

Is Nokia's CEO a Microsoft mole? - haasted
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/111014/nokia-workers-ceo-microsoft-iphone-linux

======
pavlov
Summary: journalist visits a Nokia software development site in Tampere, where
everybody used to work on two mobile operating systems that Nokia is phasing
out.

Understandably, these people are not particularly willing to admit that the
software they spent years on wasn't good enough to keep up with Apple and
Google, so the old conspiracy theory plops up: the Nokia CEO must be a "mole"
who's intentionally driving the stock price down.

The root cause of this myopic idea is neatly summed up near the end of the
article:

 _Linus Thorvalds, Linux’s Finnish founder, says that “Microsoft-hatred is a
disease” among open source programmers, but in Tampere it’s more of an
epidemic._

~~~
Geee
How about MeeGo Harmattan, which is said to be even ahead of iOS in terms of
usability, performance and polish. Definitely ahead of Android. Elop stated
that they couldn't get it ready until 2014, but surprisingly it's on markets
before the WP phones. Nokia store is also way ahead of WP marketplace. It's
just huge downplay of Nokia's products, while WP is not at all proven
platform.

Elop's statements were understandable back then, when nobody had seen the N9.

~~~
untog
"How about MeeGo Harmattan, which is said to be even ahead of iOS in terms of
usability, performance and polish."

"which is said"? Who said?

~~~
daliusd
I agree that it is too optimistic (see my other comment) but I was
dissapointed that I can't swype in iPad.

~~~
daliusd
OK. Maybe I was not clear enough but I wanted to say that swipe
(<http://swipe.nokia.com/>) function from MeeGo Harmattan grown into me very
fast. I have iPad as well - I have tried to swipe program in iPad naturally
one day and that has not worked for me because there is no such function in
iPad. My point is that Nokia has done something really cool from
usability/user experience perspective.

Or maybe I'm downvoted only because I insulted all iOS device owners by saying
that their device is not coolest gadget anymore...

------
0x12
A mole is someone that is there undercover. Nokia's CEO is there in plain
sight and has very strong connections to Microsoft, was brought in by the
board to guide Nokia away from their homebrew stuff and onto Windows.

How could he possibly be a mole?

~~~
ChuckMcM
That is what I was thinking, you could ask "is he a colonial governor?" You
know, the guy the Colonial power installs as the head of state insuring that
the colony will endeavor to make its patron state wealthier at the expense of
its own citizens.

~~~
cpeterso
The Nokia board of directors probably hired Elop _because_ they wanted to
transition to Windows Phone. Elop's job was to the bearer of bad news (to
employees).

~~~
robert_nsu
I was under the impression that they wanted to transition to Windows Phone or
Android. Anything to help them become/stay competitive in the mobile space.

~~~
rbanffy
That would mean a transition to Android, because WP7 has proven not very
competitive. In fact, Microsoft is giving them away for free at their stores.

~~~
majorlazer
_In fact, Microsoft is giving them away for free at their stores._

Do you have any sources for that?

~~~
rbanffy
[http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/10/19/microsoft-
dishing...](http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/10/19/microsoft-dishing-out-
free-first-gen-wp7-handsets-at-its-stores)

~~~
majorlazer
Sorry, but that's far from free. Very misleading statement.

------
kb101
It is definitely noteworthy that the N9 and the N8, both examples of excellent
hardware running competitive software, have basically been sandbagged by
Nokia.

Contrast this with RIM, who just released a slew of stop-gap phones until QNX
(BBX) is ready... but they still are promoting the hell out of those phones
and are getting decent sales, keeping the company viable. And those aren't
even world-beating phones.

Meantime, the N8 with its pentaband radio and Zeiss camera, and the N9 showing
off the best of Meego, get no promotion at all... really does make you wonder.
Microsoft-hatred might indeed be a disease, but Nokia threw out Symbian and
Meego for an OS that is (for all its positive reviews) unproven.

Symbian Belle and Meego are definitely competitive options and offer a lot.
Any tech site (engadget etc.) reviewing the N9 basically wound up mourning the
premature death of Meego and wondering what might have been. In the case of
the N8, the common assessment was it was stellar hardware with an OS that was
_almost_ there... well I think Belle pushed it over that line to being
something competitive.

This is the same madness that Apotheker brought to HP, trashing established
businesses just because they weren't sexy enough and then immediately trying
to import the business model of the last company he worked at. I don't think
Elop is a mole but he definitely has yet to do anything except destroy value
at Nokia.

~~~
stevenwei
The N8? Which didn't have a QWERTY keyboard in portrait mode until a year
after release? That would randomly lock up when interacting with the UI?

That OS was nowhere near the level of its competitors.

~~~
Geee
Symbian Belle. Basically, it's on Android level now. They did the whole
interface from ground up using Qt and GPU acceleration. The earlier versions
were really horrible though.

------
moondowner
You can argue that Elop isn't a mole, but putting such neglect on the N9 is a
true evidence that they don't want any platform built at Nokia (Symbian,
MeeGo) to succeed.

Here's what the editor of GSMArena wrote in a recent post:

<http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n9-review-659.php>

"Not shown much love by its own maker, the Nokia N9 is embraced by the
consumers. You won’t see Stephen Elop getting all too fired up about MeeGo and
spending hours explaining how it’s the best thing since Santa, sauna and the
N95. But if you care to look, you'll notice thousands of people hitting our
site each day to just check out the Nokia N9."

------
sriramk
One thing that all these ridiculous conspiracy theories miss is that Elop
spent a very short time at MSFT - around 2 years. He seems to switch companies
often, except for one long stint in Macromedia.

------
Geee
They are waiting for one year before takeover. There is some kind of rule
designed to block takeovers that says the sale price must be determined from
the maximum price of past year. I'm not sure Elop would walk alive from it
though, Finns are pretty passionate about Nokia.

------
patrickgzill
Shades of the incompetent Rick Belluzzo who destroyed SGI:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Belluzzo>

~~~
fleitz
Rick joined SGI in 1998, by that time Nvidia and Voodoo had put all but the
final nails in the coffin of SGI.

~~~
mikeryan
But he was considered a "Microsoft Mole" for some things he did at both HP and
SGI. Heck there's even an Urban Dictionary term "belluzzo" named for this act
after him.

[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=belluzzo&...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=belluzzo&defid=3861632)

------
fpgeek
The decision that never made sense to me was going all-in on WP7 instead of
diversifying across MeeGo, WP7 and Android.

When push comes to shove, getting Nokia to treat WP7 as a first-tier platform
would have bought Microsoft just as big a win as Nokia going all-in. I'd argue
it might even have been a bigger win because Nokia would look much less like a
rudderless ship about to crash. Maybe Elop didn't negotiate hard enough, maybe
he didn't have the vision, or maybe he was too influenced by his time at
Microsoft. We'll probably never know.

------
nir
As usual in Globalpost, attributing to malice what can be easily explained by
stupidity. CEOs make dumb decisions every day without being anyone's mole.

------
harryf
Wasn't there a myth that Microsoft killed Commodore with a mole on the board?

~~~
0x12
iirc it was the XOR patent, here is one part of that story:

<http://xcssa.org/pipermail/xcssa/2005-February/002587.html>

I'm not sure if that was all there was to it and possibly there is room in
there for a 'microsoft mole' somehow, but a single mole on the board of
directors would be just a way to get information out, you can't destroy a
company in a straightforward way.

And such a mole would have to be compensated very well indeed to survive the
breach of fiduciary duty lawsuits that would be leveled at him/her if it ever
came out.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiduciary>

It's no joke to be accused of stuff like that.

~~~
pohl
Hypothetically, would being the 8th largest individual shareholder of MSFT be
large enough compensation to make a fiduciary suit an acceptable cost of doing
business?

~~~
0x12
In some places breach of fiduciary duty is a criminal offense. So you may very
well end up in jail.

I'm not sure there is adequate compensation for a risk like that. Being the
8th largest shareholder of MSFT might do the trick for some individuals but
that's just another version of 'every man has his price'. For me I hope I'll
never learn mine.

------
bauchidgw
at a conference i talked with some nokia devs, two funny stories.

1) the N9 (the meego phone) will never be released in an english speaking
country as marketing fears the tech blogger will write even more crap about
their strategy change - as it is a quiete decent phone

2) even though the code for the N9 they do not get any test devices, the code
in a very rudimentary ide only, as there is a no Meego phone for devs anymore
policy

on the other hamd, he was quiete drunk and frustrated so i do not know how
mich of it is true

~~~
somebear
Pretty much nothing.

Disclaimer: I work as a software engineer at Nokia.

Australia is very much an English speaking country (although we are at the
ass-end of the world), and the N9 is getting a lot of active marketing here
[1, 2].

I have also been working on the software for the N9, but most of my
development has been on device, either on the N950 or the N9. We always
grumble that we don't get enough devices, but these guys must have been
frustrated about something else to go that far out.

There were a lot of problems developing for the N9, don't get me wrong, but
they were not endemic to MeeGo over Symbian or S40 where I've also worked.

[1] [http://press.nokia.com.au/nokia-n9-%E2%80%9Call-
screen%E2%80...](http://press.nokia.com.au/nokia-n9-%E2%80%9Call-
screen%E2%80%9D-smartphone-available-through-all-australian-operators-and-
major-retailers/) [2] [http://news.softpedia.com/news/Nokia-N9-in-Beautifully-
Simpl...](http://news.softpedia.com/news/Nokia-N9-in-Beautifully-Simple-
Marketing-Campaign-in-Australia-225971.shtml)

~~~
majika
Just in case you miss it, I made a comment parallel to yours to the parent.
(POV of an Australian on the N9 and Nokia)

------
boundhund
Note: the parking lot was probably deserted because there is currently an
industry-wide labour union dispute that prohibits working overtime.

~~~
YourAnMoran
Not to mention that during the past six months, a significant amount of
Nokia's engineers have either been laid off or found new employers on their
own. It was a catchy way to begin the article but nothing more.

------
tamersalama
The article's picture is very well picked. It's as if they're talking to each
other while covering their mouths.

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kermitthehermit
Yes, he is, he's the trojan horse MS sent inside Nokia so they could "control"
a large phone manufacturer.

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lakeeffect
yes

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shareme
Better yet is this question:

MS value has decreased at least a 3rd since Ballmer got control..is Ballmer a
mole ?

Same exact logic problems as the article..except mine has more flair and
imagination

~~~
cpeterso
Is Ballmer a mole for Procter & Gamble?

~~~
contextfree
Obviously. P&G is still in phase 2 of their plan, too. They're playing a long
game.

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vegai
They're just fricking phones, why do we care so much about this?

