Why do people love Nokia so much? Because they took a leap of faith.
There are those out there who believe that Stephen Elop is a Microsoft trojan horse and one day he showed at Nokia's headquarters with cash in hand and told them that they're going to ditch everything they've ever accomplished so they can make Windows Phones. That's a fine story but I highly doubt it was that simple.
Lets not forget that Nokia's entire board had to sign off on what is a massive deal. It's not just a cash infusion, or simply repackaging the N9; Nokia restructured their company to become a lean, mean Windows Phone machine. They took all the work and progress they made with Symbian/Meego and tossed it out the window.
That's not an overnight decision. An overnight decision is saying, "Hey, our Galaxy SII is pretty sweet. Lets toss Mango inside it and call it a day." What Nokia did required months of planning, meetings, watching market trends, and a massive evaluation of their long term strategy. They knew Symbian was dying and had two choices - Android or Windows Phone.
Now, when I say a leap of faith I a mean leap of super freakin' faith.
Who remembers when Windows Phone first launched? Multi-tasking? Son, we didn't have copy and paste! Poor app selection and crappy 1st gen hardware made Windows Phone users the laughing stock of smartphones. And Nokia joined up with who? Microsoft? A company that, at the time, only had 7% worldwide market share with their failing Windows Mobile platform. Sure Microsoft threw some money at them, but not nearly enough to make Nokia an overnight success or to guarantee long term growth.
Logically Nokia should have went with Android. It was and still is a much more mature platform. Google controls over 50% of the worldwide market with no signs of slowing down. It would have been easy for Nokia to slap a skin on Android and start pumping out device after device. However, someone at Nokia crunched the numbers and decided that Android was a poor choice. Look how that turned out. Samsung and Apple are expected to grab over 90% of mobile profits in 2012. 90-freaking-percent! LG, HTC, Motorola, they're hurting. And Nokia could be in the same boat had they chosen Android.
Now, Nokia choosing Windows Phone could still end with them going bankrupt, but instead of taking the easy Android route, Nokia took the very very very hard Windows Phone route. Considering the size of Nokia, they could blow a billion dollars in less than a year. A billion dollars just isn't enough money to justify the risk they're taking with Windows Phone. And if I'm not mistaken, that's 1 billion spread out over 5 years, thus making Windows Phone an even riskier choice.
Nokia took a massive leap of faith by choosing Windows Phone and users are standing behind them because they know Nokia is going at this 100%. What makes the Microsoft-Nokia partnership so beautiful is that they were both lost with no direction and they needed each other to find their path.
As for HTC... I've argued in the past that HTC has been very good to Windows Phone. I'd even argue that HTC was the number 1 WP vendor before Nokia came along. And contrary to popular belief, HTC has released firmware updates for their phones. In fact, the international version of the original Titan received several firmware updates. Those updates may still get released when Tango finally drops.
However, HTC still treats Windows Phone as a secondary option. HTC had over a year to make a competitive ecosystem and did absolutely nothing. They've also been slow to acknowledge problems with their Windows Phone. When users started reporting paint chipping on the new HTC One S, HTC immediately responded. Titan users have been complaining about terrible sound quality on the Titan and HTC hasn't said anything. Factoring in that fairly unusable WiFi antenna and I was not a happy Titan user. That's why I switched to the Lumia 900. HTC isn't the devil but Nokia has clearly eclipsed them in the support and ecosystem department.
And Samsung? Windows Phone is just a cash grab to them. Microsoft gave them 12 million to advertise their phones and Samsung skipped right back to Android town once that money ran out.
While it may seem unfair that Nokia has so many exclusive apps, I can't be mad at them because HTC/Samsung had over a year to build a superior ecosystem and flat out wasted it. Reap what you sow.