No different to Apple...
...over 10 years ago, I remember a certain "bribe" from MS to Apple. Apple seem to have done well out of it, and hopefully Nokia will do. That was for far less than $1 billion, IIRC. To be fair, people moaned about that deal too, as they will do now...
The news is hardly a surprise - clearly MS have a lot more to gain from this, as someone trying to break into the market, with Nokia being the number one phone and smartphone company.
And good news about Qt ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/07/nokia_qt_bye/ ):
Firstly let's not forget what Nokia have done - most importantly, making Qt open source (before it was some odd license, that wasn't available for free use on Windows IIRC).
They've continued development, supporting desktop platforms, and also adding support for the number one smartphone platform.
But this move is also good news - with the recent Nokia/MS news, they're passing it to another company, rather than letting it drop (of course being open source, someone could always fork it as a last resort...) This potentially opens the way for other mobile ports, to Android, Blackberry - and even Windows, to keep Qt on Nokia. (Even if Nokia had stuck with Symbian/Meego and Qt, it's unlikely they would have developed Qt for other mobile platforms.)
"The Nokia brand (trademark) is worth something, but that will be dealt with by the rise of the OS brands. If I wanted a phone now, I'd look for an Android one, I wouldn't be looking for a particular manufacturer."
Ah, a survey of one anecdote!
Nokia are still the number one company. And they advertise under the name "Nokia" - they've never advertised terms like "Symbian".
Meanwhile, the Iphone is advertised by product - how many people go looking for an "IOS phone"?
Android is a special case, as an OS that runs on many manufacturers' phones, though even there, I'm not sure how many people in the mainstream care about the OS.
"I hope Nokia enjoy there 1 billion as there market share in 5 years will prolly be somewhere around the size of the employees of microsoft plus the employees of nokia."
This is the new "Apple are going bust", which we've been hearing for years since *their* deal with MS. People have been saying it for Nokia for years too, yet they still consistently outsell everyone else.