Nokia's towel has been thrown - sad but true

So it happened. Mr Elop decided to make financial geeks happy (hmm, apparently not) and disappoint all devoted Nokia fans at the same time by announcing "strategic partnership" with Microsoft.

What struck me today in the morning, once such bold announcement has been made, is that no earlier than few months ago Mr Elop has been quite positive about future of Nokia in context of MeeGo in one of the interviews he gave. What had to happen in-between to suddenly make him claim Nokia as "burning platform" and need to "join an ecosystem" remains unclear. Yet I suspect his Microsoft roots had some influence here but we'll never know.

Nonetheless, this is it. We will now have MicroNokia (or better NoSoft) with Windows Phone OS rather than MeeGo.

Although Symbian and MeeGo aren't officialy ditched, I reckon today's announcement (on par with N9 cancellation rumour we've heard just days ago) is quite clear about the future of MeeGo in Nokia. Or rather lack of thereof. Even if it survives somehow with Nokia it will probably be kept as a niche, open source side project for "experimental" devices. Sounds familiar, right?

I can't understand how this could happen with all that heavy MeeGo and, more importantly, Qt buzz we've seen over past months?! Let me be clear - Nokia is indeed in deep trouble and maybe even is a "burning platform", yet they have all these tools and potential to "build" rather than "join" a competetive ecosystem. And yes, I agree that Symbian's quite dated, MeeGo didn't really take off yet, and Ovi's not quite there yet either, however with Qt being that joining glue, they could really make it a compelling and innovative platform that could make real impact on the market.

They could. Yet today they have chosen to ditch all that effort althogether, throw a towel and start over again on top of Microsoft's OS instead. This is an absolute, utter and unbelievable disgrace.

Even Mr Elop insisting that they will "build" an ecosystem with Microsoft won't convince me. More importantly, now you have to convince all these folks who believed in MeeGo/Qt to not switch to Android or iOS instead! But since Qt ecosystem is virtually nothing, would you bother anyway? Surely not.

On the other hand, this is all fresh and I write it with great deal of affection, as I'm one of those "old-Nokia believers", and who knows - maybe all that change would actually turn out good in long-run? No matter how we hate this decision now, it will be matter of coming months (at least) to see what actually will come out of it. In fact, I've had brief play with Windows Phone 7 powered device already and I must say it was pretty nice experience, so... who knows, maybe pairing WP7 experience with Nokia's hardware is going to work out well? Well, time will tell but for time being I'm sceptical to put it mild.

Nonetheless, I am worried about that deal in one more aspect. Many people see this deal as great thing for Microsoft and not that great for Nokia. Imagine Microsoft decides to pull out from partnership for whatever reason at some point in the future? You never know, right? What you'll get is Microsoft with their own mobile OS promoted on the back of Nokia and... Nokia left with nothing and diverting their strategy once again - back to the rubber business. You never know, right?