Yeah, Nokia sold a lot of "smartphones" prior to getting in bed with Microsoft, but they were hardly competitive with Android/iOS devices.

Seems to me like Microsoft did Nokia a favour. They bought the cow when they were already getting the milk for free. (Well, not literally free. Perhaps a lease at very reasonable rates.)

Noka 3210 was the original beast!

Still have mine and sit till works lol

Man the Scandinavians ruled mobiles 15 years ago. It was Ericsson vs Nokia, and a lil bit of Alcatel, Moto and Siemens!

as i explained in an earlier post this wasnt really about Meego as it is about andriod, it was clear symbian wasnt cutting it anymore, the smartphone market that nokia once dominated was shifting towards andriod and iOS. Nokia could have stuck with Meego and phased out symbian in the major markets where it wasnt popular, or went with andriod or go with windows phone as it did. the result, windows phone failed to turn the company around. and it IS do to windows phone. how can companies like ZTE and huawei sell more smartphones than nokia when nokia has a much stronger brand name, marketing budget and awarness. HTC, sony, LG, TZE, huawei and samsung. what do all these have in commen? they focus on andriod as a primary OS, and they all outsell nokia when it comes down to smartphones. Elops choice to kill off Meego and go with Windows was a bad choice for nokia not because it killed Meego and whatever potential. it was a bad choice because it closed the door for Nokia to use andriod. they went with windows which proved to be a failure. 

Aren't MS the ones who bought Apple shares in 97 which, in a lot of ways, saved Apple? Now they are investing in Nokia assets, basically saving that company. MS want these companies to survive, it benefits their business model as a software company.

As for why they went with Windows instead of andorid... Nokia was losing money hand over fist.  Windows phone exclusivity came with a bag of cash.  Android phone exclusivity came with a bunch of superior, cheaper samsung phones.

Also...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-07/microsoft-is-said-to-pay-nokia-more-than-1-billion-under-software-accord.html

To consider how much that is...  The handset buisness is being bought for 7.2 Billion currently.

If they went with Android... they'd still be in the same position.  Their phones just weren't cutting it.  It was a choice of gambling on being a big fish in a small pond, or be a small fish in a big pond as you slowly wasted away into nothing. 

Samsung is the only real name when it comes to android, everyone else is just living in a tiny secondary market that would of never supported Nokia.

Had they went with Android they would of eventually had to drop phones.

At least this way they got some money for their dieing marketshare.

So, there is an evil company other than Microsoft in this world! WOW!

Well technically, part of the MS share buy was that Apple would drop it's copyright infringement lawsuits.

It was sort of a case of Microsoft making a deal because they had leverage.  While Apple could of won it's case, it would of collapsed doing it, making the money they won a bittersweet victory.   This way, Microsoft got a significant "discount" from what the judgement could of been.

Or so goes the lore.

I'm sorry but that is way off...

First of all, Meego may be the dreamcast of smartphones and so is beloved by everyone, but it never would have cut the cheese with Android and iOS in terms of app support, features, innovation and marketshare. Hell Microsoft is pumping millions of dollars in to Windows phone and its having a hard time. Meego didn't have a chance in hell.

Seconly, going with windows phone made perfect sense as it allowed them to differentiate from everyone else. Going with Android would have netted them more sales initially, but also made them in direct competition with Samsung, LG and rest...all of which make their own LCD pannels, ram chips and other components...hence they would have the upper edge on margins. There aren't a lot of smartphone companies out there that are making money on Android. Look at HTC, 20+ million yearly smartphone shipments for HTC One alone...barely any profit for the company. Samsung is basically killing everyone at this point. 

Also they wouldn't have gotten 500 million every quarter from Microsoft in cashflow. This alone accounts for 2.5 million smartphones sold every quarter. 

From a Nokia fanboy position, it makes sense to keep Meego alive and fight the good fight, but in order to cut down on dev cost, they had to reduce their R&D and support, and only Windows Phone is able to offer an out of box solution which requires no R&D from the OEM's end, since iOS isn't available for licensing.

You're wrong. Nokia developed a lot of smartphones OS:

Symbian: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian

Maemo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maemo

Meego: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeeGo

Bananaking most probably meant Maemo, only wrote it wrong. If dropping that was a good or bad decision is opinion.