It was an epic fail for Nokia to miss out so blatantly on the entire smart phone revolution (and please don't say things like "but Nokia had their 'Communicator' a decade before it all started" — that kind of products is *not* related). If it can't be iOS (which it of course can't, not if you aren't Apple), then at least it has to be Android. With the whole infra structure of app stores etc connected to it of course. There is no third. Certainly not Symbian. And does anyone really want Microsoft's solution? Sales figures this far has said clearly "no", and for Nokia in particular, the newest sales figures for "Lumia" is rumored to be catastrophic. It will be very difficult for them to enter a market that has existed for many years that is completely occupied and dominated by iOS and Android.
Nokia is making the right decision to cut the phone part of the company loose and sell it off to MS. Nokia is still very strong in other segments, and this will remove a considerable risk and bring stability to what's left, and the cash input should be more than welcome and enable investments to further strengthen their positions on the markets they are still on.
Microsoft is going south though. PC sales in general is dropping through the floor, Windows sales are catastrophic. They are going all-in on the mobile sector with phones and tablets, but to be honest it's not going too well there either. Too little, too late. Microsoft in 10 years (or 5 years even) isn't going to be what it is today, or what it was 10 years ago.
This is the fall of the old giants.
