If only the EU had thought to forestall him by mandating that all EU-sold phones were UI-compatible with Symbian and used high-quality Swiss keyboards. Or maybe stick to the cutting edge and standardise on Blackberry to really future-proof the Union. Then all would have been well.
Apple's tightly-integrated design was capturing more than 100% of the profit share of mobile pones for a few humourous quarters a decade ago, due to losses by everyone else.
I suspect that forcing modular designs would not have helped the Europeans get products out that consumers wanted.
Elop was the last nail. The reviews for the N9 were good, but it was too little, too late. Mind-share was already taken by Android and iOS, and Samsung were already eating into Nokia's dumb phone dominance. Nokia were dead in the water.
