power users are the people who buy the apps and really drive the ecosystem.
The good news is that there's still a lot of smartphone growth to be had in the 75% or so of mobile phone users who don't have a smartphone yet. Nobody has a better claim to those future smartphone customers than Nokia.
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.
