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Well, that's that. Symbian and MeeGo are on the way out, new partners Nokia and Microsoft confirmed early Friday, and Windows Phone is in.

The widely anticipated news came just a few days after word leaked of an internal Nokia memo from CEO Stephen Elop, who compared Nokia's precarious perch atop the wireless world to that of a man standing on a "burning platform," with multiple explosions—the biggest coming from such runaway smartphone success as Apple's iPhone and Google's Android OS—erupting all around him. The only way to survive, declared Elop in the leaked memo, would be to leap into the "freezing water" below.

The freezing water, as it turns out, will be Microsoft's budding Windows Phone platform. (Kind of a back-handed compliment, but hey—so it goes.)

Details on the new, "broad strategic partnership" are still preliminary, Nokia said in an official blog post Friday, but make no mistake—we're not just talking a token handshake and photo opp here.

Coinciding with the deal is a major management shakeup, with Nokia poised to divide itself into two core businesses. The first: "Smart Devices," tasked with cranking out a "winning Windows Phone portfolio" and handling the soon-to-be-phased-out Symbian and MeeGo platforms. (Wait, MeeGo's already on the way out? Hold on—we'll get to that in a moment.)

The second business, called "Mobile Devices," will be focused on Nokia's (still massive) Series 40 division of low-cost handsets, with Nokia looking to connect the "next billion" would-be mobile users.

So, what does all this mean from a gadget perspective?

Well, you can pretty much kiss Symbian—a once-great smartphone platform that's fallen way behind the times—goodbye. While Nokia still plans on selling 150 million more Symbian phones "in the years to come," the new plan is to "retain" but "transition" Nokia's 200 million Symbian users to its new "primary" smartphone platform, Windows Phone.

And as for MeeGo, Nokia's long-awaited, next-generation mobile OS, expect one MeeGo-based handset (the first, by the way) this year. That said, MeeGo is now destined to become an "open-source, mobile operating system project" focused on "longer-term market exploration of next-generation devices, platforms, and user experience."
Translation: the first MeeGo smartphone, if and when it arrives, will probably be the last.

Meanwhile, Microsoft says it will look to Nokia to "help drive the future of Windows Phone," bringing such features as top-notch optics and Nokia Maps to the table, while Microsoft's Bing will become Nokia's search engine of choice. (What about tablets, you ask? Good question—neither Nokia nor Microsoft ever mention the "t" word in their respective press releases.)

Nokia also trumpeted Windows Phone features like live tiles, tight Xbox and Office integration, and the Zune media hub as reasons to "get excited" about the new partnership.
The Nokia-Microsoft deal had been rumored for months, but speculation grew to a fever pitch in recent days following the leak of Elop's extraordinary internal memo.

Another possible partner for Nokia was Google—and indeed, Nokia's Elop was reportedly in talks with Google CEO Eric Schmidt about a potential deal. In the end, though, Elop decided (according to CNET) that Nokia "would have difficulties differentiating within that ecosystem," and that all the "value" would have been "moving to Google."

In other words: with Microsoft's nascent Windows Phone OS, Nokia gets to be a big fish in a small pond, rather than a just one of many minnows in a growing sea of Android phones.

At the same time, Microsoft now has one of the largest phone makers in the world almost exclusively devoted to Windows Mobile—and Microsoft certainly needs the help if it's going to give Apple and Google a run for their smartphone money.

So, what do you think: did Nokia pick the right partner in wireless crime? And what about the prospect of a Nokia-designed Windows Phone? Fire away below.