Wow... how about not comment about something you are yet to experience, I mean go to a phone company stall and test one out and dont be so anti things just because.

I know a lot of people who would never use a mac but have an iphone... it is a phone. Annoying...

Win7 phone is one OS, it has just different power... any test would work. Have you used an Android or are you saying that because you don't like mac and microsoft without even trying any of them...

BB uses Symbian as far as I know... might they go that way as well?

ooooooh purrrdy looks like a may get a nokia once again...

I'm not in need of a smartphone, but they do look good and they might sell well. In the short term (say one year), for Nokia to have some smartphones out there beats having none, as they are being pummeled in the highest margin segment of the market.

I think that the concerns of some stakeholders and tech analysts comes from the mid-term and long-term range, though. Basically Nokia chose to became the biggest fish in the (presently) smallest pond (the WP7 market), instead of competing with the likes of HTC, Motorola, LG etc in the field of "value proposition by differentiation over barebone Android".

But they have basically chosen to outsource the entirety of the software infrastructure. They have an OS they don't write, that they are allowed to customize in a minor way but that they aren't allowed to fragment. They have their appstore infrastructure absorbed and integrated into MS' one, and will be shackled to whatever direction MS takes with that.

Which poses problems in mid and long term when it comes to agility. Apple has been very focused with iOS and has been conquering new untapped markets at the highest margins. Android and WebOS devices are following the way quite aptly, bringing cheaper competition first to phones, in the future with tablets.

But Nokia is now shackled to MS, so they will enter tablets either

1) with a MeeGo product, powered by an OS that is practically stillborn, as they are disbanding much of the R&D on it and moving people to MS integration projects

2) when MS develops a strategy for that... ie when they decide that they will stop trying to push Win7 on tablets and take the same way as iOS, Android, WebOS and recognize that it requires a careful design, very different from a desktop OS.

But tablets are oldish news... let's take steps further. New higher margin markets will be born. Apple will usually open some of those paths, Android devices will have a common basic infrastructure with specialized value propositions... and Nokia will invariably be a follower if they can't control their software and network stack. Ecosystems is where it's at now... and Nokia chose to lose most control of theirs.

As I said it's basically a takeover. Great for MS, they now have a smartphone hardware division, let's see what they can do with it. But I can understand why they had to dispel the notion that the company is moving to US.

This. 

Nice to see them get rid of that outdated symbian system.

Yeah I stick to the phone for a few years too, I think it doesn't help the fact that I have a longass contract too, so I am chained to X8 for a while haha lol. Beats the Sony Ericsson I had. You know it's ironic, I always get Sony ericssons :p But I was eyeing HTC wildfire or desire, but ended up picking this up for a cheap contract, well so I thought at the time.

You're obviously deluded. I can't take the rest of what you said seriously when you opened with the above.

Please go and buy a smart phone so you can comment adequately on this topic. Hop to it.

A lot of chatter about the Nokia stock but this is more in line with the earlier announcement from the CEO that the company was in trouble. The stock point was actually higher than its low some 6 months ago so I see this as a readjustment to a realisation Nokia was not doing as well as the stock would suggest. What is dissapointing is that the announcement with regards to a strategic partnership did not result in a rally. Then again this is a technology market and to some degree the analysts are still getting their heads around it all and are probably scrabbling for information. Ask yourself this if they were so all knoweledgable how come they took Nokia from a low of 8.5 in August 2010 to a high of 11.7 prior to the CEO memo leak.

This is a brave move and what they are doing is pre-empting a decline in the Symbian market and it is the strong symbiam market which has allowed them to take the eye of the ball. Suprisingly for some on here it would seem but smartphones are only one aspect of the marketplace. What you are seeing from Nokia is a recognition of its future importance. A partnership with Microsoft allows them to backfill where they have not previously been strong.

My recent experience with the N8 really confirmed to me how off the ball Nokia had become and my recent experience with both the N8 and the Omnia with WM7 that I now welcome this move.

Even so, I'll miss it. The Nokia 6680 was my first smartphone, the first in line to use the symbian we know today.

Oh well, bring on WM7!