This, so much. Maybe Elop brought more to the table than meets the eye, but the Windows choice stinks so heavily given his history, Microsoft's history with OEM

This, so much. Maybe Elop brought more to the table than meets the eye, but the Windows choice stinks so heavily given his history, Microsoft's history with OEMs, and the specifics of the deal that it almost doesn't really matter if there was some kind of logic that didn't make it out into the popular world. Nokia may have been in a bad position but like you, I anticipated the trajectory things took. If they were going to take the risk of trying to make any platform a third major player, it should have been one they owned the upside of. Failing that, buying into the Android ecosystem (maybe with a bid to extend it, bring in rockstar S60 emulation and/or better native Linux support) and competing on their hardware capabilities and reputation is the only thing that made sense.