A couple of people in here have touched on it, but those claiming that if Nokia had gone Android they'd be in even better shape are kind of missing the point. It's not like Android losers have a lack of quality phones. Nokia having a quality phone on Android wouldn't have made it automatically successful.
Outside of the obvious financial investment by Microsoft directly, Windows Phone gives Nokia two distinct advantages:
1) A unique-looking interface and OS that genuinely differentiates it from other phones that Android could never give them
2) An OS that can actually run extremely smoothly and relatively quickly on immensely cheap hardware, with most apps on the Store working fine on those devices.
Losers? Really what are we 7 now and defending Billion Dollar corporations on the internet.
Ignoring that.
The question; if Nokia should have gone Android or not has already been answered by funnily enough Microsoft, the $7.2B buy out and $2B non recoverable cash injection have already answered the question, if Nokia was succesful in it's WP experiment and the answer is obviously no. Nobody sells a succesful company with promising growth prospects.
There is no Nokia any more in the smartphone market there is only Lumia and Windows Phone 8, MS have sunk how many billion (Elop: "with a B") into this Nokia adventure $2B - $3B at the start and now the figures above? Yet people still think Nokia is doing well? Who are you kidding?
1. WP running great on low end hardware? OK what low end hardware, the Nokia 520 as zomwtfbbq pointed out is quite beefy, my Galaxy Nexus runs fine unless I use Chrome which murders it - but that is driven by Google's insistence on running essentially the same platform on desktop and mobile. Quite the contrary if you want to talk running on low end hardware go see what is being sold in China and Africa and count how many are running WP.
2. Unique interface - you mean the same interface that can't be changed across any OEM? Is that not the antithesis of unique?
What the OP also fails to point out is that the HTC he is shitting on is the second largest maker of Windows Phone handsets. So whatever is driving Nokia is unique to Nokia and not WP which is common to both companies. Read - marketing push HTC can't match, Here Maps HTC which became universal in Feb, camera performance HTC can't match, low margins on the 520 HTC cant match. Throw in the MS financing and it becomes obvious other WP OEMs are outclassed here.
Sony which has categorically stated for some bizarre reason that China and the USA are not it's focus for smartphone sales but globally they shipped more than Nokia now imagine they actually had competent management in 2 of the biggest smartphone markets in the world.
As I will say as many times as this argument crops up the fact that MS had to buy Nokia and the fact that MS will soon become the world largest dumbphone maker as the Nokia board have cut their phone business all together and ran sits on the very opposite side of the argument that Nokia should not have gone android - throw in the leaks that Nokia were still working on an android handset a few weeks before the deal with MS was announced pretty much sums it all up what senior execs thought they should be doing.
I sound very anti WP but I am not
WP will be successful in terms of market share MS obviously view it as a strategic and important product. I think it is a risky and pointless investment by MS and support the investor who said they should spin off the Entertainment and Devices division (Xbox, WP etc) and Bing to concentrate on their core strengths .
ps - The reason I say it's pointless is Google with Android is devaluing the OS - Android is not the best OS on the market but it's free and as a result I will never pay $100 to install windows on my phone. So MS is forced to offer WP at a pittance $10 per phone that pales in comparison to the license cost of PC's. Throw in the fact OEM's don't particularly like not being able to differentiate in terms of hardware and you face an expensive uphill struggle. Google on the other hand makes the bulk of it's money on Android through ads, giving away the OS for free is a no brainer. Apps are not making Google or Apple huge returns unless MS wants to transform itself into an ad company a la Google.