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Essential further reading comes from mobile phone industry analyst Tomi Ahonen, who was front-and-centre in the Elop opprobrium, and coined many of the English-

Essential further reading comes from mobile phone industry analyst Tomi Ahonen, who was front-and-centre in the Elop opprobrium, and coined many of the English-language quips about the Nokia-Microsoft mess as it was happening: "Calculating the Elop Effect: He's already destroyed a company the size of Oracle, and profits the size of Google" https://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/12/calculating-the-elop-effect-hes-already-destroyed-a-company-the-size-of-oracle-and-profits-the-size-.html https://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/12/calcul...

pavlov 6y ago
If you read the book that's the original post here, it becomes very clear that Nokia had already managed to destroy itself by 2010. Elop salvaged a substantial amount of value by offloading Nokia's unprofitable mobile devices division to Ballmer. Tomi Ahonen is a Finn with personal relationships to the old Nokia guard. Spinning the story as Elop's failure was a convenient way to let them off the hook for destroying $100B shareholder value in 2000-2010.
- cf100clunk 6y ago
  I take it you're reacting to the title of the Ahonen article? It is a huge piece with many, many links. Regarding Ahonen's past, look at his accuracy over the years in all things mobile phone marketing when many other supposed experts were floundering, particularly about Windows Phone.
  - pavlov 6y ago
    I've read Ahonen's posts for a long time. He was an oldschool Nokia loyalist until that position became untenable. E.g. in 2010 when smartphone apps were already a thing, he was gung-ho about MMS: https://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/an-inconceivable-truth-mms-is-a-global-success-at-30b-dollars.html https://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/an-inc... "Compared to Facebook, MMS reaches a 3 times bigger audience - its lead is radically bigger compared to smaller social networking sites like MySpace, Twitter, Flickr etc. The same is true of the total installed base of all brands of smartphones. If you only think of apps for Apple's iPhone including the total shipments of all iPod Touch and iPad devices, MMS will reach an interactive multimedia mobile phone audience... that is 20 times larger." If you had invested based on his analysis, you'd have got a business built around last-gen messaging technology just as it was being wiped out.
- bitcharmer 6y ago
  I'm sorry but you're wrong. In 2010 Nokia was still fine[1]. I'm gonna stick to expert market analyst on this one. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NOK/nokia/revenue https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NOK/nokia/revenue
  - mjg59 6y ago
    In 2010, Nokia was fucked. Series 60 wasn't competitive and the repeated ground-up rewritings of their Linux platform meant it was way behind schedule. The N9 shipped late, and even then only shipped as early as it did because development of the followup device had been sacrificed to put more people on the N9. Realistically, in 2010 it was already clear that Nokia would have nothing to ship in 2012.
  - pavlov 6y ago
    I know the linked book "Operation Elop" is a long and occasionally tedious read, but it's worth reading a couple of the initial chapters if you still believe Nokia was fine in 2010. The problems started already years before, but Nokia management was successful for a while in hiding its dysfunction behind the immediate effects of the 2008 crisis.
  - nl 6y ago
    2010 Nokia was fine the way 2020 Intel is fine. It could have been salvaged, but there were issues if you know what you are looking at. Even looking at the Nokia finance numbers you posted the issues are clear. Both revenue (-2%) and profits (-6%) are down in a growing market, and the bigger drop in profits is indicative of them losing high end market share.
  - macintux 6y ago
    BlackBerry was growing its sales for years after the iPhone, but observers knew that the coyote had run off the cliff, gravity simply hadn’t recognized it yet. Nokia was in a similar boat.
- socialdemocrat 6y ago
  We all know they where in trouble then. The point is that Elop made it 10x worse. Doubling down on Windows Phone was a terrible choice. Nobody wanted that. I know a lot of Windows fans have convinced themselves Windows Phone was awesome but it wasn’t. Avoiding Windows Nokia could still have been alive by going for Android. Sure a smaller company than in the heyday but still alive.
  - pavlov 6y ago
    Nokia is still alive and worth about 20 billion euros. The billions in cash that they made from selling the loss-making mobile devices albatross to Steve Ballmer allowed Nokia to purchase both Siemens’ share of the networks business as well as Alcatel.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  I worked at Nokia at the time this all went down. It's true to say that Nokia was in difficulty and initially laughed at the iPhone when it was first released. Elop may have had the right idea but how that idea was delivered should be a lession in how not to do things. I remember the Burning Platform memo appearing on the intranet homepage. Instantly thousands of people stopped caring. They just hung around waiting for Voluntary Redundancy offers. Truths were told, it got very dirty.
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  The sale of Nokia phone to MS was negotiated by Siilasmaa, not Elop.

pavlov 6y ago

If you read the book that's the original post here, it becomes very clear that Nokia had already managed to destroy itself by 2010. Elop salvaged a substantial amount of value by offloading Nokia's unprofitable mobile devices division to Ballmer. Tomi Ahonen is a Finn with personal relationships to the old Nokia guard. Spinning the story as Elop's failure was a convenient way to let them off the hook for destroying $100B shareholder value in 2000-2010.

cf100clunk 6y ago
I take it you're reacting to the title of the Ahonen article? It is a huge piece with many, many links. Regarding Ahonen's past, look at his accuracy over the years in all things mobile phone marketing when many other supposed experts were floundering, particularly about Windows Phone.
- pavlov 6y ago
  I've read Ahonen's posts for a long time. He was an oldschool Nokia loyalist until that position became untenable. E.g. in 2010 when smartphone apps were already a thing, he was gung-ho about MMS: https://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/an-inconceivable-truth-mms-is-a-global-success-at-30b-dollars.html https://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2010/06/an-inc... "Compared to Facebook, MMS reaches a 3 times bigger audience - its lead is radically bigger compared to smaller social networking sites like MySpace, Twitter, Flickr etc. The same is true of the total installed base of all brands of smartphones. If you only think of apps for Apple's iPhone including the total shipments of all iPod Touch and iPad devices, MMS will reach an interactive multimedia mobile phone audience... that is 20 times larger." If you had invested based on his analysis, you'd have got a business built around last-gen messaging technology just as it was being wiped out.
bitcharmer 6y ago
I'm sorry but you're wrong. In 2010 Nokia was still fine[1]. I'm gonna stick to expert market analyst on this one. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NOK/nokia/revenue https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NOK/nokia/revenue
- mjg59 6y ago
  In 2010, Nokia was fucked. Series 60 wasn't competitive and the repeated ground-up rewritings of their Linux platform meant it was way behind schedule. The N9 shipped late, and even then only shipped as early as it did because development of the followup device had been sacrificed to put more people on the N9. Realistically, in 2010 it was already clear that Nokia would have nothing to ship in 2012.
- pavlov 6y ago
  I know the linked book "Operation Elop" is a long and occasionally tedious read, but it's worth reading a couple of the initial chapters if you still believe Nokia was fine in 2010. The problems started already years before, but Nokia management was successful for a while in hiding its dysfunction behind the immediate effects of the 2008 crisis.
- nl 6y ago
  2010 Nokia was fine the way 2020 Intel is fine. It could have been salvaged, but there were issues if you know what you are looking at. Even looking at the Nokia finance numbers you posted the issues are clear. Both revenue (-2%) and profits (-6%) are down in a growing market, and the bigger drop in profits is indicative of them losing high end market share.
- macintux 6y ago
  BlackBerry was growing its sales for years after the iPhone, but observers knew that the coyote had run off the cliff, gravity simply hadn’t recognized it yet. Nokia was in a similar boat.
socialdemocrat 6y ago
We all know they where in trouble then. The point is that Elop made it 10x worse. Doubling down on Windows Phone was a terrible choice. Nobody wanted that. I know a lot of Windows fans have convinced themselves Windows Phone was awesome but it wasn’t. Avoiding Windows Nokia could still have been alive by going for Android. Sure a smaller company than in the heyday but still alive.
- pavlov 6y ago
  Nokia is still alive and worth about 20 billion euros. The billions in cash that they made from selling the loss-making mobile devices albatross to Steve Ballmer allowed Nokia to purchase both Siemens’ share of the networks business as well as Alcatel.
secondcoming 6y ago
I worked at Nokia at the time this all went down. It's true to say that Nokia was in difficulty and initially laughed at the iPhone when it was first released. Elop may have had the right idea but how that idea was delivered should be a lession in how not to do things. I remember the Burning Platform memo appearing on the intranet homepage. Instantly thousands of people stopped caring. They just hung around waiting for Voluntary Redundancy offers. Truths were told, it got very dirty.
howlgarnish 6y ago
The sale of Nokia phone to MS was negotiated by Siilasmaa, not Elop.