Why on earth should this be allowed to go through? If Apple have been infringing patents since 2007, why has it taken two and a half years to for Nokia to speak up?

And what is to say that Apple have not come up with their own solution? This maybe a mistake by someone. Do Nokia have a patent covering all mobile data? Security is unique to all vendors. It will be part of the OS and I doubt that Nokia have any patents that cover OSX.

The only thing I can think of is that negotiations have been happening in the mean time but have fallen through. That's pure speculation on my part mind.

How is Nokia's health at the moment?
Did I hear rumours of bankruptcy a while ago?

I seriously doubt that. They are one of the biggest handset manufacturers in the world and have production all over the place. They may be hit by the fact that people are not changing their handsets as often. Though that could impact all manufacturers to a greater or lesser degree. Unless Nokia have borrowed excessively in the last few years I doubt that they will have any problems.

I think you'll find that 2 to 3 years is a relatively rapid turnaround for this sort of thing, consider the process so far:

First you have to investigate to find out if your patent has actually been infringed, this requires technical and legal experts to draw up reports. these reports are written by teams of engineers and lawyers, so that's probably your first year down the drain. Then you have to try to resolve the dispute by offering licensing terms to the infringing party. Then they have to hire expert legal and technical teams to draw up reports to say they aren't infringing. If they are still worried you will sue, they trawl through all their own patents to see if they have anything to hit you back with (more reports). Then they look for prior art (additional reports). Then, when they are ready to go to court and defend themselves, that's when they tell you to stick your licensing terms up your bum. Then you issue a press release to tell everyone you are suing them.