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It's not about unusual sequences of events, he's saying that Elop had an important incentive to accelerate the landslide of Nokia into irrelevance in order for

It's not about unusual sequences of events, he's saying that Elop had an important incentive to accelerate the landslide of Nokia into irrelevance in order for it to be bought cheaply by his former employer. Things like publicly bashing your company (that well-known memo), abruptly stopping a successful (though declining) line like the Symbian cheap phones and spending a whole year to launch a new line with an unproven and unpopular OS (in mobile). Even before all of that enthusiasts had hacked the N900 and made it run Android (look at NITDroid), so it could hardly be argued that it was difficult task for them to swiftly move to Android and differentiate themselves like Samsung does. He wasn't responsible for Nokia's difficulties in 2010, but it was far from an impossible situation. Seriously, these events are things many of us saw as soon as he put a foot on Nokia. We have been calling him a Trojan Horse since then, and with Nokia bought and Elop back at Microsoft as Head of Devices with a juicy check who can say we were mistaken? I even bought a Nokia N9 last year considering it my farewell to a once great company destined to be a part of Microsoft. And I'm hardly a clairvoyant.

pm90 13y ago
I too bought the N9 last year... but I didn't realize it until now that I had similar feelings for that purchase
abalone 13y ago
It could "hardly be argued" that it'd be a difficult task to compete with Samsung? No, that could definitely be argued. I'm not exactly a gigantic Elop fan but Nokia was in trouble long before he came on board. Consider this headline from his hiring in 2010: "Nokia Hires Microsoft's Elop as CEO to Reverse Losses to Apple". A top Nokia shareholder said, "Earlier management grossly underestimated the challenges related to moving from a hardware-driven business model to software." And Elop: "My job is to take the organization through a period of disruption..." [1] That's what's at the core of this, a kind of denial about Nokia's condition pre-Elop. Fans want to pretend everything was hunky-dorey and make the hatchet man the scapegoat. But really, Nokia fumbled their chance to build a smartphone platform several years ago. And one could definitely argue that Elop's bet on Microsoft's platform was a better shot at a profitable strategy than competing with Samsung in the Android space. (Have you considered that's why the board brought him on in the first place?) Didn't work out so well but probably neither would have becoming yet another Android player. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-10/nokia-hires-microsoft-s-elop-as-chief-executive-to-reverse-losses-to-apple.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-10/nokia-hires-microso...
- Shamanmuni 13y ago
  I didn't say that, I said it could hardly be argued that they couldn't have easily entered the Android ecosystem. We are talking about smartphones, they were (and are) competing with Samsung anyway, Windows or Android. So, what you say doesn't make much sense to me. I acknowledge Nokia's situation in 2010, but I think you are taking the other extreme of considering Nokia already doomed by that time. By the time Elop entered Nokia it still was the largest mobile phone maker in unit sales and Samsung had just entered the smartphone sector a year before. And though a promising entrant, Samsung wasn't that big of a threat until much later. Look at the article you linked, or Elop's memo, they don't even mention Samsung or Galaxy phones (just Android in general terms). At that time Android was low-hanging fruit to be put on their phones and leverage their market leadership. The first Galaxy phones weren't exactly a paramount of excellence. I don't think it's very unrealistic to think that they could have competed with Samsung in more or less equal terms for Android dominance. And I'm telling this without being exactly an Android fan, but at that time it was the most sensible course of action (IMHO). They could have even tried both Android and Windows Phone (something Samsung did) and see what sticked. Instead, they chose to stop Symbian and Meego and took the strange decision of betting the future of the company on the all new Windows Phone 7, something which can only be described as an enormous gamble. Those first phones couldn't even be upgraded to Windows Phone 8 when it came out afterwards, and I'm not even mentioning the incompatibilities between those two. Talk about a burning platform.
  - abalone 13y ago
    You claimed more than that. You said it would be easy to enter "and differentiate themselves like Samsung has" (emphasis mine). That most certainly is not easy. There are multiple big players that have tried that exact strategy and failed or been reduced to marginless commodities. Just found this money quote from Elop: For Elop, it was all about standing out from the crowd, and he admitted that Nokia couldn't do that with Android. "The single most important word is 'differentiation,' " he said. "Entering the [Android] environment late, we knew we would have a hard time differentiating." Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57559620-94/nokia-on-the-edge-inside-an-icons-fight-for-survival/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57559620-94/nokia-on-the-ed...
deleted 13y ago
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pm90 13y ago

I too bought the N9 last year... but I didn't realize it until now that I had similar feelings for that purchase

abalone 13y ago

It could "hardly be argued" that it'd be a difficult task to compete with Samsung? No, that could definitely be argued. I'm not exactly a gigantic Elop fan but Nokia was in trouble long before he came on board. Consider this headline from his hiring in 2010: "Nokia Hires Microsoft's Elop as CEO to Reverse Losses to Apple". A top Nokia shareholder said, "Earlier management grossly underestimated the challenges related to moving from a hardware-driven business model to software." And Elop: "My job is to take the organization through a period of disruption..." [1] That's what's at the core of this, a kind of denial about Nokia's condition pre-Elop. Fans want to pretend everything was hunky-dorey and make the hatchet man the scapegoat. But really, Nokia fumbled their chance to build a smartphone platform several years ago. And one could definitely argue that Elop's bet on Microsoft's platform was a better shot at a profitable strategy than competing with Samsung in the Android space. (Have you considered that's why the board brought him on in the first place?) Didn't work out so well but probably neither would have becoming yet another Android player. [1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-10/nokia-hires-microsoft-s-elop-as-chief-executive-to-reverse-losses-to-apple.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-10/nokia-hires-microso...

Shamanmuni 13y ago
I didn't say that, I said it could hardly be argued that they couldn't have easily entered the Android ecosystem. We are talking about smartphones, they were (and are) competing with Samsung anyway, Windows or Android. So, what you say doesn't make much sense to me. I acknowledge Nokia's situation in 2010, but I think you are taking the other extreme of considering Nokia already doomed by that time. By the time Elop entered Nokia it still was the largest mobile phone maker in unit sales and Samsung had just entered the smartphone sector a year before. And though a promising entrant, Samsung wasn't that big of a threat until much later. Look at the article you linked, or Elop's memo, they don't even mention Samsung or Galaxy phones (just Android in general terms). At that time Android was low-hanging fruit to be put on their phones and leverage their market leadership. The first Galaxy phones weren't exactly a paramount of excellence. I don't think it's very unrealistic to think that they could have competed with Samsung in more or less equal terms for Android dominance. And I'm telling this without being exactly an Android fan, but at that time it was the most sensible course of action (IMHO). They could have even tried both Android and Windows Phone (something Samsung did) and see what sticked. Instead, they chose to stop Symbian and Meego and took the strange decision of betting the future of the company on the all new Windows Phone 7, something which can only be described as an enormous gamble. Those first phones couldn't even be upgraded to Windows Phone 8 when it came out afterwards, and I'm not even mentioning the incompatibilities between those two. Talk about a burning platform.
- abalone 13y ago
  You claimed more than that. You said it would be easy to enter "and differentiate themselves like Samsung has" (emphasis mine). That most certainly is not easy. There are multiple big players that have tried that exact strategy and failed or been reduced to marginless commodities. Just found this money quote from Elop: For Elop, it was all about standing out from the crowd, and he admitted that Nokia couldn't do that with Android. "The single most important word is 'differentiation,' " he said. "Entering the [Android] environment late, we knew we would have a hard time differentiating." Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57559620-94/nokia-on-the-edge-inside-an-icons-fight-for-survival/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57559620-94/nokia-on-the-ed...

deleted 13y ago

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