Pyramid Research's Stela Bokun on Nokia's need to reassess its position on Symbian, MeeGo

Further to our coverage of Pyramid Research's take on Nokia's strategic partnership with Microsoft, we've been contacted by senior analyst Stela Bokun seeking to clarify her position.

According to Bokun, rather than calling on Nokia to drop support for Symbian immediately as previously reported, her intent had been to suggest the Finnish firm was in need of a reality check.

Simply speaking, CEO Stephen Elop's belief that demand for Symbian devices will hold up in the run up to the launch of Nokia's first Windows Phone 7 device is unrealistic.

"No, of course Elop cannot stop shipping Symbian devices right away. That would have been a catastrophic move for Nokia, given the fact that it still doesn't have the first WP7 device ready for shipment," Bokun told us via email.

"My point was that it's very difficult to believe that Nokia will be able to ship another 150 million Symbian devices in the transition to Windows Phone, simply because operators will not be very eager to include those devices into their portfolios.

"It just doesn't sound convincing that service providers would push for devices which will not be in demand by end-users only so that they would support Nokia - the giant of the vendor community - in its transition to Windows Phone."

Elop's plans for MeeGo are equally impractical, in Bokun's view.

"I don't think he [Elop] should bother to ship the one single MeeGo device he's said Nokia will ship in 2011," she continued.

"There is no point in it. Intel is not happy about Nokia's partnership with Windows Phone to begin with, and shipping that one device serves no good to anybody - nobody will buy it, Nokia will not learn anything from it, and Intel will not be appeased."

You can read Bokun's note on the Nokia-Microsoft deal in full on Pyramid Research's website.