Nokia Shareholders Rip Elop As A ‘Triple-A Flop’

[HardOCP News]

It's hard to believe this guy is on the shortlist to become Microsoft's next CEO. I guess the good news is that, if he is selected as CEO, his track record suggests he won't make it more than a year or two.

Both the Finnish press and government have savaged him for getting a $25 million payday even though Nokia’s market share and stock price both plunged under his watch. To compound matters, Elop has also refused to give back any of the $25 million he made after selling the company’s handset division to Microsoft because he claims he’ll need all the money he can get for his impending divorce. Even before Elop sold off the company’s handset division, Nokia investors had long questioned his decision to go exclusively with Windows Phone as the company’s mobile platform and accused him of putting the company on the “road to hell.”

 

[amddragonpc]

If MSFT chooses Elop to be its CEO, my shares in MSFT are going out on the market.

 

[heatlesssun]

Guess even his wife didn't like what he did at Nokia.

 

[Twisted Kidney]

Nothing can turn around a tech company without media buzz and the media has written Nokia off in the only market that generates buzz, the smart phone market. They were still 30% of the total mobile market in 2011 while Samsung was just 18%, but regular cells don't generate media buzz, media buzz drives speculation, speculation drives share prices, share prices drive the availability of cash, liquidity keeps you going and keeps you growing. They didn't keep themselves in the media with new products after they got stung so badly with the ngage, it might have done them in.

Cell phones may still be 75+% of the world market but the media won't keep you alive without a talking point, Apple learned that before anyone else and Samsung has picked it up and run with it.

 

[rudy]

Of course Nokia fans in the home turf hate him. But if he really did crash Nokia on purpose to orchestrate a merger with MS then it could mean he is a great CEO for MS.

 

[mecra]

This is kind of the truth of CEOs... they can ruin or really hurt a company, yet somehow land great gigs at other companies. It's almost as if a CEO's track record isn't included in the candidate search.

 

[Sworkhard]

This is kind of the truth of CEOs... they can ruin or really hurt a company, yet somehow land great gigs at other companies. It's almost as if a CEO's track record isn't included in the candidate search.

Part of that is because if a candidate has already made mistakes at a different company, he's less likely to make the same ones at the one that's hiring him. It might have been Balmer who said he preferred someone who already made mistakes, so long as he was confident the person had learned from them and wouldn't make the same kind of mistakes again.

 

[Outamyhead]

sounds like a greedy little f#@k.

 

[Spidey329]

Part of that is because if a candidate has already made mistakes at a different company, he's less likely to make the same ones at the one that's hiring him. It might have been Balmer who said he preferred someone who already made mistakes, so long as he was confident the person had learned from them and wouldn't make the same kind of mistakes again.

So Balmer is a shoe in for any upcoming CEO gig!

 

[dgz]

Part of that is because if a candidate has already made mistakes at a different company, he's less likely to make the same ones at the one that's hiring him. It might have been Balmer who said he preferred someone who already made mistakes, so long as he was confident the person had learned from them and wouldn't make the same kind of mistakes again.

That doesn't make any sense to me.

Elop did a great job for MS - he ruined the market leader so that his actual employer could buy it for pennies. Of course he's on that short-list.

 

[Xrave]

if he really did crash Nokia on purpose to orchestrate a merger with MS then it could mean he is a great CEO for MS.

It's actually a win/win for him.

If he bombed Nokia on purpose so Microsoft can buy them, then it is a great play and great strategy.

If he tried to make Nokia succeed and failed and as a result bombed Nokia, then he plays it off to the Microsoft board that it was actually his strategy, and still wins.

 

[Ashbringer]

Maybe the new Windows Phones might become bullet proof with Nokia involved.

 

[mi7chy]

Him stating that he would get rid of the Xbox influenced my new gen console purchasing decision. Getting rid of Bing I can agree with but Xbox is a strategic mistake. It's the all-in-one home device for game console, media center and could potentially be a PC that can potentially pull the rug from under Dell, HP, etc.

 

[haz_mat]

Elop is either a complete idiot, or a genius with a sinister plan. Who in their right mind would shut down Nokia's long linage of homemade OSs? It's no iOS or Android, but my Symbian phone is everything I want in a communication device. I f*cking hate on screen keyboards and slider-keyboards, this E71 just does it for me and I don't need anything more. A good portion of the non-US market agrees with too because Symbian phones were Nokia's bread-and-butter for quite some time until Elop showed up.

I tried a droid for a while but had to toss it because it was dropping calls and txts when the processor was busy with something else. Totally unacceptable - and would never happen on a Symbian because of the completely different way the OS handles tasks. You damn right the background apps should be guaranteed execution time, and the only reason its not much of a problem anymore is because they threw enough processor and RAM at the problem until it went away. Symbian might not be as inherently fast, but when considering a "mission critical" device like a phone I'd gladly trade some speed for reliability.

 

[SpeedyVV]

"road to hell" is what I am going through with my Windows phone