Elop to Lead Devices and Studios at Microsoft: This Means Xbox

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• Klimax - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link

  For some stupid reason, which wasn't ever based in reality? And thus true?

• Bob Todd - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link

  Even completely ignoring what happened after Elop, Nokia wasn't exactly doing swimmingly before he came on. They were completely floundering with their own platforms (building a great device isn't enough), and they didn't have a way to differentiate with Android that consumers actually cared about. You can look at Elop as putting the nail in the coffin of Nokia's past, but they seem to have dug their own grave.

• piroroadkill - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link

  I argue that he could have done a lot better than he did, and almost everyone agrees.
  
  They needed to scrap the multiple platforms they had to concentrate on one: Maemo (Meego, later). Look at the Nokia N9. Probably the last real Nokia flagship.
  
  Look at Blackberry, they can run Android apps on their OS.
  
  Meego was Linux based and would have been adaptable to run Android applications as well as their existing Qt framework.
  
  So if we imagine more devices like the N9, with Android app compatibility, that was possible 3 years ago. Instead, they took a torch to all the talent they had and got a guy in who wasn't Finnish, didn't care about Finland, had worked for Microsoft before, and got him to anchor Nokia to literally the least popular phone platform of the time.
  
  That's Elop's fault.

• piroroadkill - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link

  To expand on this, look at the Nokia N900! N950! Phones people want a sequel to.

• Bob Todd - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link

  Phones that geeks (like those of us who read this site) want sequels too. Not the general buying public which accounts for almost the totality of device sales. I don't think anyone has ever doubted that Nokia can build kick ass hardware. They've also got some strong software capabilities (e.g. mapping). But the technical feasibility to run Android apps doesn't make a good platform, which is where they totally failed over several years. They wouldn't have had access to the Play store. So create their own? Have it be sparsely populated and rarely updated (Amazon app store) by developers because the ecosystem wasn't big enough to be worth it? Realistically they were years away from a competitive platform (not devices) if they ever could have gotten there, and they were bleeding cash the whole time. I don't care about Elop one way or another, but I'd say Nokia's fall from grace is mostly attributed to the years between 2007 and when Elop was hired. The executive management during those years completely failed the company, their shareholders, and their fans. The ability to run Android apps isn't going to save Blackberry either.

• djboxbaba - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link

  Thank you, finally someone actually gets it.

• Klimax - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link

  Meego was already behind and had broken process. It would just accelerate downfall.

• HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - link

  Revisionist history.
  
  Nokia wasn't blowing the market up, but Elop tanked them hard. There's a difference between being an in-the-running third place or fourth place in a sea of big money and where Elop left Nokia.
  
  He completely decimated their sales to absurdly low levels. They had no choice but to extort Microsoft by threatening to go Android. The negative press on that would have left Windows Phone with no chance in the market at all. That's how they got Microsoft to fork over a billion for Nokia's mobility division (without the brand), get to still work on their own Android phone, and then watch as MS finally had had one too many billion dollar screwups by Ballmer to take another one.
  
  That's when Bill Gates and his ego could no longer protect Ballmer from being taken out of the big chair. I'm sure Gates didn't want to acknowledge he'd made a mistake with Ballmer, but that billion dollar mistake was just one too many billion dollar mistakes to let stand.
  
  That's why Ballmer went from sure of his status to out the door in only a few months around the same time as the Nokia purchase. He'd screwed up with that purchase they had to write off. They screwed up with Windows Vista. They screwed up with Windows 8. They didn't manage to fix the screw up with 8.1. They screwed up the Xbox One launch and seemingly have screwed up the first year (at least) of its sales. They've screwed up Windows Phone despite repeated platform changes that obsolete each and every last version of the OS when going to a new one despite Android and iOS being able to maintain software compatibility for their apps. They screwed up RT's release and branding and everything about it, really. Then they screwed up Surface, too, and went from premium to practically giving it away to make it have any kind of pickup in the marketplace.
  
  Having to pay Nokia a billion dollars for their mobility division SANS their actual brand was the last straw. He had no more time to correct Microsoft's course and assure his legacy would be a great one, so he rushed to finish his reorganization strategy and probably had to have Gates tell him what to do to get it done.
  
  At least there, he would get the credit if the reorganization helped make the company rebound. But they weren't going to leave Microsoft in his hands any longer.
  
  Elop would still be rewarded in this scenario because he did exactly what he said he would. He tanked Nokia by tying it to an OS that was fringe at best and incomplete. What few people had been loyal to Nokia left in droves because whereas they would have gone for a boring, standard Android device that could use one of the bajillions of Android apps, they were forced to decide between Windows Phones or having apps.
  
  And phones are defined by the apps they have. You don't see on ads, "We now have a Windows Phone app." Nope. You see, "We have an iOS and Android app."
  
  So Nokia made Microsoft pay a billion dollars for losing them billions. Nobody won, but at least Nokia got a laugh at Microsoft's expense at the end.

• Klimax - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link

  Sorry, but sales were already mostly falling (but got masked by few emergent markets, but not for long either) So Elop wasn't cause. In fact as market went on, I doubt anybody would be able to salvage it before sales hitting bottom.
  
  Your post is just one giant ignorant rant, which doesn't contain much of truth, but rewrite of history and boatload of projection and wrong assumptions (respectively baseless).

• Klimax - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link

  That would be previous CEO who managed to mismanage company. (Like trying to import different corporate culture) Elop was already coming to sinking ship. (Best example is utterly broken development of Meego)