3 ms·

Burning Platforms Memo Damaged Nokia: Wiped out $13B revenues

19 points by locusm 14y ago

fpgeek 14y ago
I think he overestimates how much life was left in Symbian. A better baseline might be RIM's performance over the last year (as another manufacturer that hadn't really figured out touchscreen smartphones), maybe plus a bit of upside for better Meego execution, but still... the carnage has been amazing. It will be interesting to find out what today's "big announcement" in Finland will be. Probably more layoffs, but there were sale rumors recently...
Groxx 14y ago
The memo, for those who don't know it off the top of their head: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-rallies-troops-in-brutally-honest-burnin/ http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-ra... (just the first result I googled, feel free to suggest a better one)
kkowalczyk 14y ago
What a ridiculous, sensationalist, witch-hunting article. Elop's memo has about as much to do with Nokia's problems as the weather on the day it was leaked. If Elop didn't write that memo or it didn't leak, Nokia would have been in about the same about trouble today, because their problems are not caused by Elop's wordsmanship but by Apple and Google re-defining the smartphone business in an astonishingly short time and Nokia (and RIM and Microsoft and Palm) not having a response.
- adventureful 14y ago
  The author might as well argue that Elop's memo is what sank Palm and RIM too. Would make about as much sense.
  - reiichiroh 14y ago
    Tomi's blog is weird though, I'll give you that, blinded by nationalism. I can almost picture a pro-Canadian super-partisan RIM ex-exec writing the same sort of "mobile industry analysis" blog for RIM in parallel universe.
Osiris 14y ago
JCPenney is going through a similar problem now in which the incoming CEO make huge changes very quickly seemingly without understand the market or the customer[1]. It seems like new CEOs often like to try to make a name for themselves and jump in head first and try to turn a very large boat quickly without a complete understanding of the consequences. In JCPenney's case, the CEO believed that people would prefer to know they are always getting the best price, but he didn't understand that customers actually get a rush/high from finding great "sale" deals (even if they only look like sales because regular prices are jacked up).[1] Perhaps Elop sould have taken some time to get into the company, and understand its customers (including carriers as well as phone users) before deciding on a course correction. Once a new direction was found, keeping it internal and shocking customers will new tech when it was ready would have probably done much more for than company that telling everyone a year in advance, "Don't buy our stuff until we come out with our new Windows phone because we're not going to support it and we think it sucks". [1] http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/jcpenney-discovers-the-importance-of-research-the-hard-way_b39061 http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/jcpenney-discovers-the-i...
adventureful 14y ago
Couldn't hardly get any more ridiculous or sensationalistic than this: "which was the first in a long series of managment blunders by Nokia's new CEO, Stephen Elop, the most incompetent and damaging CEO of any Fortune 500 sized company in corporate history" You'd have to be pretty ignorant to have never heard of Enron or Worldcom, both of which were radically more destructive (in every possible sense). If we're talking about value destruction, Long Term Capital Management completely rattled the entire US economy, causing perhaps hundreds of billions in spill over damage. Bank of America and Citi both vaporized a trillion dollars with toxic mortgages, and more than take the cake in destruction. Lehman, Countrywide, and Bear Stearns also exceed anything that has happened at Nokia. The value plunge in Lucent and Nortel after the dotcom bubble (due in part to dangerous customer leveraging), was nearly half a trillion combined, with massive sales and profit drops. Bernie Madoff didn't run a Fortune 500 size company, but the $65x billion he 'managed' might as well have qualified him. And on and on it goes. Keeping with the style of the article, I'll just go ahead and declare that since the author was extraordinarily wrong about that one thing, therefore the entire article is pure trash.
reiichiroh 14y ago
It should be noted that the author of this blog (Tomi Ahonen)is an ex-Nokia executive with fierce, irrational support for Finnish (mis)management of Nokia and a strident detractor of Elop.
reiichiroh 14y ago
Judging from the article's comments, Tomi and his fans somehow believe in their hearts that Meego and the N9 would have saved Nokia.
stevenwei 14y ago
This guy definitely seems to have an axe to grind, this decline was going to happen regardless of the memo.

19 points by locusm 14y ago

I think he overestimates how much life was left in Symbian. A better baseline might be RIM's performance over the last year (as another manufacturer that hadn't really figured out touchscreen smartphones), maybe plus a bit of upside for better Meego execution, but still... the carnage has been amazing. It will be interesting to find out what today's "big announcement" in Finland will be. Probably more layoffs, but there were sale rumors recently...

Groxx 14y ago

The memo, for those who don't know it off the top of their head: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-rallies-troops-in-brutally-honest-burnin/ http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-ra... (just the first result I googled, feel free to suggest a better one)

kkowalczyk 14y ago

What a ridiculous, sensationalist, witch-hunting article. Elop's memo has about as much to do with Nokia's problems as the weather on the day it was leaked. If Elop didn't write that memo or it didn't leak, Nokia would have been in about the same about trouble today, because their problems are not caused by Elop's wordsmanship but by Apple and Google re-defining the smartphone business in an astonishingly short time and Nokia (and RIM and Microsoft and Palm) not having a response.

adventureful 14y ago
The author might as well argue that Elop's memo is what sank Palm and RIM too. Would make about as much sense.
- reiichiroh 14y ago
  Tomi's blog is weird though, I'll give you that, blinded by nationalism. I can almost picture a pro-Canadian super-partisan RIM ex-exec writing the same sort of "mobile industry analysis" blog for RIM in parallel universe.

Osiris 14y ago

JCPenney is going through a similar problem now in which the incoming CEO make huge changes very quickly seemingly without understand the market or the customer[1]. It seems like new CEOs often like to try to make a name for themselves and jump in head first and try to turn a very large boat quickly without a complete understanding of the consequences. In JCPenney's case, the CEO believed that people would prefer to know they are always getting the best price, but he didn't understand that customers actually get a rush/high from finding great "sale" deals (even if they only look like sales because regular prices are jacked up).[1] Perhaps Elop sould have taken some time to get into the company, and understand its customers (including carriers as well as phone users) before deciding on a course correction. Once a new direction was found, keeping it internal and shocking customers will new tech when it was ready would have probably done much more for than company that telling everyone a year in advance, "Don't buy our stuff until we come out with our new Windows phone because we're not going to support it and we think it sucks". [1] http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/jcpenney-discovers-the-importance-of-research-the-hard-way_b39061 http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/jcpenney-discovers-the-i...

adventureful 14y ago

Couldn't hardly get any more ridiculous or sensationalistic than this: "which was the first in a long series of managment blunders by Nokia's new CEO, Stephen Elop, the most incompetent and damaging CEO of any Fortune 500 sized company in corporate history" You'd have to be pretty ignorant to have never heard of Enron or Worldcom, both of which were radically more destructive (in every possible sense). If we're talking about value destruction, Long Term Capital Management completely rattled the entire US economy, causing perhaps hundreds of billions in spill over damage. Bank of America and Citi both vaporized a trillion dollars with toxic mortgages, and more than take the cake in destruction. Lehman, Countrywide, and Bear Stearns also exceed anything that has happened at Nokia. The value plunge in Lucent and Nortel after the dotcom bubble (due in part to dangerous customer leveraging), was nearly half a trillion combined, with massive sales and profit drops. Bernie Madoff didn't run a Fortune 500 size company, but the $65x billion he 'managed' might as well have qualified him. And on and on it goes. Keeping with the style of the article, I'll just go ahead and declare that since the author was extraordinarily wrong about that one thing, therefore the entire article is pure trash.

reiichiroh 14y ago

It should be noted that the author of this blog (Tomi Ahonen)is an ex-Nokia executive with fierce, irrational support for Finnish (mis)management of Nokia and a strident detractor of Elop.

reiichiroh 14y ago

Judging from the article's comments, Tomi and his fans somehow believe in their hearts that Meego and the N9 would have saved Nokia.

stevenwei 14y ago

This guy definitely seems to have an axe to grind, this decline was going to happen regardless of the memo.