Here's one take: Look at Samsung, LG, and HTC. All of them are making both Windows Phone 7 devices and Android ones; if Windows Phone 7 takes off, they're in

Here's one take: Look at Samsung, LG, and HTC. All of them are making both Windows Phone 7 devices and Android ones; if Windows Phone 7 takes off, they're in the race, but if it doesn't, they'll have other stuff that's working for them. Now look at Nokia. The difference isn't what Nokia will be doing --- making Windows Phone 7 devices; it's what they won't be doing --- making Android phones. They've taken a big, risky bet, which they could have hedged, and haven't. And the platform they've bet on is one which allows manufacturers less freedom to customize and differentiate themselves than the one they've shunned. Heck, if they just shipped stock Android, that would differentiate them from most of the phones on the market. (Contrast to Windows Phone 7, where Microsoft is being very restrictive in what manufacturers can dink. Nokia may get more freedom than some as part of this deal, but not nearly as much as the HTC Sense experience for Android.) And you could try to say that they don't have resources to handle multiple platforms --- but if that's the issue, why are they still talking about shipping Maemo? In short, this is still different from what other manufacturers are doing, but based on the announced terms of the deal, it's not really clear why it's better, and it is pretty clear why it might be worse. There might be unannounced terms of the deal that change that calculus, but for now, people can only judge from what they can see.