

Former Nokia boss Stephen Elop to receive $25m pay-off - flarg
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24171520

======
rbanffy
What annoys me most is not the evident maneuver that benefited Microsoft
alone. It's not that Elop will be rewarded for destroying a company. It's the
many Nokia employees who lost their jobs thanks to what amounts to be
facilitating an acquisition by screwing shareholders and employees.

Doesn't Finland have laws about this?

~~~
pavlov
If the pre-Elop executives had been left in charge, Nokia would most likely be
in bankruptcy today. The imminent collapse in smartphones was exactly the
reason why he was hired.

Under Elop, the loss-making phone business was streamlined to the point that
Nokia's stockholders got $7 billion for it, rather than losing the whole
company.

For a comparison point, look at BlackBerry. They're basically what Nokia would
have become if they had continued on the Symbian+Meego path. Nobody's going to
pay 7 billion for BlackBerry at this point.

~~~
speeder
I doubt it. Nokia had 60% of Brazil smartphone market, and almost the entire
normal phone market, and they lost that only after Elop showed up.

Here in Brazil Chinese knockoffs are king now, because no major manufacturer
took the niche that Nokia left.

~~~
pavlov
_...they lost that only after Elop showed up._

Correlation does not imply causation...

Nokia's Symbian sales collapsed in early 2011. The real damage occurred
earlier. This delay is due to inventory levels: resellers bought lots of Nokia
phones in Q4 2010 but buyers didn't want them anymore, and the shit hits the
fan at Nokia only in the next quarter when those resellers don't buy any more
phones.

What did Elop do in Q4 2010 that would have caused the collapse in sales? The
"burning platform" memo came in Feb 2011.

Which is more likely: that millions of people didn't buy Nokia phones because
they somehow disliked a new CEO who hadn't yet done anything, or because they
just didn't want the phones that Nokia was selling in 2010?

Nokia's 2010 phones like N97 and C5 were simply horrible. The Symbian-based
new devices in the pipeline were barely any better. One Meego phone wasn't
going to save the day. Elop saw that and took drastic action.

Somebody else might have tried coasting on Symbian while developing Meego into
something workable -- and that would have taken Nokia down the BlackBerry
route, only with much larger expenses (Symbian and Meego R&D was ridiculously
expensive; without Elop's cost slashing, Nokia would probably have been losing
billions per quarter in 2012).

~~~
pessimizer
>Somebody else might have tried coasting on Symbian while developing Meego
into something workable

People act like this was the only option. He could have coasted on Symbian and
MeeGo while developing Windows phones into something workable.

------
Fuxy
Nokia had an interesting vantage point.

Usually disruptors start with a very low end non significant part of the
market and chase competitor gradually out.

That's what they were left with after the unexpected smartphone boom.

So the chance for them to recover was there with a small shift in strategy but
after they gave that up and bet everything on Microsoft they got doomed.

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dandrews
Ellison: "Every ecosystem needs a scavenger".

(Referring specifically to CA, and quoted by Marc Benioff here:
[http://www.blnz.com/news/2008/02/19/SaaS_Have_Breakout_Accep...](http://www.blnz.com/news/2008/02/19/SaaS_Have_Breakout_Accepted_7338.html)
)

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cja
It was obvious that Nokia should have gone with Android because of its
popularity versus Windows Phone. Elop surely guided them towards Microsoft
even though it was the inferior option.

Imagine if Nokia had gone with Android two years ago. Nokia's build quality
and cameras plus pure Android versus Samsung's build quality and Touchwiz
would have made Nokia the obvious choice for many smartphone buyers.

I'd kill for a Nokia Android phone.

~~~
throwawaykf02
In the interest of DRY:

Yay-sayers: "That's not obvious at all -- look at all Android manufacturers
other than Samsung"

Nay-Sayers: "Nokia had the capability to sufficiently differentiate their
hardware to avoid the fate of LG, HTC et al."

Neutral: "We'll never really know."

------
programminggeek
I think it would have been cheaper for Microsoft to just build their own
devices than go through all of this to buy Nokia.

~~~
mbesto
You know what, I _think_ you're right too. But I'm just an armchair M&A
analyst. It's about risk reduction and this is a much safer bet than say
perhaps, Kin?[0] There are so many dynamics to this, as it's not as simple as
you may think. Just a few factors that often get missed:

\- Cost (and time) of go to market

\- Cost of marketing

\- Cost (and time) of branding

\- Emerging market opportunities

This list goes on and on...

Unfortunately what is produced as an offshoot of M&A is a whole bunch of
people who start pulling at the windfall straws.

[0] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Kin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Kin)

