With the sale of Nortel’s trove of patents being approved (in both America and Canada) the fallout from this might be a major shift in the mobile landscape (in particular with Redmond’s insistence that royalties be paid for the licensing agreements that are in place which will impact Android’s OS).
The end-result could be that said hardware players (HTC; Samsung, Motorola, etc.) that have largely tied their futures against Apple to Google (within the mobile space) just might begin to second guess the wisdom of doing so. Granted; it might not happen overnight; however, Microsoft has got to feel good about this in that they just might be able to exert more pressure on any given number of hardware makers to move / work closer with Windows Phone 7 (and, by extension, Nokia too). Towards that end; with their alliance mostly being looked at as both a great unknown / two also-ran players trying to get back in the race: the simple reality of economic determinism might draw handset vendors closer to Microsoft as what they’re proposing with Nokia (currently) isn’t really anything to ‘write home about.’
Apple has also got to be pleased about this outcome in and as far as that it essentially helps them to further flank their primary competition to their current market supremacy (in particular this could also be true due to how contentious their relationship has become with Google over the past year or so within the mobile space).
Finally; Google looks to be the ultimate loser (at this juncture anyway) within this space as they were the early leader of the bidding war that ensued over Nortel’s assets. And, it must also sting that a conglomerate of players rallied against them (with perhaps the oddest pairing of Apple and Microsoft joining sides to outbid the firm).
From the WSJ: http://goo.gl/a1ApA