alt Hacker NewsNokia was already in deep trouble before windows phone. If they did not go windows phone they would have ended up a android OEM (still better for them than what ended up happening) but there was no realistic way for them to "domination" at that point. That would have required them to change strategy years before they first saw the iphone.
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As an Android OEM they'd have zero chance in the Asian market due to cost/features but they'd likely compete very well in the shut-out-from-most-competition US market and a good chance to be a secondary player in the European markets. Not a leader anymore but a significant player for sure.
Windows Phone was dead on arrival. Throwing yourself behind a losing platform was Nokia's death knell.
Nokia fanboys would never accept anything other than Elop/MS fault.
Even if you shove the sales values in their face and ask to explain why the revenue was dropping for a 3rd year by the time of the Burning Platform memo.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/267819/nokias-net-sales-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_ph...
And it's always N900 and 'dEvelOpmeNt hIstoRy'.
I'm pretty sure what most of them didn't even read the memo, literally.
> still better for them than what ended up happening
Microsoft paid $7.2 billion for Nokia's loss making phone division in 2013.
There's no way anybody would have paid that much for just another Android OEM.
As much as Nokia fans hated it, the Windows Phone strategy actually extracted the best value out of the rotting assets of Nokia Mobile Phones.
And Nokia the networking company remains a $70B corporation today. The cash from Microsoft enabled the investments that made them a network leader.