Nokia shareholder 'revolt' against Microsoft WP7 deal ends after a day

The much-ballyhooed Nokia shareholder “revolt” over Nokia’s Windows Phone 7 adoption plan is over, a day after it began.

Update: It turns out the “revolt” was nothing but a hoax. The Plan B blog page was taken down on began redirecting to a @NokiaPlanB Twitter account on February 16. A tweet revealed the alleged ruse, and the alleged creator of the hoax claimed to be nothing but a “very bored engineer who really likes his iPhone.”  I have no idea what’s real here — including the latest claim about his/her occupation and choice of phone.

According to the now-unavailable site, the nine anonymous shareholders, claiming to be former Nokia employees, banded together and proposed an alternative “Plan B” — which included the firing of Nokia CEO Stephen Elop — announced on their blog on February 16 that they had decided to ditch their effort. The Plan B team was responding to Nokia’s decision, announced this week, to put its eggs in the Windows Phone basket, rather than going with Android or staying the current Nokia Symbian/MeeGo course.

Despite claims that “hundreds” of shareholders were backing their play, the Plan B team said they had not received encouraging feedback from institutional investors. They also said they believed most of Nokia’s software talent would have left the company by the time their plan kicked in.

The Plan B group proposed restricting the Microsoft-Nokia Windows Phone partnership to North America; making MeeGo Nokia’s primary smartphone platform; guaranteeing Symbian’s promised lifespan to five years; and backing Qt as Nokia’s development platform.

Meanwhile, here are some other Nokia-Microsoft tidbits from around the Web that may be of interest — and appear to be real, not hoaxes:

• When will Nokia release their first Nokia-branded Windows Phone 7 devices? Nokia execs have said that some devices may ship this calendar year, but nothing in substantial volume until 2012. Nokia is promising to build lower-cost, lower-end Windows Phone 7 devices.
• Verizon’s Chief Technology Officer has no love for the Microsoft-Nokia partnership. In fact, he has little love at all for  Windows Phone 7, and said at the Mobile World Congress that he sees the mobile market as a three-horse race between Apple, Android and RIM. (I’ve got to say this is really making me think about switching carriers when my Verizon contract expires in October, as I want to try a Windows Phone 7, but don’t want my carrier limiting me.)
• How much did Microsoft pay Nokia to win the Windows Phone 7 contract? The New York Times originally reported the figure was in the “hundreds of millions.” Elop said this week that the actual amount was in the billions. However, that “billions” figure includes a number of working parts: Marketing funds; some kind of reward for backing Bing and Microsoft adCenter; undisclosed payback for Nokia’s contribution of various Nokia wireless services, including mapping.
• The Finnish trade union Pro is seeking €100,000 (in addition to severance payments) for every Nokia employee that loses their job under “I am not a Trojan Horse” Elop’s new strategy.
• Elop says “Our Plan B is to make Plan A successful.”