Why is it a big deal?
Microsoft buys a potentially large market share for Windows Phone 7 by knocking out a potent competitor MeeGo. With this move Nokia degrades itself to pure hardware manufacturer (with a strong patent portfolio), giving up its Ovi store and other aspirations.
It will be rather cold out there for them (just look at competition Samsung, HTC, ZTE, LG to name a few), and we saw how successfully they coped with them earlier... I am sure Windows Phone 7 is a usable platform & Microsoft will do everything doable to make it even better to be able to catch up with Android. On the other hand MeeGo is a linux based OS where you could reuse the linux stack (like install a webserver on your phone if that is what you need), backed by excelent Qt, technically the most advanced stuff in mobile atm.
How miscommunicated by Steven Elop & his team
I mean seriously, you dont mention any words that can even be even associated with "disaster" to be able push trough a deal you made. I think he is simply not competent enough to lead a company level of Nokia, regardless of how good/bad the deal itself is.
Consequences
The price of Nokia shares went down by 13.97% instantly (almost 5B $). Guess it will be even harder to communicate to shareholders, really hope that Mr. Elop will prepare better this time. Nokia receives a yet undisclosed amount of cash from Microsoft measured in billions of USD. Microsoft has started seriously investing in mobile, and their war chest is not small. Nokia holds lot of patents in mobile arena, is still a strong brand so from Microsofts side perfect strategic partner.
Community?!
When Google released Android they did everything possible to attract 3rd party developers & make them adapt their platform & write apps for it (copy-paste idea from Apple). These developers are early adopters, show their phones & apps to friends, they blog about it etc. & the whole thing will get traction soon. So in short a valuable asset.
What Nokia did? They encouraged thousands of devs that MeeGo is the way to go, the guys invest serious time in it and suddenly burning platform & cold sea. Now if you invested & lost time on Nokia lie would you be early adopter in second round/any rounds. Thats just bad karma which I dont think Nokia needs.
