Maybe they would have had more sales with an Android phone, but I'm not sure it would have made a bit enough difference to prevent this buyout. Elop set Nokia up to be bought out by being a major windows phone maker. It may have been a better long-term bet than Android.
Having said that, I agree with your final point. If you view the whole thing as a setup to extract maximum value via an acquisition, it might make sense. They may have been worth more as a MS acquisition target selling Windows phones than they would have been had they gone down the Android path.
It's entirely possible that neither path would have led to sustainability as a standalone entity.
In my alternate fantasy timeline, I'm currently using an amazingly efficient Meego device which gives me as powerful an environment like Android, in a neat and simple user-interface [1]
> Nokia was crushing rivals everywhere.
Would they have done better with Android,hard to say,I think they would.Nokia is a famous ,in Europe for instance, Nokia means robust and quality phones.But we'll never know.
Nokia has never needed a software edge to crush its rivals. They just needed to keep making phones that wouldn't break if you dropped them.
When you already have a massive competitive advantage (Nokia's reputation for making reliable hardware), you don't dive into a niche.
Then the market changed to "[Android] phones that are like the iPhone" and Nokia refused to compete in that market, going for the "[Windows] phones that are not like the iPhone"-market instead. And totally dominated it with a 90%+ market share.
But that market was tiny. And Nokia was size-wise geared to compete with Samsung and Apple. Cue massive collapse of business when expenses overtook sales.
The specs could be weak, as long as it would be easy, durable and fast for regular users.
Nokia 3310 was phone for regular users. Phone that could drop, had few games, allowed you to download some ringtones. Strong battery, good screen, water/shock proof. Put 8GB memory plus one SD slot, some ok-ish processor and 2GB ram (so it wont age after 1 year) + make put really good battery. No ridiculous screen resolutions, fingerprint readers etc - just durable smartphone for regular user.
With specs like that they might break even - but for sure they would steal european and growing APAC regions easy. Once they would get back they would release business versions that would help them to correct their profitability. Its not difficult for such a strong brand like Nokia. I was amazed how Scandinavian way of thinking (simplicity) vanished from the company.
If Nokia could deliver mentioned phone - I would use it for sure.