

Burning Platforms Memo Damaged Nokia: Wiped out $13B revenues - locusm
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/06/the-final-reckoning-of-burning-platforms-memo-damaged-nokia-by-wiping-out-13b-in-revenues-and-destro.html

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kkowalczyk
What a ridiculous, sensationalist, witch-hunting article.

Elop's memo has about as much to do with Nokia's problems as the weather on
the day it was leaked.

If Elop didn't write that memo or it didn't leak, Nokia would have been in
about the same about trouble today, because their problems are not caused by
Elop's wordsmanship but by Apple and Google re-defining the smartphone
business in an astonishingly short time and Nokia (and RIM and Microsoft and
Palm) not having a response.

~~~
adventureful
The author might as well argue that Elop's memo is what sank Palm and RIM too.
Would make about as much sense.

~~~
reiichiroh
Tomi's blog is weird though, I'll give you that, blinded by nationalism. I can
almost picture a pro-Canadian super-partisan RIM ex-exec writing the same sort
of "mobile industry analysis" blog for RIM in parallel universe.

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reiichiroh
It should be noted that the author of this blog (Tomi Ahonen)is an ex-Nokia
executive with fierce, irrational support for Finnish (mis)management of Nokia
and a strident detractor of Elop.

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Osiris
JCPenney is going through a similar problem now in which the incoming CEO make
huge changes very quickly seemingly without understand the market or the
customer[1].

It seems like new CEOs often like to try to make a name for themselves and
jump in head first and try to turn a very large boat quickly without a
complete understanding of the consequences.

In JCPenney's case, the CEO believed that people would prefer to know they are
always getting the best price, but he didn't understand that customers
actually get a rush/high from finding great "sale" deals (even if they only
look like sales because regular prices are jacked up).[1]

Perhaps Elop sould have taken some time to get into the company, and
understand its customers (including carriers as well as phone users) before
deciding on a course correction. Once a new direction was found, keeping it
internal and shocking customers will new tech _when it was ready_ would have
probably done much more for than company that telling everyone a year in
advance, "Don't buy our stuff until we come out with our new Windows phone
because we're not going to support it and we think it sucks".

[1] [http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/jcpenney-discovers-
the-i...](http://www.mediabistro.com/prnewser/jcpenney-discovers-the-
importance-of-research-the-hard-way_b39061)

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fpgeek
I think he overestimates how much life was left in Symbian. A better baseline
might be RIM's performance over the last year (as another manufacturer that
hadn't really figured out touchscreen smartphones), maybe plus a bit of upside
for better Meego execution, but still... the carnage has been amazing.

It will be interesting to find out what today's "big announcement" in Finland
will be. Probably more layoffs, but there were sale rumors recently...

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Groxx
The memo, for those who don't know it off the top of their head:
[http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-
ra...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-rallies-
troops-in-brutally-honest-burnin/) (just the first result I googled, feel free
to suggest a better one)

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stevenwei
This guy definitely seems to have an axe to grind, this decline was going to
happen regardless of the memo.

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reiichiroh
Judging from the article's comments, Tomi and his fans somehow believe in
their hearts that Meego and the N9 would have saved Nokia.

------
adventureful
Couldn't hardly get any more ridiculous or sensationalistic than this: "which
was the first in a long series of managment blunders by Nokia's new CEO,
Stephen Elop, the most incompetent and damaging CEO of any Fortune 500 sized
company in corporate history"

You'd have to be pretty ignorant to have never heard of Enron or Worldcom,
both of which were radically more destructive (in every possible sense). If
we're talking about value destruction, Long Term Capital Management completely
rattled the entire US economy, causing perhaps hundreds of billions in spill
over damage. Bank of America and Citi both vaporized a trillion dollars with
toxic mortgages, and more than take the cake in destruction. Lehman,
Countrywide, and Bear Stearns also exceed anything that has happened at Nokia.
The value plunge in Lucent and Nortel after the dotcom bubble (due in part to
dangerous customer leveraging), was nearly half a trillion combined, with
massive sales and profit drops. Bernie Madoff didn't run a Fortune 500 size
company, but the $65x billion he 'managed' might as well have qualified him.

And on and on it goes.

Keeping with the style of the article, I'll just go ahead and declare that
since the author was extraordinarily wrong about that one thing, therefore the
entire article is pure trash.

