Re: Apple will buy Nokia first...
Apple doesn't have much of a record for this kind of acquisition: buying a large company, stripping out the IP and selling or closing the rest. You don't need engineers for that but lots and lots of beancounters.
Other manufacturers would never let Apple go it alone. Much more likely for a joint bid, presumably led by Microsoft who we can assume to have already assured itself with preferential rights, with the IP going to a patent pool as happened with Nortel.
If we're lucky Microsoft will get in a bidding war with itself again like it did with Skype.