6 ms·

On the subject of this tablet (too little, too late), there is a nagging question, that maybe someone could explain: Why has there not been any criminal invest

On the subject of this tablet (too little, too late), there is a nagging question, that maybe someone could explain: Why has there not been any criminal investigation at all, into the infiltration and acquisiton of Nokia? 1. Microsoft exec becomes CEO of Nokia 2. He bankrupts the company (burning platform memo, etc.) (Not only does he bankrupt it, but in all the history of corporate business, this is one of the most spectacular flameouts ever...) 3. Microsoft buys Nokia for peanuts I mean, wouldn't there at least be a bit of an investigation into this? The moment Elop became CEO, I had a suspicion that this was going to happen, and it did! I wouldn't say I'm particularly smart or well-informed - certainly everyone else saw it coming too.... (edit: clarified a couple points)

walterbell 12y ago
Which country would investigate?
- amitbhawani 12y ago
  Exactly! and whose loss is it?
- Aoyagi 12y ago
  Finland or EU (not a country (yet?), I know), of course. Nokia was a Finnish asset and EU should be looking into these deals to begin with.
  - conradfr 12y ago
    Yes like when Europe fights against Mittal when they close profitable steel factories or screw them with no investments and R&D, oh wait.
    - Aoyagi 12y ago
      And your point is what exactly?
      - conradfr 12y ago
        That the EU commission approved the MS / Nokia deal and usually don't do anything to protect these business practices.
    - orbifold 12y ago
      Sadly it no longer is enough to be profitable, you also have to make enough profit (~20% in the banking sector), which is why Thyssen decided to focus on high technology steel products, instead of competing with India/China on price.
Aoyagi 12y ago
I thought it was already established that "megacorporations" are above the law of any country.
dagw 12y ago
2 and 3 are highly contentious. Nokia's mobile phone division was in huge trouble long before Elop showed up, and there is no indication that anything he did made it worse. And given the state Nokia was in, the deal they got from MS was extremely fair.
- dijit 12y ago
  Nokia was 4 months away from shipping the "Lumia" running MeeGo when February 10th happened. People were pretty angry. Source: I was working there on the project at the time.
  - dagw 12y ago
    As a MeeGo fans since back when it was called Maemo (I even had an N810) I'm as sad as the next person to never get that phone. That being said I am not at all convinced that going with MeeGo over WP wouldn't have left Nokia in worse position than the one it ended up in.
    - walterbell 12y ago
      Nokia had Qt+QML and the opportunity to take this cross-platform, plus an innovation advantage with Meego (no Java overhead) and patents. Now Microsoft is attempting to take C# cross-platform and open-source, after blocking Qt on Windows Phone. Years have been lost. Meanwhile Java chews up memory and courtroom time on Android. There's still nothing on the market to compare with Nokia offline maps -- uses no data when travelling, does not send location history to OTT provider like Google or Apple. The entire industry lost when Nokia imploded, especially Google and Apple, whose UI has stagnated, unless hard to read "thin fonts" count as innovation. Competition from Nokia Linux nee Meego (not to mention WebOS) would have been good for all parties.
      - dagw 12y ago
        I 100% agree with everything you say. I'm even one of those strange freaks that has a Nokia Lumia as my private phone and love Nokia Here maps. From a personal point of view I really wish Nokia had stuck with MeeGo until the bitter end, but Nokia had to look out for Nokia and I still can't blame Nokia for the choices they made.
NicoJuicy 12y ago
I had the exact same thing and also, after Microsoft buys Nokia, Elop became Microsoft's Vice President of Microsoft's Devices & Services... It's like it was meant to be :) He also received quite a bonus after selling Nokia
- pjmlp 12y ago
  > He also received quite a bonus after selling Nokia He achieved what he was hired for. Sadly
jarek 12y ago
Why has there not been any criminal investigation at all, into the infiltration and acquisiton of Nokia? Who would you investigate and what crimes would you accuse them of? The closest thing I'm coming up with is blaming the directors that hired the CEO for tanking shareholder value, but that's a civil matter. Being incompetent is not a crime unless you can prove fraud.
- walterbell 12y ago
  Tomi Ahonen has made a few lists.. edit for downvoters who don't know now to run a web search: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/09/elop-25-million-dollar-golden-handshake-for-destroying-the-company-how-could-this-happen-analysis-an.html http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/09/elop-25...
  - jarek 12y ago
    I upvoted you. Very detailed back story but I'm not clear where criminal charges against anyone would arise. What am I missing? Has evidence of purposeful fraud by the board members been uncovered since Sept 2013?
    - walterbell 12y ago
      If there is evidence, it won't be on HN :) The point of the GP post was that there was no publicly visible investigation that even looked for evidence, not even from ambulance chasing lawyers. With a large number of affected parties, naive and affected observers start asking questions. When the affected people are still griping years later, it may be wise for someone to at least pretend to investigate. Wouldn't want people to lose confidence in erstwhile institutions.
      - jarek 12y ago
        Alternatively, given how common "shareholder value" civil lawsuits from ambulance-chasing lawyers are, and how large the company and its fall were, if there was something to be uncovered, it would have been uncovered by now. The fact that it hasn't and the only things remaining are some butthurt and Something Should Be Done opinions suggests per Occam's razor that there's nothing there.
Shofo 12y ago
I've been wondering this for a long time myself. Even the fact that the company was steered away from Meego for (at the time) a less functional OS like Windows Phone (damned thing didn't have a twitter app and Meego came with one...) by an ex exec who could potentially benefit from the migration of Nokia's devices to Microsoft OS(if he had options). Such a shame. Meego was revolutionary and is still imo the most intuitive OS ever made. If only someone reputable picked it up, as it still is revolutionary. Android took the double tap to turn on and HTC Sense took the app cards but beyond that it still has an edge if it was around today.
- walterbell 12y ago
  Do you recall when Nokia corporate email was migrated to Exchange, and what was the prior system? In a Hollywood movie script, after failure of internal reorgs, a company could be tanked with deniablity, speculators make $ shorting/bouncing the stock, sell shell to BigCo, retain brand, rebuild new company and new corporate culture. Only in the movies.
- eiliant 12y ago
  I miss Meego too. N9 is the best phone I've owned (even despite poor app selections). Tried looking into Sailfish but it is a poor replica.
  - catern 12y ago
    Why do you say it is a poor replica out of curiosity?
- Spearchucker 12y ago
  To be fair it (Windows Phone) didn't need a Twitter app. It is (and was, from launch) built into the OS.
brunnsbe 12y ago
Here is a good article written around 2 years ago on how Nokia went from MeeGo to Windows Phone: http://taskumuro.com/artikkelit/the-story-of-nokia-meego http://taskumuro.com/artikkelit/the-story-of-nokia-meego
pjmlp 12y ago
He got payed by Nokia board to drive it into the ground as part of his bonus. So the board is to blame, he was just going after his bonus. "Elop was entitled to immediate share price performance bonus in case of a “change of control” situation…" http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/24/nokia-payoff-stephen-elop-microsoft http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/24/nokia-payo... http://www.forbes.com/sites/terokuittinen/2013/09/24/nokia-admits-giving-misleading-information-about-elops-compensation/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/terokuittinen/2013/09/24/nokia-a...
hbharadwaj 12y ago
Have you read this article on Business Week? http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b4232056703101.htm#p1 http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b42320567... Talks about Nokia's strategy and it does look like there was buy-in on the decision from management and the board. Also, they had hired a Strategy House - can't remember which (either BCG or Bain) to bolster their conclusions. Am sure there were agreements and Elop wasn't a one-man army.
ashayh 12y ago
Small Chinese/Indian companies come out with multiple Android models every year. Was it so hard for Nokia to do the same under Elop, and put eggs in more than one basket?

walterbell 12y ago

Which country would investigate?

amitbhawani 12y ago
Exactly! and whose loss is it?
Aoyagi 12y ago
Finland or EU (not a country (yet?), I know), of course. Nokia was a Finnish asset and EU should be looking into these deals to begin with.
- conradfr 12y ago
  Yes like when Europe fights against Mittal when they close profitable steel factories or screw them with no investments and R&D, oh wait.
  - Aoyagi 12y ago
    And your point is what exactly?
    - conradfr 12y ago
      That the EU commission approved the MS / Nokia deal and usually don't do anything to protect these business practices.
  - orbifold 12y ago
    Sadly it no longer is enough to be profitable, you also have to make enough profit (~20% in the banking sector), which is why Thyssen decided to focus on high technology steel products, instead of competing with India/China on price.

Aoyagi 12y ago

I thought it was already established that "megacorporations" are above the law of any country.

dagw 12y ago

2 and 3 are highly contentious. Nokia's mobile phone division was in huge trouble long before Elop showed up, and there is no indication that anything he did made it worse. And given the state Nokia was in, the deal they got from MS was extremely fair.

dijit 12y ago
Nokia was 4 months away from shipping the "Lumia" running MeeGo when February 10th happened. People were pretty angry. Source: I was working there on the project at the time.
- dagw 12y ago
  As a MeeGo fans since back when it was called Maemo (I even had an N810) I'm as sad as the next person to never get that phone. That being said I am not at all convinced that going with MeeGo over WP wouldn't have left Nokia in worse position than the one it ended up in.
  - walterbell 12y ago
    Nokia had Qt+QML and the opportunity to take this cross-platform, plus an innovation advantage with Meego (no Java overhead) and patents. Now Microsoft is attempting to take C# cross-platform and open-source, after blocking Qt on Windows Phone. Years have been lost. Meanwhile Java chews up memory and courtroom time on Android. There's still nothing on the market to compare with Nokia offline maps -- uses no data when travelling, does not send location history to OTT provider like Google or Apple. The entire industry lost when Nokia imploded, especially Google and Apple, whose UI has stagnated, unless hard to read "thin fonts" count as innovation. Competition from Nokia Linux nee Meego (not to mention WebOS) would have been good for all parties.
    - dagw 12y ago
      I 100% agree with everything you say. I'm even one of those strange freaks that has a Nokia Lumia as my private phone and love Nokia Here maps. From a personal point of view I really wish Nokia had stuck with MeeGo until the bitter end, but Nokia had to look out for Nokia and I still can't blame Nokia for the choices they made.

NicoJuicy 12y ago

I had the exact same thing and also, after Microsoft buys Nokia, Elop became Microsoft's Vice President of Microsoft's Devices & Services... It's like it was meant to be :) He also received quite a bonus after selling Nokia

pjmlp 12y ago
> He also received quite a bonus after selling Nokia He achieved what he was hired for. Sadly

jarek 12y ago

Why has there not been any criminal investigation at all, into the infiltration and acquisiton of Nokia? Who would you investigate and what crimes would you accuse them of? The closest thing I'm coming up with is blaming the directors that hired the CEO for tanking shareholder value, but that's a civil matter. Being incompetent is not a crime unless you can prove fraud.

walterbell 12y ago
Tomi Ahonen has made a few lists.. edit for downvoters who don't know now to run a web search: http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/09/elop-25-million-dollar-golden-handshake-for-destroying-the-company-how-could-this-happen-analysis-an.html http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/09/elop-25...
- jarek 12y ago
  I upvoted you. Very detailed back story but I'm not clear where criminal charges against anyone would arise. What am I missing? Has evidence of purposeful fraud by the board members been uncovered since Sept 2013?
  - walterbell 12y ago
    If there is evidence, it won't be on HN :) The point of the GP post was that there was no publicly visible investigation that even looked for evidence, not even from ambulance chasing lawyers. With a large number of affected parties, naive and affected observers start asking questions. When the affected people are still griping years later, it may be wise for someone to at least pretend to investigate. Wouldn't want people to lose confidence in erstwhile institutions.
    - jarek 12y ago
      Alternatively, given how common "shareholder value" civil lawsuits from ambulance-chasing lawyers are, and how large the company and its fall were, if there was something to be uncovered, it would have been uncovered by now. The fact that it hasn't and the only things remaining are some butthurt and Something Should Be Done opinions suggests per Occam's razor that there's nothing there.

Shofo 12y ago

I've been wondering this for a long time myself. Even the fact that the company was steered away from Meego for (at the time) a less functional OS like Windows Phone (damned thing didn't have a twitter app and Meego came with one...) by an ex exec who could potentially benefit from the migration of Nokia's devices to Microsoft OS(if he had options). Such a shame. Meego was revolutionary and is still imo the most intuitive OS ever made. If only someone reputable picked it up, as it still is revolutionary. Android took the double tap to turn on and HTC Sense took the app cards but beyond that it still has an edge if it was around today.

walterbell 12y ago
Do you recall when Nokia corporate email was migrated to Exchange, and what was the prior system? In a Hollywood movie script, after failure of internal reorgs, a company could be tanked with deniablity, speculators make $ shorting/bouncing the stock, sell shell to BigCo, retain brand, rebuild new company and new corporate culture. Only in the movies.
eiliant 12y ago
I miss Meego too. N9 is the best phone I've owned (even despite poor app selections). Tried looking into Sailfish but it is a poor replica.
- catern 12y ago
  Why do you say it is a poor replica out of curiosity?
Spearchucker 12y ago
To be fair it (Windows Phone) didn't need a Twitter app. It is (and was, from launch) built into the OS.

brunnsbe 12y ago

Here is a good article written around 2 years ago on how Nokia went from MeeGo to Windows Phone: http://taskumuro.com/artikkelit/the-story-of-nokia-meego http://taskumuro.com/artikkelit/the-story-of-nokia-meego

pjmlp 12y ago

He got payed by Nokia board to drive it into the ground as part of his bonus. So the board is to blame, he was just going after his bonus. "Elop was entitled to immediate share price performance bonus in case of a “change of control” situation…" http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/24/nokia-payoff-stephen-elop-microsoft http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/24/nokia-payo... http://www.forbes.com/sites/terokuittinen/2013/09/24/nokia-admits-giving-misleading-information-about-elops-compensation/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/terokuittinen/2013/09/24/nokia-a...

hbharadwaj 12y ago

Have you read this article on Business Week? http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b4232056703101.htm#p1 http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b42320567... Talks about Nokia's strategy and it does look like there was buy-in on the decision from management and the board. Also, they had hired a Strategy House - can't remember which (either BCG or Bain) to bolster their conclusions. Am sure there were agreements and Elop wasn't a one-man army.

ashayh 12y ago

Small Chinese/Indian companies come out with multiple Android models every year. Was it so hard for Nokia to do the same under Elop, and put eggs in more than one basket?