MS get Nokia's (currently) established reputation in the handset market to push their smartphone OS on a broad scope of devices
MS get NAVTEQ on the cheap which will allow them to at least attempt to catch-up on the embedded systems market (eg. Audi recently Google adopted for their 3rd gen MMI)
Nokia gets ...
Um. What does Nokia get? A chance to sell some IMSIs in the US maybe? A chance to return to simply being a manufacturer?
Ah - Nokia unhook the Ovi millstone from their neck and the costs of maintaining Symbian and all their other expensive experiments.
It's pretty obvious now that this was on the cards a long time ago ; even possible the appointment of Elop was a means to start the transition.
Frankly I couldn't give a flying toss for Nokia other than admiration I had for their fringe pursuits such as the Linux implementation of their internet tablet and the fact that their old S40 handsets were absolute gold when it came to doing what mobile phones are supposed to do.
What does this mean for sponsored / financially supported ventures such as Meego Handset or indeed the ailing Maemo, not to mention the integration of Qt (the chat about MS providing tools to develop product seems to can Qt for me)? Abuse aside, Maemo still benefits from hosting services from Nokia etc - if they were to turn over all source to public domain, that would be interesting, but witness the hoovering up of Symbian - surely a requirement of the merger (did I say merger ... coughs).
We need a clear response regarding the future of Qt, Maemo services and Meego Handset ; I can see Meego itself being returned to Intel - the desktop version is refined enough to go it alone and isn't heavily reliant on the developed Qt framework.
F***ing depressed now. What a waste of time and effort. Apologies for the language.
The most promising thing to happen the mobile industry was just killed. This was a public suicide by Nokia, they will never grow to dominate the market with optimal services now..
