Even if one assumes that Windows Phone was wonderful (and a long WP7 user, I’m sympathetic to this view), it still doesn’t follow that Windows Phone didn’t kill Nokia.

- Windows Phone had no brand value. It didn’t add to the Nokia brand. It detracted from it

- Windows Phone allowed very minimal UI customization. This meant that Nokia could add little to no Nokia specific functionality

- Windows Phone allowed minimal hardware customization. This meant all Nokia phones looked and behaved like cheap Chinese phones for less than half the price

- Windows Phone was closed source, which meant Nokia engineers could not add either hardware or software functionality beyond whar Windows Phone already supported.

- As part of the Windows phone transition, MS required Nokia to kill their own OS development. Switching to Windows Phone was a hard 1 way turn.

The alternative to Nokia at the time wasn’t Windows Phone vs Meego. It was Windows Phone vs Meego vs Android vs Android + Meego.

The obvious, both contemporaneous and in hindsight, choice was to go with Android which and continue Meego dev on the side as a fallback. Android brought Nokia up to speed on the hardware and app ecosystem side, while allowing them to innovate on the hardware side and using their brand + unique designs + hardware quality to be a leading Android developer.