"I believe that Nokia can get back into the phone business in 2016"
They may be allowed to by the end of a non-compete clause, but those clauses are standard fodder that lawyers always insert in commercial agreements.
If Nokia wanted to make phones they wouldn't have sold the phone business. As it is, their board recognised that only two companies were making money out of hardware (and arguably the Company That Shall Not Be Named makes the money on software, and just happens to insource hardware design). If margins are so tight that most other entirely competent hardware makers are losing money, finding somebody to take your own ailing phone business off your hands (and then them paying you for it) is a master stroke of Finnish and or Canadian genius. Although they were admittedly helped by Microsoft's strategic drift, and the fact that MS had a huge cash pile burning a hole in their trousers.
In this view of the world, the words "Trojan horse" do apply, but instead of Elop himself being that horse, in fact the Nokia phones business that was the Trojan horse and Elop's just hauled it into the Redmond fort, where it will turn out to be a big bag of trouble.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
