My feeling is that had Apple not released the iPhone, Android would have probably joined the long list of products that Google killed.

It is competition from the iPhone (and the possible control of search traffic on mobile devices that Apple would have) that forced Google to focus on Android after acquiring it and this lead to the demise of Nokia and the mobile division of Microsoft.

I don't know if Nokia knew the marketing budget going towards launching the iPhone along with other resources planned for its launch would that have changed their view on how serious of a competitor the iPhone is going to be.

Apple showed them the way. Before iPhone Android was a nokia knockoff.

Also they only took Apple seriously way too late.

Agree. See my comment above. Having access to info about marketing budget etc. could have possibly changed that.

Which was very foolish of them, considering the success of the iPod !

I think another HW (Semiconductor) company is facing the same problem; its competitor is surging ahead full steam and the future may put the smartphone as one of the inflection points where it all began, connecting the dot backwards of course.

They swapped to Android too late but honestly I would have seen them turning it around some. Bringing in Stephen Elop to then have Microsoft strangle em some more to push the winphones was what fucked em up more imo.

By the time Microsoft bought Nokia, they were already in deep trouble, having lost major parts of the smartphone market.

And they already had Elop as their CEO for a long time and under his guidance started their alignment with Microsoft and had to lay off countless people. Someone who wasn't a trojan horse would have likely acted differently.