Critical Thought's Whatley sees Nokia deal as being strategic and important for Microsoft too

In covering, Nokia and Microsoft's strategic smartphone OS agreement, the temptation is to view the situation only from the Finnish company's perspective.

However, Microsoft has skin in the game too, points out David Whatley, president of iPhone developer Critical Thought.

"I think the Nokia deal has to be taken in context of what's going on at Microsoft," he says.

"When you look at the recent moves it's made to shake up management and move up engineering talent into the drivers seat, you can see that there is a broad strategic initiative to set up Microsoft for relevancy in key markets where it's currently lagging."

Whatley then takes a step back, with a strategic overview about how large technology companies either adapt or die.

"These things are cyclic, where a company seems so dominate at one point that we run to the courts crying antitrust, and then almost over-night no one cares about them anymore - such as AOL, or MySpace," he points out.

"Once they reach this point, the conventional wisdom is that they can no longer return to prominence. But I think that any company, with strong leadership, can reinvent itself. Even AOL is starting to show signs of life again through reinvention driven by key strategic acquisitions like TechCrunch and now Huffington Post."

In this manner, Whatley sees the Nokia deal as being as important to Microsoft as vice versa.

"I think this is a piece of a larger plan that Microsoft has been brewing for more than a little while," he says.

"Only time will tell how it plays out, but action always better than inaction. From a developers perspective, this is good news because we want the Windows Phone 7 platform to reach its market potential.

"The more hot platforms the better, and the WP7 OS is certainly a worthy contender that isn't just playing follow the leader."

You can read more developer opinions on the deal here.