It's not a joke.
Or if it is, not the usual funny kind. Though I'd be surprised if anyone expected it would be.
I don't really have much to say on this; I've said most of it in the oversized comment in the last episode.
I really don't see how running back to the roost is to be visionary. Yes, nokia is pretty much aflame. But these aren't the doings of a decisive crisis manager. It's not salvaging what you have and kicking out the rot. It's a panicked knee-jerk and I don't think nokia will reap much from this. It's more of a placeholder kind of deal, but not one that does anything for nokia brand loyalty. At all.
Ballmer is happy because he just got promised some 50 million handsets.
And Elop? He's happy he can shake Ballmer's hand "as an equal".
I would've expected a shakeup in the UI/UX department, and, hm, the phone design dept. could use some refocusing too. It's not happening. What also isn't happening is a shakeup of the superstructure that caused nokia to mostly wage inter-department wars on each other, instead of doing what they used to be good at, before the restructuring.
Yet MeeGo (I've always thought that sounded suspiciously as if written with a T in there) gets to experience yet another leadership shakeup; I recall seeing a lot of job adverts for senior management and architecture positions in that division. Well, that didn't last long.
The irony of open sourcing meego on the heels of failing to open then closing symbian again -- to use it as a "licencing organisation" milking cow AFTER every other user of the system has bailed, wonderful timing that -- doesn't fill me with confidence.
If the nokians (not counting the brass) have any sense, they'll plaster Qt over wp7 as fast as can be, do all of the UI/UX stuff on that, then fix either or both of symbian and meego to run really really well under Qt, and basically make wp7 obsolete. I'm saying that as someone who loathes Qt because it's so big and bloated to compile on a desktop; it just means it's more work, but right now the only way out of the three OSes, no UX conundrum they're stuck in.
They can do that, but they'll have to pull a "two engineers in a corner" type trick. Like unix' early days, or even the heroics of the pacific tech graphing calculator. The people who have to do it don't get paid enough for it, as the people who do get paid enough aren't doing it.
So why would they? I don't see it. In fact, as pointed out here (sendo) it's much more likely nokia will cease to be this way or that way, with some juicy morsels ending up in redmond somehow. They're as destructive as yesteryear's pension funds, only differently so. I much sooner expect an exodus.