That’s the gist of Berenberg Bank analyst Adnaan Ahmad’s open letter to Elop and former colleague Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. “[Stephen] announce an EXCLUSIVE deal with your ex-colleague, Steve: you get access to their Windows Phone 7 (WP7) intellectual property scot-free and access to the US market where your share has dived to the low single-digit level, and in so doing cut your bloated handset business R&D budget by at least 30 percent,” Ahmad writes. “Get rid of your own proprietary high-end solution (MEEGO)–it’s the biggest joke in the tech industry right now and will put you even further behind Apple and Google. Focus your high-end portfolio around WP7, and over time you can take the cost down (that’s Steve’s job and cost base) to get this into the mid-range market. Push your Symbian solutions into the low-to-mid-range smartphone market as quickly as possible to defend market share versus Android’s upcoming lowered cost ecosystem.”

An interesting, albeit unoriginal, idea, particularly coming as it does after Elop’s assertion that Nokia “must build, catalyze and/or join a competitive ecosystem” to effectively compete in the handset industry. And it has its merits–for Microsoft, access to Nokia’s massive global market share, and for Nokia, the ability to go to market with an OS that isn’t a joke, as Ahmad notes. That said, while Microsoft is certainly a valuable ecosystm partner, it’s not yet all that valuable in the mobile space. But it could be.

“Going into 2010, the overall mobile devices market is stabilizing and it is growing more in the areas where Nokia has competitive advantages,” CFO Timo Ihamuotila said during the company’s Capital Markets Day event today.

And while the company expects its mobile device volume share to be flat in 2010 compared with 2009, it also expects to increase its “mobile device value market share” a bit.

Of course, to do that, Nokia (NOK) needs a device that can compete with the likes of Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, and its recent efforts–the N97, for example–have fallen far short of that goal.

“Last year’s N97 flagship was an exercise in how not to create a touchscreen phone, complete with an odd three row keyboard featuring a space bar mysteriously moved right of center,” says technology strategist Michael Gartenberg.

“The N900 feels more like a science experiment to me,” Gartenberg observes,” than a product that’s designed for mainstream users….I used to feel Nokia’s hardware designs defined cool, but these days they just remind me of an aging movie starlet trying to re-capture some former beauty.”

2010 will be different, though. At least according to Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. “I see great opportunity for Nokia to capture new growth in our industry,” he said. “We have measures in place to push smart phones down to new price points globally, while growing margins….We have three targets for 2010: execution, execution, execution.”

Hell of an understatement, given the news. Hope they serve alcohol at that Capital Markets Day event….

Hell of an understatement, given the news. Hope they serve alcohol at that Capital Markets Day event….