5 ms·

Don't forget Nokia. Going from #1 in a market to doing so badly that you exit the market--and all in the span of 3 years--is something to behold.

hippiefahrzeug 11y ago
good one. it's what one famous blogger calls the 'elop effect': http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/08/coining-term-elop-effect-when-you-combine-osborne-effect-and-ratner-effect.html http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/08/coining...
- sirkneeland 11y ago
  Ahh, what a terrible CEO. When the only two possibilities to explain your tenure are 1) a lying co-conspirator or 2) mind-blowingly incompetent--then you've truly done a bang-up job.
- speeder 11y ago
  By the way: many people in the past, including here on HN says that Elop was right, and that the reason Nokia died was 100% apple+google fault. Here in Brazil Elop effect was interesting: it was VERY obvious, yet noone here knows who the hell Elop is. To put it simple: When Elop released that stupid memo, Nokia had 67% of Brazil smartphone market share, and the share was still rising, and Nokia utterly dominated in the non-smartphone market too. Right after Elop memo, the first thing that happened is that suddenly the communities died (although Nokia store DID suck, there was at least in Brazil a vibrant freeware app community that shared stuff in forums), then just some months later you could not find phones for sale, even new models, because the import companies DID heard of Elop memo, and decided to not risk importing the phones, even if shopkeepers still wanted it. The end result was funny: Elop nuking of Symbian was so hard, that in Brazil other smartphones could not keep up for a while, and we temporarily had a decrease in smartphone use, and a increase in feature phone use, and that increase came mostly from truly crap chinese companies, because not even Nokia feature phones could be found in stores anymore.
- adventured 11y ago
  It wasn't Elop that sank Nokia, it was Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. By the time Elop was announced as CEO in late 2010, Kallasvuo had already guaranteed Nokia was toast. Just go back to the way Nokia was behaving, and what they were saying in 2007/2008 for easy proof of that. "Nokia CEO calls Apple iPhone ‘niche product’" http://macdailynews.com/2008/04/17/nokia_shares_slammed_in_wake_of_miss_ceo_calls_apple_iphone_niche_product/ http://macdailynews.com/2008/04/17/nokia_shares_slammed_in_w... http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/nokia-ceo-disses-iphone-doesnt-seem-worried-that-us-market-share-slipped-again/d/d-id/1066946 http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/nokia-ceo-disses-iphon...? http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/12/nokia-kallasvuo-iphone-faces-cx_cn_0212autofacescan01.html http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/12/nokia-kallasvuo-iphone-face... http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/1112/048.html http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/1112/048.html
  - rodgerd 11y ago
    > Elop was a director of consulting for Lotus Development Corporation before becoming CIO for Boston Chicken in 1992,[3][7] which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1998 > In the same year, he joined Macromedia's Web/IT department[7] [...] from January 2005[10] for three months before their acquisition by Adobe Systems > He was then president of worldwide field operations at Adobe, tendering his resignation in June 2006 and leaving in December,[12] after which he was the COO of Juniper Networks for exactly one year from January 2007 – 2008 This is not the CV of a man that I would hire for anything other than running a going concern into the ground.
gcb0 11y ago
i think nokia is more about lack of executive vision/market knowledge. The other examples are more about middle management, besides the executive lack of vision and bean counting.
bane 11y ago
I feel like Atari might be the grandfather of all this.
- evilotto 11y ago
  And Commodore would have to get an honorable mention
tn13 11y ago
Is Nokia's example really good ? Nokia remain one of the largest companies in telecom hardware provider and handsets was always a side business for them. They successfully sold it to microsoft.
girvo 11y ago
I'm still upset by the fact that MeeGo/Maemo was killed, and Nokia sold to Microsoft. The N9 was still the best phone I've ever used, and it's UX ideas are still the simplest and most effective way of using a phone, and yet no one else has implemented it.
- Zirro 11y ago
  Jolla (https://jolla.com https://jolla.com) was founded by people involved in MeeGo development. While their phone got a lukewarm response, I've heard many good things about their upcoming tablet and have ordered one. As you used MeeGo, how does Sailfish OS appear to compare with it?
  - girvo 11y ago
    Sailfish unfortunately does not have all of the UI things I'm talking about -- the "three screen with edge gestures", which is a shame :( They couldn't, because the N9's UI was never open sourced despite the core being so.
- sirkneeland 11y ago
  Agreed

hippiefahrzeug 11y ago

good one. it's what one famous blogger calls the 'elop effect': http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/08/coining-term-elop-effect-when-you-combine-osborne-effect-and-ratner-effect.html http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2011/08/coining...

sirkneeland 11y ago
Ahh, what a terrible CEO. When the only two possibilities to explain your tenure are 1) a lying co-conspirator or 2) mind-blowingly incompetent--then you've truly done a bang-up job.
speeder 11y ago
By the way: many people in the past, including here on HN says that Elop was right, and that the reason Nokia died was 100% apple+google fault. Here in Brazil Elop effect was interesting: it was VERY obvious, yet noone here knows who the hell Elop is. To put it simple: When Elop released that stupid memo, Nokia had 67% of Brazil smartphone market share, and the share was still rising, and Nokia utterly dominated in the non-smartphone market too. Right after Elop memo, the first thing that happened is that suddenly the communities died (although Nokia store DID suck, there was at least in Brazil a vibrant freeware app community that shared stuff in forums), then just some months later you could not find phones for sale, even new models, because the import companies DID heard of Elop memo, and decided to not risk importing the phones, even if shopkeepers still wanted it. The end result was funny: Elop nuking of Symbian was so hard, that in Brazil other smartphones could not keep up for a while, and we temporarily had a decrease in smartphone use, and a increase in feature phone use, and that increase came mostly from truly crap chinese companies, because not even Nokia feature phones could be found in stores anymore.
adventured 11y ago
It wasn't Elop that sank Nokia, it was Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. By the time Elop was announced as CEO in late 2010, Kallasvuo had already guaranteed Nokia was toast. Just go back to the way Nokia was behaving, and what they were saying in 2007/2008 for easy proof of that. "Nokia CEO calls Apple iPhone ‘niche product’" http://macdailynews.com/2008/04/17/nokia_shares_slammed_in_wake_of_miss_ceo_calls_apple_iphone_niche_product/ http://macdailynews.com/2008/04/17/nokia_shares_slammed_in_w... http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/nokia-ceo-disses-iphone-doesnt-seem-worried-that-us-market-share-slipped-again/d/d-id/1066946 http://www.informationweek.com/mobile/nokia-ceo-disses-iphon...? http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/12/nokia-kallasvuo-iphone-faces-cx_cn_0212autofacescan01.html http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/12/nokia-kallasvuo-iphone-face... http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/1112/048.html http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2007/1112/048.html
- rodgerd 11y ago
  > Elop was a director of consulting for Lotus Development Corporation before becoming CIO for Boston Chicken in 1992,[3][7] which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1998 > In the same year, he joined Macromedia's Web/IT department[7] [...] from January 2005[10] for three months before their acquisition by Adobe Systems > He was then president of worldwide field operations at Adobe, tendering his resignation in June 2006 and leaving in December,[12] after which he was the COO of Juniper Networks for exactly one year from January 2007 – 2008 This is not the CV of a man that I would hire for anything other than running a going concern into the ground.

gcb0 11y ago

i think nokia is more about lack of executive vision/market knowledge. The other examples are more about middle management, besides the executive lack of vision and bean counting.

bane 11y ago

I feel like Atari might be the grandfather of all this.

evilotto 11y ago
And Commodore would have to get an honorable mention

tn13 11y ago

Is Nokia's example really good ? Nokia remain one of the largest companies in telecom hardware provider and handsets was always a side business for them. They successfully sold it to microsoft.

girvo 11y ago

I'm still upset by the fact that MeeGo/Maemo was killed, and Nokia sold to Microsoft. The N9 was still the best phone I've ever used, and it's UX ideas are still the simplest and most effective way of using a phone, and yet no one else has implemented it.

Zirro 11y ago
Jolla (https://jolla.com https://jolla.com) was founded by people involved in MeeGo development. While their phone got a lukewarm response, I've heard many good things about their upcoming tablet and have ordered one. As you used MeeGo, how does Sailfish OS appear to compare with it?
- girvo 11y ago
  Sailfish unfortunately does not have all of the UI things I'm talking about -- the "three screen with edge gestures", which is a shame :( They couldn't, because the N9's UI was never open sourced despite the core being so.
sirkneeland 11y ago
Agreed