<opinion> Probably Nokia would demand north of $20 billion to even be in the game. A few more bad quarters can lower the price, but still, it's Nokia.
MS has enough patents to scare the crap out of any rational company: they have been working in OS for decades and they patent everything. Long before the iPhone, MS came out with portable and mobile computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile . The fact that their work never caught on, doesn't matter, the underlying tech is probably all patented. Add to that Nortel and Netscape patents (hello cookies, SSL and everything we take for granted now) and they are loaded with patents, especially since Android is an OS. Any win against MS is temporary; they don't mind opening their checkbook to license and to hire lawyers. As for Nokia's patents they can probably "buy" a few select ones to go after Motorola /Google instead of spending billions and billions
Edit to add: If not for Google, Motorola would have undoubtedly kissed the ring too, like Samsung and almost every other company did.
Re-reading my comment it seems like I dissed Apple. I didn't mean to, actually I meant to say that OS developers (Apple obviously included) have a lot of patents that pertain to smartphones.
MS has enough patents to scare the crap out of any rational company: they have been working in OS for decades and they patent everything. Long before the iPhone, MS came out with portable and mobile computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile . The fact that their work never caught on, doesn't matter, the underlying tech is probably all patented. Add to that Nortel and Netscape patents (hello cookies, SSL and everything we take for granted now) and they are loaded with patents, especially since Android is an OS. Any win against MS is temporary; they don't mind opening their checkbook to license and to hire lawyers. As for Nokia's patents they can probably "buy" a few select ones to go after Motorola /Google instead of spending billions and billions
Edit to add: If not for Google, Motorola would have undoubtedly kissed the ring too, like Samsung and almost every other company did.
</opinion>