Why Nokia should have moved to Android: Facebook Home

Going back to Stephen Elop's 2011 announcement that Nokia was ditching Symbian for the Windows Phone platform, I've been critical of his reasoning for not hitching up to Android:

"There are already so many companies piling into that space, all doing innovative and interesting things...that it would be hard to stand out amongst them."

Ridiculous, because Amazon and B&N have both shown that you can all but strip away much of the surface and recreate the UI to your liking.  Or as I've previously pointed out, there are many apps which allow you to reskin from top to bottom, your Android phone, which you can see for yourself at mycolorscreen.  Add a few apps and a distinctive shell, and you can build a Neon Genesis Evangelion phone.  If you really have doubts about how easy it is to customize a UI into Android, take a look at Frog Design's work for Sharp Aquos.

Now that we've been introduced to Facebook Home -- which for the most part, is a mirror of what Frog Design had already demonstrated -- can there be any question that Stephen Elop was wrong?

Like Facebook, Nokia could have asserted and integrated its own lineup of apps and UI layers into their phones.  With Windows Phone, you really don't have that opportunity because you're forced to operate within the static nature of Live Tiles and UI motions.