I don't know much about the respective businesses, certainly not enough to comment, but this will effect on the way that the community view Nokia even with a somewhat trivial announcement.

Up until this point Nokia seemed to be the leading proponent for open in its adoption and continued work of a POSIX based Linux implementation for its smartphones in the shape of Maemo/MeeGo and opening the once-irreversibly entrenched symbian. A great distinction from other market players.

I can't see MS trying to break into the feature-phone market, and don't expect MS to suddenly adopt open ideology, and assume that Nokia would be conspiring to release WP7 on smartphones -- being that phones is practically all that they do in volume.

i dont know what to believe. basically i still cannot imagine such a dramatic change... plus, i dont see the benefit.

OTOH, even if it turns out to be true and it'll be good for nokia business-wise, it won't be good for me. there's nothing about a win7 (or android) phone that would make me want to have one. if i had wanted one, i could have bought it yesterday. i'm not that much of a nokia addict that i'd need the nokia tune on my win7 phone. i'm not a nokia addict at all. i just happen to love both symbian and maemo/meego. symbian for practical reasons (there's nothing a symbian phone cannot do) and maemo/meego for ideological reasons. if nokia will no longer be committed to one of these two platforms, who will? who will build my next symbian phone?

so whatever those rumors mean to the stock market, they'd all be very bad news for me.

It makes sense for Microsoft, so they can run WP7 on real hardware instead of the sorry excuses they are running on now. I mean, WP7 on a Nokia is certainly something I would consider buying, and I am sure it would be a hit, much more so than MeeGo. At least in short term.

Nokia and Microsoft sounds like a good combination somehow, but I doubt it. Ovi and Live services is probably more likely, but then again not. It would be Samsung, LG and HTC running Ovi services, that would make some laughs.

I am really looking forward to see what this is really about.

I'll never buy WP7 on anyone's hardware. If Meego or something similar is not available on suitable hardware when it comes time to retire the N900, I'd actually buy something running Android before anything with WP7. It pains me a lot to think of having to go back to friggin' Android and Big Brother (err..Google). But WP7 is totally out of the question. Even putting concerns bout M$ ethics aside, WP7 is just ghastly. Hear me Nokia?

My thoughts exactly! WP7 is as awful as iOS in my book, there's no way in hell I'd buy a phone running that.

WP7 is more awful than iOS!
It's like a copy of iOS v1 (no copy paste, yadda yadda) without the huge library of apps.

True, it seems that WP7 was set out to repeat all of iOS' failures from the start.

Lets wait and see what actually gets announced next week.

Failure to please a certain niche community...?

By most other metrics, it's been a 'success'.

But let's not go down this path of 'discussion' again...

If we're talking Xbox Live services on a MeeGo OS handset made by Nokia and powered by Intel chip platform... I could dig that

Ovi is lacking a decent media store - Zune could provide that. Games? No problem, MS have a huge division devoted for it! Decent exchange support? MS Office? Right outta the box.

I think a partnership could bring a lot to the table, as long as it was services being incorporated into MeeGo. I wouldnt want WP7 to replace MeeGo. I'm looking forward to hear what the strategy is when the keynote comes round, only a few days to go now