Nokia's new phones look fantastic. But their last ones looked fantastic, too.I think this totally sums up Nokia (and Microsoft's) predicament. They're doing all the right things, and they still can't seem to catch a break.
Google's tactic of putting Android in the hands of companies who were being heavily burned by iPhone gave them ubiquity, and in America at least, the AT&T deal probably did more harm than good for Apple by forcing Verizon to push Android hard.
Now we have this two horse system: one that has all the apps and the cachet, one that has the rest of the handsets (and, with Jelly Bean, is really a strong offering against iOS) and there just isn't any room left for Nokia or WP8. I think Nokia is going to have to step into the Windows RT ring this holiday.
Microsoft thinks it knows how to play this game from its Xbox days: buy out developers until you get enough mass to make consumers stick. But the game is different when you have carriers screwing things up for you (no Nokia on Verizon this year, carriers blocking OTA patches) and a platform that is driven by app numbers rather than by hits in the same way the games industry is. It doesn't help that web startups are hitching their horse to iOS and then begrudgingly offer Android later (I'm looking at you Mint and Simple). Windows Phone just isn't in their roadmap anywhere.
My guess is the fate of Windows Phone and Nokia is probably tied to the success of Windows 8. If Windows 8 takes off, Windows Phone will get a halo effect and sales of that will follow. But even then, I think consumers are going to be weirded out by the fact that the stuff they have on their Windows 8 tablet doesn't appear on their Windows Phone 8 handset.