[tres]

Sorry, but there's not much to support the idea that Nokia could have magically made it if only they had picked Android.

The first Samsung Galaxy was shipped in 2009[0] -- over a year before Elop was made CEO of Nokia [1] and nearly two years before the "Windows Phone Strategy" was announced.

In 2011 -- years before any strategy shift to either Windows or Android would have been able to be implemented, Samsung was already shipping more smartphones than anyone else -- including Apple [2]. Nokia didn't ship their first Windows Phone device until November 2011.

It would have been a Blackberry Storm kind of stupid to try taking on Samsung with Android as the platform. There's no compelling reason to pick Nokia over Samsung when the target market is just looking for value. At least with Windows Phone, there was some differentiation they could hope to appeal to consumers with.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop

[2] https://gigaom.com/2012/02/07/npd-apple-sold-most-smartphone...

[jpatokal]

While I agree with most of what you say, Nokia did have a differentiator: awesome, reliable, rugged, (occasionally) stylish hardware -- not a strength for most Android manufacturers, I think you'll agree. But Nokia's software is generally terrible.

Nokia hardware & Android software could have been a pretty killer combo, and a sufficient differentiator to get some extra profit margin; plus Nokia was (is) very experienced in producing at huge volume.

Unsurprisingly, the rump of Nokia that was not merged into Microsoft is now climbing on the Android bandwagon in a big way... but unfortunately everybody else now has a 10-year headstart.