an admission finally, that there is in fact, another option...

Is there trouble in paradise? Or is the chairman of the board trying to distance himself from the inevitable outcome of a decision he supported?
It's interesting to see that despite e-flop's "we have no plan b" comments, the chairman himself would be prepared to come out and say otherwise.

Anyone for step 7 of 6 perhaps?

I don't read this as another option. Maybe another approach but for the same WP platform.

A contingency if windows 8 fails, can't be windows , unless 7.5 remains as a low cost option.
When the MS deal was announced, and despite the "no plan b" comments by e-flop then, I drew people to the fine print in the Media release, that clearly stated the deal did not exclude Nokia from further developing or using other options, and that the deal was subject to market and financial exclusions.
Harmattan as a high end option could still easily be on the table, and would sit nicely on bigger screens and faster SoC's that already exist in the Lumia line-up.
time will tell......

Can Nokia really use Harmattan as a back up strategy? Its based on MeeGo 1.2. Im not really aware of what MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan means, but can Nokia just develop MeeGo further without Intel?

Harmattan is a far cry from MeeGo.
The reference by Nokia was an attempt to align Harmattan with Meego through the implementation and inclusion of QT/QML API's to give Harmattan "MeeGo compliance".
Regardless, with OSS underpinnings, Nokia can do what they like, and certainly don't need Intel's blessing to continue in house development of the project.

Whatever happens, they have plenty of choice. Meego is open so they could just spin off from there, use Mer or Tizen. They could jump on the Android band-wagon. They could take Debian 7 when it stablises and use it as a base for Maemo7 (still counting Harmattan as 6). It all depends how much cash is left to switch to the backup plan.

The Maemo team has been fired months ago. There's no one left to work on another Linux system...unless one day they prove me wrong maybe?

Wasn't "plan B" to make "plan A" work all along?

@ user/zero
They already have a *nix system so they don't need to develop another one.
@whayong
That was e-flop spin. He was obliged to push the 100% committed line...

IMHO Nokia will not be able to switch to a plan B, when plan A fails, Nokia will be in a terrible state, Elop is doing a wonderful job of dismantling Nokia, killing and selling off everything that is a threat to WinPhone or has a chance of giving Nokia a recovery without Microsoft.
the new rumour is Microsoft is looking to help RIM, or as i see it Microsoft is look to make sure they kill QT so it has no future in the mobile world and can not be a threat to Microsoft's master plan.