LG, HTC, Sony …etc have all but disappeared and they all chose Android. Sony especially had some solid hits back in the day.
Microsoft utterly failed Nokia but I don’t consider the decision at the time to be a terrible one.
They could have probably produced better hardware than the other Android makers - the N9 and first Lumias were very nice devices to hold and use - but they weren't exactly coming in with a ton of momentum in the market.
Regarding the N9, it was released essentially without any marketing push, with very little availability (I think they didn't even get it into live stores, you had to order online). It was also released after the memo, so obviously only few people got it.
> LG, HTC, Sony …etc have all but disappeared and they all chose Android.
Yeah, but that took a decade or more. Going with Windows was an insta-death. Going with Android would have given them at least a decade to decide on a strategy.
Windows over Android was an insane choice, no matter which angle you look at it from.
Edit to add: the most popular vendor, by far, is Apple, with more than 60% of the market. Steve Jobs studied Sony very carefully, back in the day. It shows.
In this metaphor, Nokias actions were neither staying on the platform not jumping into the water but shooting itself in the head instead.
If the internally Nokia OSes were not going anywhere, which looked to be the case from the outside, the obvious solution was to go with Android. Something that already had the user base, had the apps, had the platform, was open source so it allowed for innovation and differentiation, and Nokia could tailor it to work well with their hardware.
Instead, he chose to go with Windows Phone which had absolutely no benefits. And had severe restriction the kind of phones Nokia could create and on the modifications they could make (they could barely even reskin it) and did not allow Nokia to leverage any software or hardware prowess they may have had.