I'm sorry but it's honestly pointless discussing this as no one in this thread wants to spend even an ounce of time into researching this. Reading your comment in it's entirety tells me you weren't there when stuff was happening.
> That was an A-Team EU hardware company's performance.
For the record, the Lumia phones had A-Tier hardware in them. They boasted the best low light cameras on phones for a while around ~2012.
Nokia made the Lumia phones, MS provided the operating system. Previously, Nokia had their own Linux based OS, called Maemo, which was originally supposed to run on what became Lumia. It later formed into Sailfish OS, which had it's own device family.
The issue wasn't the hardware platform itself, it was the fact that Nokia decided to go with the MS ecosystem, instead of Android. And honestly, I don't even think that was a bad move. I am at a loss trying to figure out how device manufacturers actually make profits based on what has turned into extremely restrictive licensing deals with Google in order to get GAPPS on their phones.
But when Nokia starts with an overwhelming incumbents advantage, their board doesn't even have confidence that Nokia's internal talent pool can lead them to make a mobile phone! They couldn't defend themselves from multiple companies in completely different industries with no prior competence in the mobile phone world. That was an A-Team EU hardware company's performance.
The issue here isn't company size, it is something specific to the EU. I'm not sure what, but since it is a geographic thing I'd start with regulation and branch out from there.