Nokia and Microsoft, sitting in a tree ...

With Nokia embracing Microsoft to power its phones, the mobile phone maker has jumped off the burning platform and into the sea.

CEO Stephen Elop said the water would be freezing, and if the opining I've read is any indicator, he was right.

Ars Technica's Ryan Paul:

Adoption of Windows Phone 7 is fundamentally an act of capitulation by Nokia—an acknowledgement that the company is incapable of building its own ecosystem or innovating above the hardware layer.

...

Whether this deal can save Nokia is a question that's difficult to answer, but it's clear that the company's ambitions have diminished. Adopting Microsoft's platform puts Nokia in the unenviable position of being dependent on Microsoft and the success of Microsoft's fledgling mobile platform.

Eric S. Raymond wrote a brutal assessment of the partnership (thanks for the link, Technologizer) in which he hammered Elop for creating even greater confusion within Nokia by splitting the company's resources into divisions pursuing mutually incompatible goals. Raymond is so bewildered by Nokia's strategy that he even wonders if Elop is attempting to "head-fake Microsoft," using Redmond's resources to buy time while Nokia quietly attempts to develop Android phones. (Read Raymond's blog entry for yourself: I can't neatly summarize his thinking.) In the end, though:

The reorg may dissipate Nokia’s people and energies into so many officially-sanctioned missions that it can’t execute on any of them – in fact I think that’s the outcome to bet on. It’s the company that’s burning now, not the platform; I would no longer bet on Nokia surviving another 24 months.

Nokia appears to have killed its first MeeGo handset, which may bode ill for MeeGo's future. On the bright side, some of the confusion Raymond predicted might be diminished.

Harry McCracken at Technologizer isn't a critic as much as the friend standing to one side, giving advice. It's good advice, but the companies probably don't want to hear it because it throws cold water on their bravado. Among his points: "Build something that feels like it came from one company" (in my opinion, Microsoft will have a tough time making that happen because that just isn't the way the company works with its hardware partners), and "Be humble. Very, very humble," which to Harry boils down to, "if I were you guys, I’d try to reduce expectations, not raise them." (Again, I'm having a tough time imagining Steve Ballmer taking that to heart.)

Horace Dediu at Asymco has a wickedly amusing survey of Microsoft's strategic partners in the mobile sphere. Not a happy ending in the bunch. Check out the comments, too: mostly on-point and smart, two qualities lacking in most comment forums. I like best the shortest and harshest pair:

[Commenter "Synth"] Two dinosaurs mating.

[Commenter "TheOtherGeoff"] as a 5km meteor plummets towards the Yucatan Peninsula.

Courtesy of Daring Fireball, a piece from Matt Drance entitled, "Microsoft Buys Nokia for $0B." Drance doesn't think Microsoft is what Nokia needs:

Nokia’s problems, according to Elop, are with focus and execution—two things I wouldn’t say Microsoft is known for.

But Drance's central thesis is that Nokia is irrelevant: it's Microsoft that actually made news with this partnership. Microsoft effectively took over Nokia, in Drance's opinion (backed by some interesting rumors reported at the time Elop, an ex-Microsoft executive, took the CEO job at Nokia).

We like to think of Steve Ballmer throwing chairs when his executives leave. I think this time he told Elop, “Fine. Go get me some hardware I can own.” Elop did.

The move gets Microsoft as close as it can get to having an integrated hardware/software solution in the mobile environment.

Nokiasoft, Microkia, Nokioid (per Raymond's somewhat wild-eyed speculation) ... whatever this turns out to be could be interesting. Or it could wind up as yet another Microsoft partnership that didn't work out.