New book looks at Stephen Elop's reign as Nokia and calls him 'one of the world's worst' CEOs

Exclusive deals in the US market are common.  Apple used them in their iPhone launch in 2007 too:  https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2007/01/09Apple-Chooses-Cingular-as-Exclu... It's the way they do it over there.

HERE is not very useful in China due to the out of date maps

I would have thought WorldCom or Enron CEOs would have to be worse.

Well they are, but not from a Finnish perspective where Nokia is the national symbol, the national hope and pride. Especially when people refuse to admit over there that Nokia was a sinking ship already some time before Elop came into the picture. But hey, when you're from Finland and some American (that globally already have a horrible reputation) comes into your precious Nokia, being the national icon and all, to somehow save and manage the already mostly crippled company... No matter how that goes or how it ends up, it won't go over well with anyone over there. To me Elop wasn't brilliant, but atleast both the future of Nokia as a solid and healthy company and the future of the mobile phone department is saved in some manner. Could've been better, but could've been far, far worse.

Nokia still here but as HERE

I don't mean to be pedantic, but Elop is Canadian. Just thought that it is important to point that out.

Also, Nokia as a company is almost 150 years old, they wouldn't sink, just restructurise

They lost close to 75% of their market cap prior to his arrival, even if they did successfully restructure it is doubtful they would ever be the company they were pre 2007 and would not longer be that big of a national symbol or as big of a contributor to the Finnish economy

Hey, we don't use big words here...stop that shit now

That's it!  Pick on us poor Canucks!

well, the person might be wrong about that but Canada is in America, so it's still American country and they are still American people, that's how it works when canada is located in north AMERICA ;). so nothing about his words are too wrong, we know he meant US, but "American" is so wrong when you use what you learn in school. and then it means people should stop using American to refer as US citizen, or find a new name. beause America is a big continent, and just like some people say "I am European" I am sure people should be able to use "I am American" without living in US.

The point is they don't. Canadians call themselves and are referred to as Canadian or Canucks (although much more rarely) and people from USA call themselves and are referred to as American or Yanks. No one really says "I'm North American" Also I don't really think people say "I'm European" "I've heard Brit, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Swiss, etc" No one really says "I'm European" when they are asked where they are from. Regardless of whether that is techincally correct or not. Guaranteed the guy above meant a person from USA when he said "American (that globally already have a horrible reputation)", however wrong that is. 

I'm Canadian and would never call myself American. American means USA end of discussion.

I think that Elop was a good CEO although a great CEO might have saved Nokia devices. The bottom line here is that if Nokia was a national symbol how little Finnish cared about the company buying more Samsung Galaxy than Lumias or Ashas.

I'd have to agree with the " Could've been better, but could've been far, far worse." assessment. Nokia wasn't able to catch up on the software side before Elop came on board, and couldn't keep up either way. If they stuck with Symbian/Meego, they probably would have continued on a similar downward spiral, if not faster, given that Android was just starting to eat into that low-end smartphone market. MY GUESS: Their smartphone market would have become increasingly niche. If they had went with Android, it would have been WAY more of a crap shoot. With great hardware, and good marketing, they might have been able to establish themselves, but they would have been facing an uphill battle against Samsung, who, over the past 5 years, spent a tonne of money to own the Android market. MY GUESS: most likely, they might have had a bit more marketshare with their Android phones, but financially not much better off, given the MS cash infusion. Either direction was a risk, but Nokia was in a tough spot before Elop came on, and there were no easy answers. People who said "They should go with Android" really didn't look at the larger market factors. Given the hyperbolic nature of the book claims, this is mainly delusional ex-Nokia employees airing dirty laundry.

Exactly. What happened to HTC would have happened to Nokia if they went Android. Now HTC is crawling back to WP and they are close to bankruptcy. I liked HTC and had a WP HD7 but I couldn't forgive them for abandoing WP. I have a Lumia 925 and will continue to stay with Lumia as long as they continue make superb hardware.

HTC crawling back to WP? LOL. Your delusion is incredible.... not shocking, seeing as we're on wpcentral, but, still incredible.  Truth is, Microsoft has restructured their whole WP footprint to accommodate manufacturers like HTC because they need them. Why do you think Microsoft is not releasing a high-end flagship phone anytime soon? That void has been left for the Samsungs and the HTCs to fill up. 

@JB Yeah...HTC is kinda irrelevant now to WP...they lost their chance to compete with Lumia line...now there are tons of hardware manufacturers offering WP that HTC now has to compete with. I had an HTC HD7 running WP but for close to 18 mths they didn't offer a premium WP phone, so off to Lumia 925 I went and never looked back...that's why HTC will be bankrupt in a year...

I guess if they had just stuck with WP and ignored Android, HTC would be doing great right now! Yeah, ok. 

@JB MSFT doesn't care...HTC has to pay MSFT $15 Android patent fees for each Android sold. Samsung alone pays MSFT $1 Billion per yr in Android patent fees. If HTC stuck with WP, MSFT could have cut them a deal on fees. HTC loses money on every phone they sell...like I said MSFT doesn't care because it has Lumia and HTC is now irrelevant...

Totally agree

Im from Finland and this is 100% true. The main problems were caused by Ollilla and the horrible CEO Kallasvuo. Elop didnt do the best possible job for sure, but it wasnt easy place to come in to a big sinking ship like that. The board though played their cards really well considering the situation. 7bn for a piece of crap that the handset division was and is, was pure genious. Im sure they counted this when they decided to go all in for WP. MS was forced to buy it.

He killed a famous consumer brand name.

It wasn't that famous anymore. The Lumia brand is more "famous" than the Nokia brand.

That has to be the most delusional comment ever. I don't know in what kind of world you live, but in mine 8/10 people still believe Nokia has the best built hardware in the world and 3/10 barely know Lumia. You're delusional.

I agree Nokia is/was more well known than Lumia, but I'm confused by your rebuttal being supported by the 8/10 and 3/10 fictititious survey results.

Hitler was delusional, tho person is uninformed

Lol.. No, Nokia is way more well known than Lumia..

Nokia was known 4 it's durability and Lumia is known that were from Nokia which run Windows

Actually, to the Average consumer Lumia isn't known for anything.. The average consumer couldn't tell you what a "Lumia" is..

Remember when everyone use BB it's because Nokia fail to implement new Symbian Belle on N8. Then they go to meggo OS Nokia N9 but no good. Finally 1st Lumia came out with windows phone 7.5 it 800 and 710. From there Nokia slowly back to the market and now here we are with Lumia 2nd and 3rd generation (WP 8 devices)

Nokia N9's MeeGo OS was 3x times better OS than WP... even when its new OS and its been released almost the same time as WP, it had more feature than WP   watch this Nokia N950 that havent been released this is dev prev. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwmmUOvqvyM

ROTFLMAO! Meego was complete garbage, with no app ecosystem to speak of. They wasted a couple of billion dollars on Meego and it was still crap, and it had absolutely no apps. How can you sell an OS that developers completely ignore. You obviously didn't watch that video, because Meego on that phone lags like a bitch, and Nokia rarely showed the full Meego OS because they knew it was crap. Windows Phone 8 is a million times better than Meego ever was.  

at that time there was NO WINDOWS PHONE 8 at all so ure wrong at this point lol and if Jolla could make their Sailfish OS to run android apps so why cant Nokia make MeeGo to run android apps? MeeGo was completely new OS like WP7.0... Sailfish OS is made of MeeGo that still trying to develop

So much so that it was DOA!

No it really is not.　　And I'm speaking as a person who has a N9 in front of me right now.   The Lumia 800 which I also had was much more pleasant to use than the N9 despite lacking features, the N9 was buggy as hell and required multiple firmware flashes before it was even working.   Dropping Meego was one of the right decisions, if WP was late, Meego wasn't even at the starting line.  

I had an n9 for awhile as my daily phone.  Really loved meego actually.  Wish that it could have been developed further.

LOL! You are delusional and ignorant. He didn't kill squat. Nokia was dead and dying long before Elop set foot in Finland. Nokia's troubles started years before they hired Elop. Actually, under Elop they dramatically reduce their losses and sold more smartphones, not to mention they put out the best phones they've ever made under him. He was simply hired to save a company that was impossible to save.

I would have to agree. Nokia's Finnish Management Team killed Nokia. Elop saved it's future.
Where would Nokia be without Windows Phone? In Receivership writing down it's inventory of unsold Meego phones, seeking of its Patents.

Nokia would of gone high up if it developed MeeGo more further

Trojan Elop Posted via Windows Phone Central App on Android

No, everyone I speak to about my Nokia are surprised that people still buy Nokias.  It wasn't that strong.  Plus the company was the 'Walking Dead' when it came to smartphones - they had to switch to something.  And if they went Android, they'd be too late for the party that is controlled by Samsung.  Windows Phone was the least riskiest of a bunch of crappy choices.

I still think Nokia should have tried the android route as well as WP. They put there eggs in one basket & lost. I think a Nokia Android phone would have been great.

The thing is Android got no support from it's vendor due to it's freeware and android itself isn't great at the start line but it became a bomb when Samsung begin to adopt it 4 they low end phone

You must be in America. Outside of America it is a completely different story.

OPK killed the Nokia name, but watching and completely ignoring the announcement of the iPhone and thinking it won't be a threat. The end result, they got squeezed at the high-end by Apple and at the low-end by Android while running around like a chicken with its head cutoff and making zero decisions before Elop arrived.

He's the man who will be known for killing Nokia.

I still think he was a trojan horse... And even if he wasn't and all was unintended, he made damn sure that lots of people thought the same way as I do.

Then you're a friggin' idiot, because Microsoft doesn't have the power to place whoever they want at another publicly traded company. That company and it's board have to approve any hiring, unless you're suggesting Nokia's board was a part of that idiotic conspiracy theory.

This is the part I don't understand. Even if the intent was to plant Elop at Nokia in an effort to one day loop the OEM into Microsoft the deal would have to have gone through a board of directors too. How can educated individuals, I'm assuming individuals capable of writing to be educated enough to handle this concept, believe he was placed as Nokia's CEO. If Microsoft had the power/money to do this why not purchase them sooner? Microsoft saw value in Nokia and could afford the cost. It happens, put away your aluminum hats folks.

How quickly people forget history. Before Windows Phone was officially launched in late 2010 (just before, in fact) Stephen Elop was installed as CEO. Major players in the financial press were calling this a bad move and couldn't understand why they chose him (he was the first non-Finnish CEO in the company's history which was strange in and of itself), they all thought he would make a terrible CEO. Not long after the reason began to come to light. In early 2011 information that Microsoft was channeling money into Nokia, billions of dollars in fact, was beginning to become public so if you want a reason why the board would agree to a CEO that was put forth by Microsoft, look no further than the money trail. Nokia was in trouble, stagnating and losing groud to Android, and MS came riding in with an offer that was very hard to decline under the circumstances. It's not hard to imagine that Microsoft, as it was preparing Windows Phone, was looking around for a well established handset manufacturer that it could possibly partner with. With Nokia there was a bonus, because here was an experienced company in near dire financial straits so they were not only able to "partner" with them but were able to strike a deal that would keep Nokia afloat in exchange for them installing one of their own as the boss. Nokia was already starting into freefall, all Elop had to do was stabilize the company enough to ride it the rest of the way in until Windows Phone development had enough of a foothold and Nokias fortunes were so far in toilet that the board would readily agree to a sale. I think that in late 2009/early 2010 there's no way the board would have agreed to a Microsoft takeover, but the shape the company was in four years later made it a completely different story.

LOL! Another conspiracy theory nutjob. " In early 2011 information that Microsoft was channeling money into Nokia, billions of dollars in fact" There was nothing secret about that, and Microsoft wasn't channeling money into Nokia. They were paying Nokia a billion dollars a year to use Windows Phone, and everyone knew it because it was made public. That was never a secret. You make it sound like it was a shady deal under the table. The billion dollar a year payments started after Elop was hired, when they chose to use Windows Phone after negotiations with Microsoft. They chose Windows Phone for two reasons. One, the billion dollar a year payments, and two, they didn't feel Android would allow them to compete on their own, especially against a juggernaut like Samsung. FYI, Microsoft didn't even want to buy Nokia. What would Microsoft need with Nokia when they could build their own phones? Microsoft was almost forced into buying Nokia because they were 90% of Windows Phone, and if they didn't they were going to make Android devices instead. Microsoft would have liked Nokia to turn it around. Microsoft didn't want to have to take on another 30,000 employees, and a failed phone maker. Do some of you even think before you post this tripe.

I agree. People seem to forget that Nokia was hinting towards Android and was already in negotiations with Lenovo. Under Lenovo, Nokia could finally go full Android. With Nokia having a 90% market share within the windows phone ecosystem, Microsoft had no choice but to buy Nokia putting them in akward position toward the other OEM

Hey there, hotshot. I wasn't revising anything. I never said that they were making a back room deal. What I was trying to point out was that people were led to believe that MS had a nominal deal with Nokia, which turned out to not be the case at all. They weren't just "partnering", they were pumping billions into the company, which pretty much put them in the cat bird seat when it comes to call the shots and that was NOT public knowledge at the time. Don't believe me? Here's your "revisionist" history: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2513151/mobile-wireless/microsoft-to-pay-out--billions--as-part-of-nokia-deal.html

I can't believe you got upvoted so much...

In early 2011 information that Microsoft was channeling money into Nokia, billions of dollars in fact, was beginning to become public

Talk about revisionist history... this deal was announced in advance, including how much money would be paid to Nokia, and how the payment plan would reverse, depending on That you paint this publically available information (actually a pulic announcement) as some sort of secret back room deal is ridiculous.

Reported for being insulting.

If you honestly believe that crazy conspiracy, then you deserve it. Microsoft has no power to place one of their own into another publicly traded company. Elop was hired by Nokia and it's board, and they approved of the selection of Windows Phone on a number of factors. The BS about Elop being a trojan horse is completely idiotic because Microsoft never wanted to buy Nokia. If that's all Microsoft wanted, they could have gone about it in a much simpler and cheaper way.

If he wasn't a Trojan horse, then I'm a monkey's uncle.

So, you are a monkey's uncle..

Better than delusional.
 

The only delusional people here are the ones who believe in idiotic conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact.

What does your nephew, Bobo, say?

My thoughts exactly
Windows phone became my choice because of Lumia

True.. windows phone has seen light of the day because of nokia. Many people adopted wp because of nokia. I can't comment whether his decisions were intentional or unintentional, but definately his decisions resulted into the end of Nokia. Even I believe that he was not a good CEO. Posted via Windows Phone Central App

Again, Nokia was finished long before Elop came around. I love how people conveniently forget the three years before Elop, when Nokia was in a death spiral. Why else do you think the previous CEO and executive team were summarily fired. Their market share, revenue, and profits were falling for years before Elop was hired. Elop was hired to try and save an already dead company.
 

Nokias devices and services (you know, the unit Microsoft bought this year) had an operating profit of 3,2 billion euros for the full year of 2010. The year before it was 3,3 billion euros. To say that Nokia was in a death spiral the three years preluding Elop would be a stretch of the imagination. And completely wrong.

LoL but you must be wrong, they are educated internet citizens

True... Feeling angry and sad..not that I don't love my Lumia...i became a lumiist because of Nokia and am Wp user because of Nokia...bt still...Nokian forever..

+720

+520

+820

Angry? No! Sad? No!
When I got my Lumia 800, I understood what was the goal, why they did what they did and why MS wanted to be part of it all. The reason was and is the next iteration of the OS, the Windows 10. It's all clear now. And I feel a bit bad for Mr. Elop. He just had to sacrifice him self and his family for the common good of man kind.

+520

I got hooked into Nokia because WP. First I was a Motorola man with the Startac line, then Sony Ericcson came with the W series; then I was an HTC man in Windows Mobile; after that it was LG (WP7) and when Nokia Lumia 800 came I bit the hook and since then I'm a Nokia Lumia man.

You missed a lot, Nokia was smartphoning for years with Symbian, much more powerful than lagdroid and, you know, without spywares and shit

Woah. Ouch!

hahahahaaaa wow

off-topic, if you agree please vote :) : https://windowsphone.uservoice.com/forums/101801-feature-suggestions/suggestions/6534225-you-should-reward-users-of-wp7-because-they-could

That's off topic for sure even the suggestion is off topic lol
That site is there to suggest and vote for the OS (new features/needed stuff) not what Microsoft stores should do

Not really if you look at some of those suggestions, they are not just about software

Lumia became my choice because of Windows.

Windows phone became my choice because of Nokia Lumia

+920 I was interested in the OS. Nokia just happened to have the better phone at that time.

I swear this comment was edited. It said "Windows phone became my choice because of Lumia" before. You even dropped the "phone" from your comment.

No Sammy, that was another poster. Didn't edit my comment.

Not this one

Oops. Now I see it.

Same. (iOS = WP) > Android IMO. So since I already had an iPad and an iPod Touch just go with a low end WP phone.

Same here. Fell in love with the OS the minute I saw it. Was gonna buy an iPhone before. My first was a Samsung Focus cuz I couldn't afford something better. After that I got the Lumia 920 cuz it was the best looking. And it had better specs than the iPhone 4/4S

I dis agree... There was no future for Symbian...bec of him the I have my lovely 525...

Yes. I also regard him as weak.

Considering Nokia at the time of his arrival, things could be worse.

he inherited a company that was going down the toilet and he saved it by making it something MSFT would want to buy.

bingo bango. His job wasn't to save Symbian...it was to drive Nokia shareholder value.  And he did...(I'm personally up 202.74%). And now Nokia is left with a profitable business and an influx of cash...you'd think people in Finland would be happy that the entire company didn't go bankrupt (with even more jobs lost)?  I really don't get the Symbian love...  

I can assure you fellow shareholders like yourself are smiling inside :-). The sad fact of life is that negativity gets so much amplification and publicity than positive stuff. No shareholder seems to have come forward complaining so far, in fact they love it lol!

It think the argument comes down to people who think Nokia would have been a Samsung contender had they gone Android instead of Windows.  I agree with you though, Nokia was saved and the track-record for companies producing Android devices is very bad except for Samsung.

I believe, Nokia could've been a world leader in Android but being progressive with continuous R&D ethics, they failed to evolve in the ever-changing market. There is no doubt that everything evolved around them!

How? Nokia was in no shape to compete with a company like Samsung, and they didn't have the resources to do it. Nokia would have gone bankrupt with Android, and they either would have been sold to a larger company, or everyone lost their jobs. Have you been paying attention? Samsung makes virtually all of the profits in Android. Every other Android OEM is losing money. Android is not saving Sony, HTC, Asus, Acer, LG, etc. Motorola hasn't made a profit in eons, and neither has any of those other companies. So what makes you believe that Nokia could have been huge in Android? They would have burned through their cash in 6 months.

Tel that to the 15,000 employees who lost their jobs. But as long as your stock price is up, who cares, right?

Better than the entire company going bankrupt, and the entire company going out of business and even more people losing their jobs.
 

Would have never happened

I would have bought an HTC
Windows phone but I went with Nokia only because of Elop's decision to go with Windows phone.

Have to agree. When the company in your care collapses and its major part has to be sold, that's a measure of how bad a CEO you were.

He took a dying company and made them desirable enough for Microsoft to purchase. Not that bad, really. Symbian wasn't going to make it.

Agree with rpm. The Lumia line takes the Galaxy line and spanks it any and every day. As CEO he had the guts to make a decision to put his eggs in the Windows ecosystem. Why? Because the Android market was and is super saturated. People like these two authors think making Lumias for Android would've saved Nokia? Can you prove it? You can't prove it either way can you! So get off your fit people. Even though people cannot see it because of terrible press, journalism and bias, the Lumia line outshines most phones and product lines out there. Don't blame Elop for the bias in the press

Nokia-Siemens Network, was the only profitable arm of Nokia, before Elop/WP came along, not the phone business. They were losing on margin big time, with Symbian, and had already been surpassed by Samsung, on both the low, and high end, even before the Android craze, went mach 10, and catapulted them into the stratosphere. Nokia was never going to beat Samsung, at their own game (low-end), without a massive influx of cash, and a true differentiator. Microsoft, gave them both. Nokia sold textiles, and auto tires, I believe, when it was founded. They now own the lion's share of the satellite navigation/mapping business, globally, with NavTeq, and are full steam ahead, with their end to end mapping solution, HERE. These were Finns, writing a sensationalistic piece, about the one thing, in Finland, more famous, than the invention, of the sauna. It's to be expected, that they'd view Elop badly. I wonder what would have happened if he'd been Finnish, and done the same thing? Would they have painted him as badly? Ah, but if he was Finnish, he might have clung to the desperate hope that Meego, or Symbian could again rule the world? Which is what got them into trouble in the first place. See what Elop's fellow Canadians are doing, in Ontario? They know BB can't be saved, and that Android is a loser's bet, for any company without a $3 billion advertising budget, like Samsung. So, they're going down, with the ship. Soon to be wholly owned by some budget patent troll, surely. Just a name, like Kodak, or Polaroid, to be traded like bubblegum. So, if the story needs a villain, I guess Elop, will have to do. But I think the true villainy, was the hubris, of the Finnish company, and/or, its citizens itself, that were, and still are the last to know, that they had no new clothes, and were indeed, naked as a jaybird. Fin.

Awesome diatribe

Thanks... Nothing particularly scathing, really.

Holy, commas, Batman!

Sorry. I having quite gotten the hang of the complete abandonment, of commas, as part of prepositional phrases, or as transitional devices, that are a gutting of written English, and, seemingly, required, when on the Internet. I actually leave a few out, here and there, and its like showering in fire. Sorry. Didn't mean to offend.

"Nokia-Siemens Network, was the only profitable arm of Nokia, before Elop/WP came along, not the phone business"   This is just so wrong on so many levels that I will just leave it at that. 

That's a cop-out, Morgan. Enlighten us, with your corrections. If you don't, then your comment is just so wrong, on so many levels, and I will just leave it at that.

Ok, if we combine the profits from the three different business-segments in Nokia the three years prior Elop started at Nokia we get this: NAVTEQ made a loss of 0.722 billion euros between the years 2008-2010. Nokia Siemens Network mad a loss of 2.626 billion euros between the years 2008-2010 D&S made 12.429 billion euros in profits between the years 2008-2010.   Now again, do you stand by your statement that the only profitable business-segment was Nokia Siemens Network before Elop started at Nokia?

If that is true, then I relent. I was in the middle of some work, and conflating some things, like rubber boots, and auto tires, as well. My point was that the phone business was sinking,  between 2008-2011, being only carried by shrinking, loer margin sales, of Symbian, that were being eaten into, by samsung, and unsustainable. Nokia has survived, by ditching old businesses, for new profitable ones, and this is no different.  

There were no such thing as automobiles when Nokia started, they initially sold rubber boots which was a pretty high tech item in 1865! ;)

Thanks opusthecat! I actually was at work, in the middle of something, and I couldn't remember the boots, but I knew it was a rubber product, and auto tires, just came to mind. And the textiles bit, while boots are clothing, was actually, a remembrance, of the beginnings of Samsung, which started as a textile company.

My Lumia 1020 totally disagrees and so do I!!!

When the people working for you think you're an idiot, chances are it's true. Nice future this company has.

They interviewed "former" employees man.  Like seriously, can you ask for a more negative group of people to interview?  One major group left because they didn't want to work on Windows and the next major outflux left when Nokia laid them off due to streamlining and then the next when Microsoft laid off over 2,000 people...yeah, I'm sure they're all ECSTATIC about Elop...

Nope.

He jumped aboard a sinking ship ffs. Android would not have saved them, bought them some more time maybe.

He jumped aboard the single largest distributor of mobile phones in the World at the time.

Of course at that point. But absolutes can be deceiving. The trajectory is what really matters! Were they growing or falling?

The Titanic was the largest ship in the world even while it was sinking...

Awesome analogy...have to remember that one

LOL! Yeah, and 99% of those phones Nokia was selling were dumb phones. That's what Nokia shills don't bring up. 99% of the phones they were selling were dumb phones and incredibly low end Symbian phones that were crap. Nokia wasn't making any money on those phones. Who cares how many phones you sell when they're dumb phones and you're not making any money off of them. Symbian was getting slaughtered not only by Android and iOS, but also by the tech press.  

You should really go through some of Nokias financial reports from 2008-2011 to get a better picture of Nokia as a company. I don't know where you are getting your information from but you are wrong on their financials from their pre windows-phone-era.

Yes he was . He selected windows was good but ignored android was worst.
Like Samsung do make windows phone and android as well. He should had done that too.

Really dude! Samsung is just appeasing Microsoft and they don't even support the windows phones they have made overt the past three years. When our comes to windows phone, Samsung is worse than HTC and LG(when they made a WP) put together and that's hard to do!

The LG Quantum was a killer device.

So you think Android could 'save' Nokia? Tell that to Sony, HTC and LG. Why do you think Ericsson exited the mobile phone space? Obviously they saw the tide had turned and left the job to Sony. To make profit off Android is extremely difficult for any company whose sole income stream comes from mobile phones. LG has huge alternative revenue streams and you can see how long it took to begin making some impact. What would have been financing Nokia in the 5-6 years it would take to turn a profit even if they could, Symbian?? Elop was given a very difficult task. Many former tech giants are struggling today, and it's not something you 'fix' in 2 years. Anyone who says that has not managed more than his household.

Nokia wasn't allowed to make Android devices as long as they took the multi-million dollar cash influxes every quarter.  If they didn't take the cash then the company would have sunk years ago.  It was only when the contract with MS was due to expire did they produce an Android phone (my guess it was Nokia's way of telling MS to buy the devices division or renew our contract).

I think Nokia X proved that going android would not have helped. Sales were not even published. And it was a low/mid-range device so it should have sold well. I think the Lumia brand has become bigger than the Nokia brand to be honest. It would be a shame if Microsoft just slapped Microsoft in the front of the device instead of just Lumia and maybe Microsoft on the back.

Some huge imagination here

Without Microsoft Nokia would be dead. Simple as that.

No. Android or meego+Android VM would save Nokia.

Microsoft did save Nokia. Android wouldn't have helped much.

Android? How so??

Based on what? Sony, HTC, LG all struggling with Android. Samsung was absolutely dominant over there. Now look at how Samsung mobilve devices is doing recently and let me know if you think it's still a good idea. That division is emploding they are expecitng a 60% drop in profit and 20% drop in sales.

They didn't have the cash to pull off a transition like that on their own...they needed the cash and MS needed a closer knit HW partner...it was a win-win. Google already had Motorola (and Samsung/HTC albeit with less control).

Are you forgetting the Nokia X? Didn't work very well did it?

LOL! Meego was crap and had no ecosystem or developer support. Meego was DOA.

Without Nokia, Microsoft would have never gotten even remotely close to their current market share for windows phones. Simple as that.

It goes the same way. Without Microsoft, Nokie would either have gone with a different OS and if it was Android, they'll be struggling like HTC and the rest.

Did DJCBS (or whatever the letter are) write it?

Lolol I am sure he did...oh well..

LOL

LOL, lets try not to wake him up today...

Too late, mate :P Posted via the Windows Phone Central App for Android

No I didn't. Otherwise they would sustain the Trojan-theory. ;) Posted via the Windows Phone Central App for Android

Hahahahahahahaha

Man, that was my first thought when I saw the headline.

Not sure about that ("worst")... And most persons would take an even distribution of personnel for research, having most former Nokia reps obviously skews the results... Did they compare to other CEOs from other multibillion dollar worldwide companies?

Yeah, if they indeed called him the "worst in the world" it shows their bias and discredits the entire book. Did they interview every other CEO in the world to reach this conclusion?

Where can I but the book? Nether Google and Bing can find a reseller

Try yahoo

Lumia became my choice because of Nokia i ser forward for the real deal Nokia Lumia hopefully with some Android extreme!

Yes definitely one of the worst CEO...his slow, wrong decision, and slow progress in Symbian platform making it as a good smartphone OS downgrade the popularity of Nokia among people. Also the total bet only on the WP made it deeper.

Symbian was garbage.  I used it, it was a mess.  People were moving on to iOS and Symbian was so far behind and that was BEFORE Elop.  It was a dead OS.  Elop was faced with either Windows or Android and only MS was giving Nikia millions in cash to keep the company afloat.  How is that not easy to understand?

Symbian 3 was far better than ios in that time with better multitasking. If he wished then there was a possibility to see Symbian as a primary mobile OS instead of lagdroid today.

Yeah right and somehow people still ignored it in favor of iOS. There must have been something or many things iOS had that it didn't, like fluid performance and execution which was only a dream prior to the iPhone! If there's anything I'm grateful to the fruit company for, it's got to be the fluid performance on mobile devices! Somehow all the features in the world just can't replace a good and smooth user experience - all Symbian touch implementations were sorely lacking in this department! Believe me I used many of them!

Symbian was unintuitive, laggy, and had severe UI and performance issues. Symbian also had no developer support to speak of. What does it say about your OS when Windows Phones developer support and ecosystem blows past your OS that's been on the market for years?

How is trading shit for shit a good thing?

Where are you getting this bullshit from by the way?

Totally agree

Fins are bound to be upset about how it panned out. But the fact still remains that Nokia hired him knowing full well that he used to work for Microsoft.

^This!

If Elop was really that sh*t, you think he got a job with Microsoft? Anybody noticed how long it took for MS to find a new CEO? And so MS will just appoint Elop because.......he is a nice guy or something?
I wonder how much family of those writers was actually working for Nokia and lost their job....

Probably that was part of the deal to buy the Devices & Services division. We'll see how this will continue. Having him in charge of Microsoft Mobile while they downsize it and restructure it likely is a good idea, given that he's burnt in the eyes of many already. Once that restructuring has finished I'm curious to see wether Sadella keeps him in this position. That being said: I believe that at least presentation-wise and in interviews Elop was doing very well. Got the same feeling this year at Build. He's a good presenter in the end.

Someone might be great as division leader, doesn't make one great as a CEO. They praise him for changing the leadership -structure and attitudes after all. I don't know whether or not he was one of the worst CEOs, I don't know enough about them to make that call, but he certainly wasn't great. As for whether or not Nokia was doomed no matter what they did, I personally don't think so, but once again don't know enough to throw my opinions around as fact. Nokia certainly had very viable options.

Even before elop. Nokia was almost going down. Though they could have taken android path. But I think.. Even that wouldn't change things.

Nokia had many chances to update Symbian to compete with touch screen phones but never did. When Sony Ericsson used Symbian they stuck their own GUI on it called UIQ, why didn't that push Nokia to develop a native touch screen interface? The Nokia communicator was crying out for a touch screen, but it never got one.

How did it work out for Sony Ericsson?

Market share of Sony?

well..... they inteviewed mostly former Nokia employees , i guess they are still holding a grudge against him . for the record i don't believe Elop is "one of the world's worst – if not the worst – chief executives." Symbian was dead . He was right to pull the plug

Right

Simple as that. I guess it's convenient to have someone to blame when you go down. The entire decline of Nokia phones was Elop's fault lol! This makes me laugh! Like a student who didn't prepare for exams all semester and starts crying when the poor grades are posted blaming lecturers, school, curriculum and everything else but himself!

+1

Not sure focusing entirely on Windows Phone wasn't the best idea at the time, but to call him the worst CEO seems a bit dramatic.

Your right.

Nope, definitely not the "Worst CEO", and in fact he's very intelligent, and someone who you would want as the "front man" on products.

By the way  .... Thorsten Heins . That's a failed CEO

Hahahahaha daymn! That's a burn

Even I would like to say Nokia had a class and consumers should have been given a choice for Android. I love windows phone just because of Lumia ... The classy Nokia... Long live.

+720

Oh, not again, who is actually publishing this trash? There's always been a few die-hards that refuse to believe that Elop was a good thing for Nokia. That somehow Symbian could have had a miraculous turnaround and saved the company. Obviously to turn the company around Elop had to lay some people off, so it doesn't take much to find people who are disgruntled. They'd much rather have kept their jobs and slowly watched Nokia die. They may honestly have believed they were doing the right thing for the company had they kept on that course; but you only have to look at Blackberry to see how it would have panned out. I still don't really see why Microsoft need Nokia, they have dozens of OEMs supporting them now with 8.1 and I'm sure 10 will only improve on that. How does making their own phones help them? Incorporating more Nokia ideas into the OS is great, but I don't think they needed to spend Billions to buy them to get that. So if anything people should be happy Elop sold out to Microsoft, it's gotten rid of part of the company that was loosing them cash and delivered a sizeable improvement to Nokia shareholders. But hey, he killed Symbian, so hate on him. The board brought him in to do just that, so it's them these people should aim their unnecessary anger at.

Most succinct reply yet.

"But hey, he killed Symbian, so hate on him."   I think people are "hating" on Elop because when all the other OEMs moved to android Elop steered Nokia towards an unproven operating system with low marketshare. Fast forward three years and their division that makes phones is being sold. Don't think anyone truly is mad about Nokia abandoning Symbian, just the choice that Nokia went solely with WP.

Nokia was dead in 2010 they only had the Nokia N9 as a modern Smartphone without him and the switch to wp the company would have been dead in mid 2012.

I think Nokia made poor choices even before Elop.....look at blackberry and the monumental mis-steps their CEOs made...elop cant be the worst... And to me...the means justified end...Microsoft now has its own devices and services division...i do love Nokia but they were sinking long before Elop... But with the new iteration of the company...they will rebound in spaces they never had access to before...

Yes, the worst, Nokia phones died under his watch and it's remains devoured my Microsoft. I chose Lumia and windows phone because of Nokia and their lifetime offline capable international navigation, open file system and camera, no other reason but now I am dreading the future.

True,he destroyed Nokia.I was a die hard fan of Nokia from the Nokia N70 time.Now there won't be any phones with NOKIA brand/name.I hate Elop!!!I started loving Windows Phone only because of Nokia

He did destroy Nokia? dude what are you smoking? years before he took over the Company(*hint* *hint* Changing CEOs is always a signal that something has to change!), Nokia was dying! Symbian was dead and the N9 was a strategic disaster. Elop did the right thing, keep Nokia from further falling by partnering with Microsoft and have them pay billions just for the sake of sticking with WP. Next step was to get rid of Nokias D&S division asap and I can assure you, Elop had not a single say in this decision, the Board and only the Board had. You want to blame someone? blame the Board because they did a horrible job at keeping Nokia relevant!

I guess the decision to sell was made solely by him and not the board? Same goes for the decision to hire him, it was Microsoft that somehow bribed members of the Nokia board and got them to hire a "trojan horse" in a Dr. Evil plan to buy the OEM division a couple of years later. Take your meds please! Simbian was dead, Android was not an option given HTC, LG, Motorola, Sony and now even Samsung struggling with it. Nokia needed cash, they could not compete in the Android field so they chose to be a big fish in a small pond instead. Also who cares what the phones are called? Who choses the OS/ecosystem soley based on the brand name on your phone?

Money man, money.

feel sad and how embarrassed he would be just think.

Elop took over a company that was already dead. Nokia was in a death spiral three years before Elop ever took over. They lost two-thirds of their value as a company during that period, and the only phones they were selling were dumb phones that they couldn't make any money on. As for Android being their savior, don't make me laugh. Ask every non-Samsung OEM is Android is a savior. They're all losing money with it, and Samsung makes virtually 100% of the profits in Android, despite their falling profits. Even Google makes little to no money on Android. Not to mention Nokia was ill equipped to take on Samsung on their own in the Android world. Nokia was being kept afloat by the billion dollars a year Microsoft was paying. I won't say he was successful, but absolutely nobody would have turned Nokia around as a phone maker.

Thank you for this comment. I'm relieved to see people writing here that didn't pick their first mobile phone in 2011 or something. Anyone who says Nokia was destroyed by Elop etc. only exhibits his ignorance about the mobile phone industry. Why not ask the more fundamental question why Elop was at Nokia in the first place? Why not at say Apple or Samsung? Obviously something at Nokia needed 'fixing' right? This is where the investigation and argument should begin, then you have real clarity and the whole picture, not just reading a page from a textbook of a thousand pages and declaring yourself entirely knowledgeable about it!

Exactly why you are wrong, couldn't have said better myself

Well, my first Nokia is Lumia with Windows Phone.
But to be honest, people would like to see Nokia with Android (Nokia X doesn't count). I like Windows Phone mostly because speed.

I have to disagree on this. Elop did the dirty work he was supposed to do, and for which Microsoft hired him. And he did the job fantastically. Nokia is now in Microsoft's hands, and all that at a fraction of its original price.

Motorola goes all in with Android, fails to gain market traction, and is bought by Android's maker Google. Nokia goes all in with Windows Phone, fails to gain market traction, and is bought by Windows Phone's maker Microsoft. Blackberry goes all in with their own OS, fails to gain market traction, bolts on Android support, again fails to gain market traction, tries and fails to find a buyer, and goes bankrupt. I think it unlikely that Elop was a Microsoft plant; he was approved by Nokia's board and retained as he made those bad decisions.  Claims that he was a Microsoft plant help deflect the criticism from Nokia itself and helps Finland, Nokia, and Nokia's fans play the victim card.  This is an understandable impulse, but not an honest nor respectable one.  

Well said! Good perspective! I just feel sorry for Elop been made the scapegoat of huge mistakes long before him!

Nope. Elop was, and is, good!

He didn't put all his eggs in one basket. They were still making Asha and prototyping Android at the time.

Then why did they released n9 with meego OS instead of Android......

Completely agree.

Disagree... I suppose they would've named him the best CEO if he had put all his eggs in the android basket instead?

Really? Market tells different story!

Not that bad..

"The duo, who work at the Finnish business newspaper Kauppaleht, interviewed over 100 people, mostly former Nokia employees, for their book."   'nuff said

Actually whatever it is..... Elop made tremendous mistakes..... The authors are right..... He shouldn't have ditched android.....n9 was one of the results of that mistake......

I never even thought about buying a Nokia phone til Elop got there and they started the Lumia WP line. If anything im a fan

I'm really sorry for you, you missed a lot man

If Nokia had taken the Android path, their share would be pretty good world wide. I'm not in any position to blame Elop, I just don't have access to relevant info, the complete agreement between Microsoft and Nokia, there are huge amount of info to take into account ! I have had Nokia since 2007 and I'm waiting for the 1020 successor !

Im not saying the windows phone move was bad. But lets admit it, Nokia was once very innovative ( N9, N950 , N8 ) they all had potential but they were slowly killed to make way for the big windows phone move. I am with elop moving to windows phone but not with him killing the other exclusive innovative approaches that Nokia used to make towards the smartphone industry

"...conclusion made by Pekka Nykänen and Merina Salminen, the authors of "Operation Elop", which was released earlier this week, The duo, who work at the Finnish business newspaper Kauppaleht, interviewed over 100 people, mostly former Nokia employees, for their book."   I stopped reading here.

I started believing in nokia again thanks to Elop. So much that I invested a lot of money in nokia @ 3.5 USD and sold a few months later @ 8.18 USD. All thanks to Elop and Microsoft. I am also vivid lumia user, through my 5th wp phone and a third consecutive lumia. I think Elop and MS saved nokia from a certain doom. But i am very aware of the nastiness they wrecked on the finnish job market. And indian. Etc.

I read somewhere that Nokia's board actually wanted Microsoft to buy the phone division. It seems plausible enough to me, Elop couldn't have 'destroyed' Nokia by himself, the Director's board must have had an active role, too...

Absolutley right ! He's not suited to be in any management role at all, whenever i see him speak in public, i'm sure he has said a thing to piss some people off, whenever i read his memos and mails to empolyees, i just go nuts, i hate the way he talks and acts.As much as i enjoy Satya and his wisdom, i hate everything about this guy. Hope sooner or later they just degrade him, before he screws surface and xbox up too, just like Nokia devices !

Sounds like the authors are bitter over the Microsoft acquisition...the stock market would not agree with their sentiments. Selling off the devices division occurred after Nokia's stock returned to near "pre-Elop" valuations.  If he was sinking Nokia, why wouldn't they sell in 2012 for a third of the price?  Why was Nokia's stock falling for two years prior to Elop?  Elop took over in the middle of the Nokia decline (2008-2012).  Changes take time to implement, and returns take even longer to realize.  The decline was the fault of executives decisions (stagnant devices division) some number of years prior to the reflection in it's stock price. It doesn't make sense...the market also liked the sale of the devices division.   It doesn't matter what anecdotal or emotional reasons the book may provide...the idea that he was one of the worst CEO's just flat out does not reflect reality if the function of the CEO is to drive shareholder value.  You may not like Windows Phone...but that's a consumer/personal issue...if you owned a piece of the company that was Nokia...then Elop's run worked out.

Wow, well said! Good to read comments with such maturity! Thank you!

Yes. Hate that arse hole... He killed Nokia... Screw him

One thing that proves he wasn't sent by MS is that all the differentiation in the OS that was there to compete with other platforms is now dean and gone, so............. 1: Social network integration (Facebook), GONE! (Making the "smoked by" campaign useless) 2: Dedicated camera button, GONE! (Making the "smoked by" campaign useless) 3: The progress of Creative Studio (5.5), destroyed. Downgraded to an Android clone version with no effects. 4: Live Lock. ABANDONED! 5: Double tap to wake, almost don't work (flaky) on 635, 920, 820, 520, 930. Why?????? 6: XBOX music, downgraded and slowed down, for reasons unknown. 7: Search! Music detection, Bing vision (QR scan) and local search/nearby places. GONE!!!!!   Thank you MS/Nokia. You might aswell start doing Android phones now. Sorry.          

And all of this incoherent rant has what to do with Elop managing Nokia...??

By the way:
- Social network integration removal was a request by Facebook (pretty much like the YouTube features removal was a demand by Google - they own the damn thing and have the power to do so), with a better app indirectly integrated proposed as a solution (the mobile app is a huge revenue generator for FB, so that's a no-brainer, really)
- The dedicated camera button requirement (along with hardware touch buttons) was made non-compulsory in order to reduce costs and encourage more OEMs into the field to make cheaper handsets. And it still does exist on most high-end WPs anyway.
- Creative studio is one of thousands of photo enhancement apps in the store, of which there are many excellent ones far better and free to download. What is so special about it?
- Live lock has been obviously placed on the back burner in light of much bigger things being worked on and developed. It was never anything quite as amazing as we initially thought anyway, and can only be seen for like 5 seconds at a time on the screen before it goes off. No big deal.
- Double tap to wake was an afterthought brought to WP by Nokia from Symbian. It was never part of the hardware/software plan. It's bound to be like that.
- I don't know where you got your WP from, but Search still works as normal for me - with Bing Vision and Music recognition very much available, except when location is turned on and Cortana appears instead.
As for the music app, I have no idea why MS changed things. They have their reasons, I guess.
Stop whining unnecessarily.

This boook was written not to tell the truth but to justify the authors sense that Elop is to blame for everything. In order to do this you base your 'research' on 'interviews' with former Nokia staff who would obviously have no reason at all to tell you anything different.   When Elop came on board Nokia was sinking .. fast.. he arrogance of previous management led to their downfall and at the time Elop made the (IMO) correct call to burn the Symbian bridge and go with Windows Phone. Android would not have been a viable replacement and would have made Nokia just another Android OEM. They would not have been able to differentiate themselves as they could with Windows Phone. IMO the major reason why it did not turn out better faster was that MSFT did in fact hold the development back by not working with Nokia deep enough to allow them to do their thing. When push came to shove and Nokia started to put their foot down and started looking at AOSP they could do nothing but buy the S&D devision just to save their own *ss as without Nokia Windows phone is non-existant really.

Nokia pulled out of Japan just before 7.0. I bought an HTC Titan 6 months after Mango. Waited when 8.0 came out because the 8x didn't make sense. Waited and then picked up a 920 just before the 1020 came out. I came to Nokia because of Windows Phone. I now have the 930. Whatever Elop has done, it is now Microsoft.

You know what Nokia was before Elop? Blackberry....  You know what it would looked like today if it continued to develop MeeGo? Blackberry. Nokia was in a death sprial and one that was quickly accelerating.  They could have gone Android, and it might have worked, but they would be directly competing with Samsung.  Sony, LG, HTC, all make nice Andriod phones, but they are lost in the noise that is the Galaxy line.  That is on the top end, on the bottom end you have lots of no name manufactures creating very inexpensive Android phones. Microsoft needed, and still needs to keep their moble dream alive, Microsoft has deep pockets, Microsoft gave Nokia a lot of money, this kept them going longer than they probably would have.  Google did not want to make the same offer.  Google didn't need Nokia. Look how hard it is for a company with deep pockets like Microsoft to re-establish itself as a player in mobile.  Nokia at the time had no chance but to go with either Windows or Android, no way did they have the financial resources to try to create a 5th platform.  iOS, Android, WP, Blackberry, Meego. No, what killed Nokia was the same thing that almost killed Blackberry, the iPhone.  Say what you will, but both of these former titans of mobile were too slow to realize the real threat and revolutionary nature of that device.  Might as well group Microsoft in with that crowd.  Nokia tried to slap touch on Symbian, and Blackberry did the same with their phones.  Both were afterthoughts, both failed! If Nokia still wanted their own platform, they should have bought Palm and webOS, drop all Meego development and focus on a webOS powerd Nokia hardware.  This would have given them a modern, viable (at the time) platform for both phones and tablets at a time when Android was still rough around the edges compaired to webOS or iOS.  Sadly HP got a hold of them, and well we know how that went. But the waited too long to respond to the iPhone and Android, it is as simple as that.

Copied and saved your comment, well written!

You should build him a monument!

From angry Finns, you know what they are going to say. As I said before, Elop is the only qualify to lead Microsoft, no one come close. I don't know BillG is thinking, but it clearly a mistake for choose someone whom no one cares.

But looks like he(Nadella) cares for Microsoft that's important

If he made "monumental mistakes" than clear correct answers should be obvious. They're not, the industry was in a time of massive change and Nokia was going down. Elop watched Palm, Motorola, Blackberry, and HTC fall or nearly collapse. Those companies choose either their own OS or Android. Elop made a decision to align itself with another industry giant with similar aspirations. What decision would have resulted in a healthy and resergent Nokia today? I don't see one.

I bet Lumia running Android would be massive hit.

Yeah right, as if Sony and HTC phones are 'inferior' to lumias!

I bet Sony, LG,  Motorolla and HTC execs said the same thing, worked out well for them didn't it?

Why Microsoft has to hire him back? I am not saying microsoft send him on purpose to Nokia. But he placed all his egg in one basket(Microsoft) he was loyal to Microsoft rather than Nokia. If he tried to save Nokia my bet is he would have went for Android, Megoo, Windows but he prefered something....

Sorry, but you have no idea what you are talking about. Megoo and Android strategies were considered before he came on board and the board didn't move on those. The board had to accept a new strategy, sure he did recommend it but the board had to approve it, so it's not like he came in and did all fo that by himself.

No but he got a nice help from a powerful force called money

I agree that he is not a good CEO and made poor business decisions, Nokia would have dominated the market if they had gone with android. Just like nokia dominates the Wp market, from a business perspective it made sense to develop android phones. Finland would always see it like that. The positive thing is that Microsoft now owns the hardware division. Which benefits us windows phone users.

No they wouldn't. Samsung was already dominating and they would have to pay licensing fees for every device..fees they couldn't afford.

Samsung's dominance was only established in 2010. The decision to move to WP was made in 2009, at which time Nokia was still a powerhouse. It was the fact that Nokia didn't go for Android that allowed and helped Samsung climb to power (that and, of course, shameless ripping off the iPhone) Posted via the Windows Phone Central App for Android

+1020

Who would have 'funded' Nokia in the meantime in their climb to 'dominance' in Android? Don't forget Samsung has huge alternative streams of income, make significant parts of their phones like screens and memory etc. Do you really think Nokia could beat Samsung in a race to the top of Android, where the only real differentiating factor is hardware? And at a time of financial stress without excess reserves to pump into accelerated development? And what of the other players HTC, Sony Ericsson, LG? would they have just been staring idly on the sidelines? The game had changed but Nokia was late to react. WP at least gave them a cash cushion via MS which they couldn't get from any other interested party at the time!

The problem with the majority here is that you're evaluating Nokia's finances and value at 2013 state. In 2009/2010, although they were losing money, they still had a lot of value and marketshare to help them make the transition to Android. They were pouring money into MeeGo along with Intel. That same money would have been (and was) poured into a different OS. The problem was that they went with one that at the time had no clear future (actually, had no future at all). So Nokia, instead of jumping from a sinking ship to a lifeboat, jumped from a sinking ship into the Costa Concordia. Worst of all, the complete mess with WP7 and the complete lack of seriousness of Microsoft regarding WP only lead to a worst state. Add for Sony, LG etc. None of them had our had the weight Nokia had. Sony is doing well in Europe on the high end market. LG I see few people with them because LG isn't particularly recognised for their phones (unlike their TVs). Motorola is practically MIA in Europe since Nokia crushed them in the beginning of the XXI century. Posted via the Windows Phone Central App for Android

Look at their profits, cashflow from operations and debt from 2007 to 2008. Do you really think in that big of a downtrend they would have been able to transition at successfully compete against Samsung and at least 4 other OEMs? The Google option was on the table long before the Windows Phone option, yet the board wasn't convinced. And their then CEO was focused on becoming a "software company" rather than remaining a "devices" company cause he was scared by how much they were already being beat at the high end of the market by Apple. You wanna talk about bad CEOs, OPK was terrible!

That rise of debt 2007/2008 comes from the acquisition of NAVTEQ and not from any operational losses which is what I guess you are implying. 

You guess wrong, all I'm implying is that their profit and cashflow has declined from 2007 level drastically and now they had significant debt to service, granted some of it could probably be serviced by NAVTEQ cashflow. The question is, if they were doing well and didn't need money, why would they ask for money from MS? Why was it such a big factor?  Transition to Android would have been very costly, the marketing alone would have been a big problem, Apple and Samsung were spending immense money on marketing actually signficantly bigger than what Nokia and MS ended up spending combined on Windows Phone.

Fair enough. I guess I just don't share the sentiment that Nokia was passed the point of no return in 2009/2010. D&S was still profitable for the full year of 2011 by the way.

It was still profitable no denying that, but it was on a significant downtrend from 2007 to 2011. So the writting was on the wall. But I'm curious, how would you turn it around? Symbian and Meego were dead, Nokia was getting squeezed by Apple at the top and Android at the bottom of the market.  Switching to Android would mean you had to tolerate a massive burn rate and compete against Samsung and at least 4 others.  

In hindsight I would say that Nokia should have gone android in order to stay relevant as a smartphone manufacturer. They could have moved to android earlier and it would have been easier for them to set up a whole line of phones at the get-go which wouldn’t be made obsolete within a year due to another shift of operating system (WP 7 -> WP 8).   A few things where against the Nokia - Microsoft partnership: The needs were far different from each other. Selling phones was Nokias bread and butter, for Microsoft it was a side-project. It wasn’t hard to see the difference in which pace the different companies wanted things to happen. It was Nokia for example that saw to it that WP 7 required lower hardware in order for them to compete in the lower price-segments. WP 7 needed to have been WP 8 from the start. Nokia already paid a price for shifting from Symbian to WP 7, now they needed to shift from one operating system to another again, this time around without a profitable D&S to fund the cost of changing a phone lineup.   Also, they should have eliminated the dividend far earlier. That dividend (still active 2012) should by the way tell you that Nokias financial statement wasn’t as bad as many here seems to think, but that money could have been used far better. 

100% agree on the dividend. On Android I partially agree. If this decision was to be made say in early 2009, I think no doubt it should have been Android. Samsung was still not dominating and that's pretty much when the growth of the ecosystem started to spike. Nokia was still in a better position financially, but OPK didn't do anything and neither did the board. I think by late 2010 it was pretty much too late. Yes that doesn't seem to be that much time, but a lot changed during that short span. 

I would argue that there still was time for Nokia to go Android route and still be successful, even in 2011. Most likely not dominate, but still be in business.   The amount of money Microsoft has been contributing to Nokia has been well overplayed here at WPC. Nokia got around 1 billion dollars per year from Microsoft which they needed to spend on buying WP-licenses. So after the deal was through the cash vs the minimum amount of licenses that Nokia was obligated to buy was close to a zero-sum-game. You could say that Microsoft is giving that very same deal to any OEM wanting to manufacture WP-devices now since they scratched the license fee.   And just to put 1 billion dollar in perspective, Nokia had around 40-50 billion of dollars in sales per year (2010-2012), hardly a needle mover in my opinion.   Secondly, maybe the biggest benefit for Nokia using android would be that they would be selling a phone which had an operating system people had become comfortable with. With WP they had to push people into the idea that tiles instead of widgets/static icons was a better way of handling your smartphone, not to mention the app-gap.   Another thing to consider was the problem with WPs functionality in certain regions which wasn’t supported (eg. languages), a problem for Nokia which wouldn’t have been if going with android. Add to that the time it took Microsoft to lower the hardware-restrictions in order to make it viable to compete on price with the lowest costing android phones.   And lastly, Nokias Symbian models kept D&S floating until around q1 2012. Since WP didn’t support hardware that enabled a competitive price on lumias Nokia started to work really hard on competing with their Asha-line with initial good results, which kept D&S alive until Q4 2012. In q1 2013 even the Asha-line started to sag and Nokia was effectively left the WP line, and then the D&S was sold to Microsoft.   I do think that if Nokia went android instead of WP in 2011 they would definitely have a shot to compete effectively. Forgot to add the part that if Nokia went with android they might have been more inclined of scratching their dividend sooner. If they would have stopped the dividend in the year of 2011, they would have saved around 1,5B euros

Will have to agree to disagree. 50 billion in sales don't convert to cashflow, you are correct on the dividend though at that point in time that money could have been spent elsewhere to hopefully generate more long term value to the shareholders. The timing of Android could be debated for years, I'm of the opinion that 2011 would be too late, you think it was still possible. I don't think we'll ever know. What originally started this massive debate was a statement by DJCBS stating that the decision to go WP was made in 2009, which it wasn't. Even if they looked at Windows Mobile before they clearly passed. Previous conversations with Microsoft don't prove that the decision was made and acted on in 2009. It was made in late 2010 after hiring of Elop and at that point regardless of Android or not OPK managed to destroy a lot of Nokia's capabilities by simple inaction. This leads me to belive that Elop was not a trojan horse. The board had plenty of time to go the Android route and went WP route based on his recommendation only after hiring him. So OPK and the board destroyed Nokia. Elop did not destroy Nokia to hand it over to MS. I think his mistake and the board's mistake with regards to the WP decision was being optimistic that MS will manage to exectued on the WP strategy effectively and quickly resulting in a 3rd player in the market and effectively differentiating Nokia from Apple or Samsung by virtue of a different ecosystem backed by a massive player. But MS is MS and they messed up more than once. I dont' think any of it was sinister or intentional to undermine Nokia to then later buy it.

Oh how I sometimes wish for an alternative universe where one could play out different scenarios. :)  And you are right, these discussions can be debated endlessly since we don’t have any proof except for the “scenario” that actually happened.   I usually only lurk around WPC and its forums, never write anything myself but have steadily visited here since the Lumia 800 days. The reason for writing now was due to one to many posts of “Nokia was in a death-spiral long before Elop started at Nokia”. That is something I strongly disagree with and I think very few of those who says that have any real clue of Nokias financial wellbeing  (D&S in particular) at the time (2009-2011). However, I don’t lump you into that group since you seem to know what you are talking about.   About the subject of Elop working undercover as a Microsoft agent, no that is extremely unlikely. I do however think that Nokia and Microsoft had some previous discussions about using WP before Elop started at Nokia. Though nothing was set in stone, Nokia going WP was more likely than not once Elop started at Nokia.   Thanks by the way for the discussion and for keeping it civil.  :)

Molgan, the feeling is mutual on people not knowing what they are talking about. It is frustrating at times. I also appreciate you keeping things civil as well, I think this was an interesting an enlightening debate. Hopefully see you around and we can argue about other topics :)

Definitely 

And I just noticed that I didn't answer your questions. Nokia could ask for money from Microsoft since they had the upper-hand. Nokia could've chosen to go with android which they leveraged in their negotiations with Microsoft, hence the money-support. Going android would however render Nokias 8 billion dollar NAVTEQ acquisition almost worthless. From the managements perspective it wouldn't have looked good if they initialized an 8 billion acquisition which value evaporated in just a few years. Wouldn't have looked good, at all.   

Precisely! Also it's improtant to consider that if they really thought that Android was a grandslam for them they wouldn't pass on it simply cause MS threw some money on the table. I think the board looked at the Google offer long and hard, if I'm not mistaken the offer from Google was on the table before WP offer. But they also looked at who they'll have to face in that market and probably didn't think it would be a sure thing.

Elop joined Nokia in September of 2010. WP strategy was announced in February of 2011. Windows Phone 7 was annoucned in October of 2010, Nokia Lumia 800 was annoucned in October of 2011.   Where did you get 2009 from? So Nokia made the decision to move to WP before Elop joined? Yet it's his fault for the strategy? Nokia's stock was in a nosedive since late 2007 to early 2009

The selection of Eflop was made before he joined.
And as with any CEO, he made the board of directors aware of his plans. Can you say the BoD was also responsible? Absolutely. But he came with a plan and with an offer. It was good strategy. Therefore, even though he was enabled, it's his responsibility. Posted via the Windows Phone Central App for Android

There is a nice Bloomberg article, in which Mary McDowell states that the WP plan was introduced to the board only in November of 2010 at that point the "Google" option was still very much on the table, they recommended the WP option and the board voted it in in February of 2011. Change in strategy, especially as large as this will always require board approval, even if Elop was selected before hand, nothing would be done until the plan was board approved. So once again where did you get 2009 from? Are you implying that Nokia made the change almost two years before the offical board approval or before the WP option was presented to the board and a whole year before the new CEO who brought in the new strategy was hired? Doesn't make any sesne.  And how was Nokia still a powerhouse in 2009/2010? Stock in a nosedive since 2007, bottoming out in late 2009. You know what else happened in 2007? Steve Jobs announced the iphone.

Funny thing, there is also a bloomberg businessweek article written by Peter Burrows where you can read that Nokia and Microsoft where in negotiations about Nokia using Windows mobile. The negotiations was lead by the microsoft employee Stephen Elop as it happens. It isn't too far-fetched to think that the WP-plan was already set in motion prior to Stephen Elops arrival at Nokia. 

Don't think I've come across that one. I'm not sure when you say Windows Mobile what do you mean? Windows Phone 7? Care to share the article as I couldn't find any that refer to what you discribe. Would be curious to know what the timing was around those negotiations.

Hmm, I had trouble with sharing a link to the article. Try searching for Bloomberg Businessweek Stephen Elop's Nokia Adventure and you should find it. (page four is the passage I am referring to)   Going by that article they do mean windows mobile and not windows phone and the negotiations should've taken place somewhere around 2008/2009 guessing from the article.

Sorry, I read that article don't recall that being mentioned. You sure they don't mean Office? That would make more sense since Elop negotiated the use of Office on Nokia devices, which makes more sense since he was part of the Office team and not Windows Mobile. Which page and paragraph? I think 2008/2009 would have been way too early for Window Phone and the same article mentions the Chairman saying that they only started looking at external candidates in Spring of 2010 and he met with Elop in the summer of 2010. Originally they were considering promoting from withing. So once again not sure how all fo that ties back to 2009 as DJCBS stated.  

It's this passage I'm thinking of: "Two years before, Elop led negotiations with Nokia over many of the same topics, but from the Microsoft side. Back then, Microsoft was trying to get Nokia to make a line of phones using Windows Mobile,"

Honestly I don't think that's correct, I think he negotiated the Office for Symbian. Negotiating Windows Mibile would be irrelevant to the eventual decision to use Windows Phone, drastically different OS, but that's just my opinion.

Well regardless if you think that is correct or not it shows that Elop was in a position in Microsoft where he led earlier negotiations with Nokia. 

Sorry let me rephrase, I meant the article isn't clear. There are a few other articles covering the same topic that state that Elop was negotiationg Office with Nokia.

Actually, Nokia was evaluating alternatives to Symbian for a long time after the 2007 announcement of the iPhone. Nokia reacted late, but they didn't wake up late to the problem of the iPhone. That search for an alternative to Symbian lead them to consider Windows Mobile. Ultimately, they decided to join forces with Intel and create MeeGo. Nokia - and this one you can't blame on Eflop - was convinced that they could create another Symbian but for smartphones to compete with iOS. Except by the end of 2008, Android showed up. Compeeting against Apple and iOS, for Nokia, would have been relatively easy IF no one else showed. Nokia was still the largest phone manufacturer with a large market share. However, competing with Google AND Apple was harder. And Nokia knew that. MeeGo, as good an OS it was (and it was in many ways way better than WP7), could not resist Apple on one side and a Google consortium on the other (Android was launched as a partnership of Google with Sony Ericsson, HTC and Samsung...two of which were formerly doing Symbian phones).   Nokia had now choices to make. If they had joined the Consortium in 2008, they would have gone Android and at that time, with their position on the market globally, they would have thrived. Because they were joining a force against Apple. Not only that, they would be joining OEMs that used to produce phones with Symbian and whom they knew well. Problem is, they had already considered Windows Mobile and Microsoft was already sniffing around. Samsung and HTC were part of the Android Consortium and would not be that interested in competing against themselves. So they never took WM or WP very seriously (and they still don't). Microsoft on the other hand needed an OEM. Microsoft had and has no expertise or tradition in hardware making of this kind. Their only option was to try and get one of the players that was "lost" in the smartphone business. They went with the biggest one, Nokia. They could have turned to Motorola instead, for example. Or Alcatel. But none of them was as appealing as the World's largest phone manufacturer. That's why I firmly believe that Eflop's arrival at Nokia wasn't innocent. He had previous contacts with Nokia through Microsoft. And he (well, Ballmer's Microsoft) had a plan. They basically pressured Nokia to turn to what would be WP7 with the promisse of obvious financial support in exchange. That partnership was announced at the beggining of 2011. Eflop was appointed CEO in September 2010 but the replacement of Olli as Nokia's CEO was set in motion way before that, ie, 2009. Since then, Eflop made his plans regarding Nokia very clear, just like when he made his plans for Microsoft clear when they were searching for a CEO to replace Ballmer. The difference is that the BoD at Microsoft was never as soft as Nokia's BoD. Microsoft rejected Eflop for CEO (thank God!). Nokia didn't do the same. Yes, the downfall of Nokia isn't Eflop's fault alone. Of course not. It's also a fault of that scarecrow of a Chairman, Riisto Siilasmaa. But the decision of hiring Eflop was never EVER peaceful within Nokia's BoD. Many of Nokia's directors were against the plan of turning to WP instead of Android. But when the Chairman and the to-be-CEO decide something, the BoD never opposes. And that's normally true for any coorporation (again, look at Microsoft. Bill Gates and Satya Nadella opposed the purchase of Nokia's D&S division. But Ballmer ranted and screamed and got what he wanted. It costed him his job as CEO, but he got what he wanted)

I agree with this. Just wanted to add that Nokia more than enough understood what they where getting when they hired Elop from Microsoft. That move from Nokia was to strenghten its tie with another player in the industri that wasn't in the android/ios camp.  

DJCBS, the article that Molgan and I are discussing clearly indicates a statement by Ollila that external candidates weren't even considered until Spring of 2010 and he met with Elop in the summer of 2010.  Please point to anything that specifically states that there were conversations with Elop about taking over prior to that. First you said the decision was made in 2009 to switch to Windows Phone, now you are suggesting it was in 2008 because "MS was sniffing around". When in reality Elop was only seriously considered in the summer of 2010, announced in the fall of 2010 and the board formally started  considering options in November of 2010 with both Android and WP on the table, with the eventual decision being made in February of 2011. A change in strategy is never pre-emptively adopted before formal board approval.  Especially withing a public company. It is certainly not adopted before the CEO that recommeneded it was even considred to be hired. They could have thought about it, talked about it and about countless other options, but not action would be taken until the approval. The rest is just speculation.  2007 iPhone was announced, OPK ignored it and sat on his hands. Then later on Android popped up and Nokia started getting hit at both ends of the market as you've stated, yet the decision was still not made. They could have gone Android in 2008 or 2009, but they were still kicking the tires on everything but Android to Nokia's detriment. So tell me how is that Elop's fault? By the time Elop was interviewed and WP was considered it was too late for Android, cause Sammy was all over that. So to conclude, no the decision was not made in 2008 or 2009 it was made in 2010 at the time when 75% of Nokia's market cap was already erased, sales and profits were on a signficant downtrend, large debt to service and as Molgan pointed out somehow Nokia still thought that it's a good time to be issuing dividends. Apple had the high-end, Android had the low-end and Samsung has established itself. Battling against either or both would have resulted in a massive burn rate which Nokia would not be able to sustain as evidenced by HTC, Motorolla, Sony, LG and Blackberry, they had to differentiate themselves or they would have joined this group being stuck between two giants. And no Nokia was no longer a giant at this point, it was a shadow of what it was with massively eroding market share at an alarming rate. I think in that situation the decision to join WP and partner with MS was a good alternative, especially wtih Nokia getting money. The issue was everything that came after that. MS fucked up with WP7 and then again with WP8, but that's a different conversation altogether and given previous discussions I think we are of the same opinion. Nokia was destroyed by OPK. By the time Elop came around it was too little too late for anything other than the deal with MS.  Elop was not a trojan horse, unless you think the entire board was in on it as well.    

Btw Ollila first met Elop in June of 2010, so that's still nowehere near 2009 as per your earlier statement

To deliberately undermine Nokia? There was nothing to undermine. The brand was dying already and would've been dead if no changes were made. While the development of MeeGo could've been faster, he did make good choices.

So let's see if I understand correctly. A couple of Finnish writers interview a bunch of ex employees of a Finnish company which had a major division sold off. Just a wild guess, but perhaps they had a bias when they set out to write this book?

The overall results of Nokia devices from 2010 to the day Microsoft took over were, in my opinion, quite good. I don't think he was the worst. I feel there is a definite bias on behalf of the authors. I think the Finnish people are angry about the buyout, especially those who were with Nokia at that time.

Fire can I get the book?

Nokia was already fucked way before Elop.

Worst? He's the cooolest CEO!

He's nowhere near the worst CEOs in the past 10 years, not after the US's banking and housing crash, BP's oil spill or even yahoo's CEO lying on their resume. He was ineffective though until the initial MS deal that make Nokia exclusive to WP and brought Nokia billions to stay afloat.

The writers in the Finnish newspaper have a bone to pick with Elop.  I bet a dollar to a donut, they sought to find those in that "report" that despised the man for personal reasons more than those who were objective about Elop. Having said that, the question is do I agree with the assessment.  Based on what?  These same 200 words all these stories posted here? You really didn't say very much to ponder. I wish you guys would actually say something when you write these drive-by stories and solicit responses.

When it comes down to splitting hairs, all CEOs are measured on one thing and one thing only, share price. (of public companies that is)
their underlings manage and report to them the operations by which that company is ultimately valued and traded.
Worst all time CEO, heck no. One you want running your company or large division, perhaps, only temporarily. As others have pointed out, while maybe a good presenter, maybe he is there to be the hatchet man while the company defines the new space,Microsoft doesn't hire dummies, especially twice, more or less.
The poll was like what, 100 people? Seriously,what % worked there and was part of the downsizing?
When that happens to a great company like Nokia, dominant in its day, it is down right distressing.
It's analogous to Digital Equipment Corporation in the 80' with Ken Olsen. Great man, smart, generous, should he have been running the second largest computer company behind IBM, not really. When Robert Palmer was eventually brought in to replace him he did exactly what ELOP, did to Nokia, sliced/diced & sold. For Nokia II can see why they are upset, but he did what he had to do, create value for shareholders instead of bankruptcy. That's the price you pay in a public market economy. I respectfully disagree with the writers of that article.

In the case of Robert (GQ) Palmer he eventually destroyed the entire company not just a part of it as is the case with Nokia.  Nokia is still around and _may be_  for a long time.  DEC went bye-bye completley when it became Compaq (by purchase) which went bye-bye then it became part of HP (by purchase), which looks to be going in the bye-bye direction too.  KO moved DEC to #2 behind IBM.  GQ Bob moved DEC the opposite way.  All this is ancient history now.  Wonder how many folks reading this know ANY of this.  My guess - not many. In closing, I disagree with the premise of the article and how does one define "worst".

Dave,
They went bye bye when Ken addressed sales and others at Brown University and spoke the infamous words "the PC is going nowhere and Unix is the snake oil of operating systems". I wish i was short the stock however, Your right about GQ though, lol sad. It has been my experience engineers don't make the best ceo's. You of all must know after all windows server is basically VMS with a windows front end, cutler assured MSFT that when he went west.

Add 1 letter to the letters in HAL (2001 space odyssey) and you come up with IBM. Add 1 letter to VMS and you come up with WNT. With WP 8.x using the WNT kernel, there's VMS in the code - somewhere.

I stopped buying Nokia years ago because Symbian was too slow. Now I own three Lumia simply because of WP. If I want Android, I will buy Samsung. Motorola couldn't survive with Android, just saying.

As a CEO, Eflop is the worst. Just look at his CV and you'll see what happened to companies he commanded. Be glad he wasn't hired for the job at Microsoft. As a Trojan horse though, he's great. He did his work exactly as instructed by his overlords. Posted via the Windows Phone Central App for Android

Nokia was on their way to going out if business before he got there. Without MS infusing then with cash, they would have fallen completely.

Yep, i agree. He pretty much put Nokia out of business. The market power of Nokia was seriously overestimated by him. They switched to WP exclusively when it would have been smart to sell phones on android, WP and their own os.

He brought Windows Phone to Nokia. That alone makes him a decent CEO. Screw Android.

From Nokia point of view he sold a money loosing division to another company. Isn't that good. Does LG is a successful Android smartphone maker? HTC ? Sony ? . Why HP got split now ? I know he didn't become Alan Mulally of Ford for Nokia.

What could he have done? If Nokia was going to set the world on fire with their Android offerings, they would have needed to do it well before 2010. Symbian clearly wasn't doing the trick, so I imagine these disgruntled employees are the ones that were so in love with Meego that they decided to leave to start up Jolla. Unfortunately Meego had no hope of making as big a dent in the smartphone world as Windows Phone could have. And Jolla's successor to it, Sailfish OS, is just as irrelevant. Like Blackberry, it has to rely on Android apps outside of the Google Play store just to maintain any resemblance of usefulness. Elop did the best he could considering Nokia was very late to the smartphone game and they last time anyone talked about them was to make fun of the N-Gage.

It's funny, because with the Hardware Division sold to Microsoft, Nokia is a healthier company now. That division was driving the company in the red, while other divisions were making profits. Now Nokia is profitable and with 7 billions in the pocket to invest. Even accounting Elop of every decision Nokia made (simply untrue), the final result is good for everyone: good for Nokia shareholders, good for Microsoft that has full control over Lumia phones, good for WP users that will continue to have the same quality and even better thanks to MS infinite cash. It's a good way to be the worst CEO in the world.

Tough to argue with results; or, in this case, the lack of results. Maybe it was inevitable, but just a few years ago Nokia was #1, and now they are gone.

What few years ago are you referring to? Before or after the iPhone and Android?

What a load of crap. Let's interview armchair quarterbacks who are upset over Nokia's fall and see if they want to slam their prior boss... great strategy for accurate "journalism". Not.

I knew the Authors are Finnish the minute I read the title. They still live in denial & blame Elop for Nokia's fuck ups.
Nokia's downhill started the day Steve Jobs (RIP) walked to the stage back in 2007 ... They thought they were big enough & bad enough to not play the game ... (Just like BlackBerry) ... Everything went downhill since then & later on they brought Elop to fix a sinking ship & do damage control ... Given the circumstances, I think he did okay, I mean things could've been a lot worse. To all the Keyboard CEOs who thought Nokia would've been better off with Android ... Things ain't looking good on that side either ... Sony posted Loses, HTC is barely making enough to stay a float, Motorola exchanged hand 3 times since 2010 & Samsung's momentum seems to running out ... They are projecting a 60% decline in profit this Quarter. I don't know about LG though. ______
P.s. No offense to the great people of Finland.

Yeah but Nokia wasnt supposed to be sold to Microsoft even if Nokia was in a down hill

And then what? Leave the mobile arm of Nokia to die it's inevitable death given the obvious trajectory?

The mobile division would've dragged the whole company down with it.

Easy now, Nokia sold one of their divisions to Microsoft, you don't want to piss off DJCBS over a technicality ;)
Nokia needed the Microsoft money ... Look at it that way, they thought Either sell the phone division & become a healthy company ... Or risk the entire company ... If Nokia (entire company) went bust, the results would've been catastrophic.

Well said, well said! This is the bitter core of truth, all other arguments are just last minute blame techniques, can't be the person to take the fall and stuff. It amazes me the way the impression is created that Nokia phones were healthy and strong prior to Elop and he just came in to destroy! I don't mind counter opinions but they should please speak the entire truth, it's not like we can change what's already done!

Thank you :)
I totally agree.

Nokia shouldnt have sold to microsoft it was okay for microsoft to have their OS on Nokia Devices...Nokia days are ending very soon because of that

I dont think Andriod would of worked, very crowded now already. Even with samsung starting to see down grade in profit this year. To a tune of 60% less with the next report comming out for the phone divison. Other option was meego.

Yes, I agree.

He wasn't that bad!!!

The fact remains is that Nokia was haemorrhaging money long before Elop became CEO and their market dominance was gradually being eroded away. Also Nokia never gained a proper foot hold on the US market, if they did the story may have turned out quite differently.Nothing lasts in this volatile world of technology, just look at blackberry - once they had every other teen with a blackberry and dominated the enterprise. Now they are as relevant as word pad on a your PC lol...

All in one basket? Asha and nokia x still exist, for now.

Even if every bad thing said about Elop is true, there are still so many CEOs out there that are far worse. Look at the CEO of Hostess. This guy basically just came in to give bonuses and a golden parachute to himself while running the company into the ground, and then put all the blame on unions.

I don't know if he's the worst CEO or not... At the time Nokia switch to Windows Phone, I didn't like it... I was a owner of a Nokia N9 with Meego and the phone was much, much, much better than the rest... Hardware was fantastic (and that's why they are still using the same design on Lumias) and the OS was way better than Android (I really dislike it, it's a mess, poor memory management, etc, etc). I switch to Lumia and Windows Phone OS ONLY when 8 was out. And with 8.1 it's even better. However, Nokia made some mistakes on Lumias... For example, they did a terrible job on Lumia 1520. I can't admit that the flagship of the Lumias series had flaws like the touchscreen. I had one for 2 month and it became useless because i couldn't even insert my PIN! Also, I don't understand how another flagship like 930 doesn't have Glance or a SD card slot... I hope that MS can expand the share of market now that they control the hardware... to be honest, I really don't like the alternatives (Android or iOS)  

Agree with you entirely about the N9. Lovely looking phone. I wanted one but couldn't have one because they weren't made available in the UK. A shameful decision I thought at the time. Eventually they plumped for Windows & stuck it into the 800, which was more or less the same form factor as the N9. It was this that convinced me to move from Android. The question for Elop was whether to stay with & develop Symbian, or move to Android, Meego or Windows Phone. Nokia was sinking & any choice was fraught with difficulty. Unfortunately for Nokia, Elop chose Windows Phone. Supposedly a brand spanking sparkly new operating system. It wasn't up to the job, because it wasn't ready. The excuses made were that it was new & we would have to wait for all the features the other OSs had. This would have been excuseable had it actually been true. In fact Microsoft had been in the smartphone business longer than most, so there was no excuse for this dud of an OS. And what made matters worse was the seeming lack of effort on Microsoft's part to resolve the issues. They appeared to move at a glacial pace. Had the system been up to scratch in the first place & had it been backed up by a dynamic Microsoft throwing much needed resources at it, Nokia may still have been with us. Perversely it was the other way around. While Microsoft laboured, Nokia made every effort possible to push the platform. It's obvious that without Nokia there would be no Windows Phone now. Microsoft let them down in a big way & one wonders if this was almost on purpose, so that they could take advantage and pick up the pieces when the crash came.

Brian Driscoll, that was the Hostess CEOs name. Took me forever to remember it.

I'm pretty sure the majority of Nokia's staff, worker's family and most of Finland probably have him as Nokia's worst CEO too.

None of us can get even close to knowing what happened behind the scenes at Nokia unless we actually worked with Mr. Elop himself. People act like the CEO of a company runs it like a king, but there's plenty of other people involved in big decisions. That said, I'm completely behind what Elop did at Nokia. Nokia clearly didn't want to make any "me too" hardware. They had a beautiful thing going with Meego but it had even less developer support than Windows Phone. They went with what they thought was the next best thing, and they were right, they chose what is now solidly the 3rd largest platform and created some amazing hardware that put Nokia's name back into the general public. That's what they needed to do. The only other thing they could have done to stay alive is stay small, or go with Android, and if I was in his position, I wouldn't have chosen anything other than Windows Phone either. Those writers are just mad that one of the products Finland was most well known for is no longer Finnish.

This article could be subtitled: "The DJCBS Tribute Thread". This is the headline that he's been waiting for with his "Eflop" gimmick. :p

That's what happens when History is on your side. And now I shall rule supreme! ;P Posted via the Windows Phone Central App for Android

u got an android phone?

Of course. I've always said that once Nokia was gone from the phone business, I would leave WP for lack of another trusted OEM. I always said I would go where Nokia is. Now Nokia is on Android (with the Z Launcher and HERE maps, both of which already run on my Z3Compact). And so am I. If there's something you should know about me, that something is: I always fulfill my promises. ;)

Nokia focus needed to go towards Meego, the N9 had a ridiculous amount of intuitive features that were so far beyond phones at the time it was incredible. It was simple enough for the iPhone crowd to get behind and advanced enough that Android tinkerers could do as they please. The only thing holding it back was that it wasn't given a second chance and that was because of Elop. It was the most critically acclaimed phone at the time, beating Samsung, Apple, Sony, whoever. The only negative of any review was that there was never going to be a successor. Nokia, under Elop, then refused to release the phone in the major mobile markets, even though demand had it sold out in many places it was released, in favor of the Lumia 800 which was forthcoming. Everything about your precious Lumia polycarbonate phone designs stemmed from that one technical marvel, complete with the curved front glass (which makes absolutely no sense in Lumia phones as it was a design that came from the swipe interface) and Swype keyboard (in built in the OS long before any other phone had implemented it). What could have been.

Hardly anyone in the U.S. has ever hears of the N9, or even Meegi, for that matter. It was NEVER going to take the world by storm, because that would have taken developer support, which is financed by $$, which the U.S. market provides, and is what drives IOS, and Android adoption. Get your heads out of the clouds. The most popular Nokia phone, by 2009, was a burner, in the 3100 series, that the Russian mob, and terrorists loved, because they couldn't be traced! Nokia. Was finished (no pun intended). The billion dollar welfare check/year from MS, kept the lights on, and prevented more layoffs in the r&d department. You're all killing me with the nonsense fanboyism/fetishization, of this company. It was DEAD, with mobile phones, as the proverbial boulder, tied around its neck. It is now ALIVE, and refocused on its next century. Nokia didn't begin, with mobile phones, and apparently, is not interested in ending, with them either, and good on them. They can now dominate the GPS market, lime they did phones, and live to fight another day. It's the MS Device Division, now, folks. Its not going to change, for all your annoying whining and moaning. It's like being stuck in that guy's head, that was on YouTube, screaming, "LEAVE BRITTANY SPEARS ALONE!" I've read all the comments, on this thread, and they've made me B**ch-averse...

Ouch

And that is my favorite basket, out of the other baskets.

Yes he is worst CEO,no doubt. He killed the Nokia. At that time Elop and MS was not showing good interest to Windows phone but after acquisition of Nokia handset division,MS is doing better job. Posted via the Windows Phone Central App for Android

I call it as a win-win for Nokia and Microsoft as well. And, the decision did help Microsoft mark their entry into smartphone world. Nokia at the same time has a new direction and vision shredding their losing edge. Some decisions are hard to make and I admire Elop for his guts in doing what he believed was right. While a good number have lost their jobs, he left a ray of hope for everyone by making sure that neither of the companies or their strategies are dead.

So, two reporters interview 100 ex-employees, and based on that information, come to the conclusion that Elop was a bad CEO. Not saying that he was or wasn't since I'm no expert in business, but I would bet you could find 100 ex-employees of any company, and based on that biased view, come to the conclusion an existing or previous CEO was the worst CEO ever.

It's not only based on the 100 employees. It's their accounts together with the known facts. Posted via the Windows Phone Central App for Android

To bad they didn't talk about they guy that killed Nokia, the previous CEO.  If anyone says Nokia was fine when Elop arrived then they are just misinformed ballwashers.

I became a Nokia user because of windows phone. I just love the combination of WP with Nokia hardware. I would definitely ditch Nokia if they go fully android.

Same here, but m a old Nokia user. I hate android.

Its tough to say... On one hand I love my Lumia 820. Nokia was NOT my reason why I went with Windows Phone however. I chose Lumia as my next upgrade BC they were "all in" with WP. I used a HTC HD2 to experiment with WP before the Lumia. I think Elop made poor decisions while being CEO. We don't know what the other choices were presented in these meetings. They could have built an incredible Android device with high end specs, and built their own services into it (I don't mean MSFT and the "X" line of devices). I would imagine that would have taken a lot more engineering and time, which they didn't have. They could have just taken Google's services with Android but they would be paying Google a license fee and pay Microsoft a patent license fee. I think dangling money in front of a company that needed it helped sway the opinion more so than anything. That's why primarily they went with WP.

Hey! Wait!.. Wait!.. He was not anyway bad from a consumer's perspective. He maintained 'the things Nokia is known about' very well.
And, I think It was Elop when Pureview debuted.
Yeah, but I certainly complain about him if he is responsible for the discontinuation of Symbian.

No, he is one of the best ceo. Because of him wp and Nokia survive

So true. Nokia would have been one of the leading brands if it had taken up Android as the major OS instead of WP long ago. Elop lead to the downfall of this giant. Now it lives under the shadow of Microsoft. Posted via Windows Phone Central App

If you look at the picture of him holding the phone, looks like he is flipping us off :)

I don't know if he was a Trojan horse or not, what I remember though is that Nokia was already going down before his arrival as CEO. Did he fail to save Nokia? Yes, but no one in their right mind can say he was the one that ruined the company. Nokia was already in trouble. They were offering Symbian phones with a resistive touch screen that were a pain to use as their flagship devices against the likes of iPhones, the first Nexus and other Android phones. By the time Elop took over as CEO Nokia had already lost a great chunk of its user base even in a country like mine (Italy), where Nokia was, and to a certain extent still is, the synonym for quality phones.

No....not true...he is not worst CEO...and doesn't deserve this rogue statement

fate of Nokia with symbian ~ fate of RIM BlackBerry. of course they want whine about it because business went out of finland (nokia history ____________  <--- goes here). He is one of great CEOs imo.

So that means he will not be a good exVP? Do something MS

He is the WORST ceo ever...i wish no other company gets a Trojan horse like him..

He was awful, there was no way he should not have teamed with Android also to maximize Nokia's chances of survival.

Android is dominated by Samsung in the Marketplace. Hey even a company like Sony (or Motorola under Google's ownership) which makes excellent handsets easily the equal of Samsung is fairing poorly against the likes of Samsung. Nokia extending themselves financially to support Android in a truly competitive manner was likely NOT possible and surely their Board of Directors would have voted down the notion to invest heavily in a Platform that already had too many companies struggling to stay profitable.

[DISCLAIMER: This is purely my opinion, and criticism and a healthy discussion is welcome. Let's just deal with it a little maturely. ☺] I personally don't think he's the best CEO ever, but he made good choices. Nokia as is was not getting anywhere. Going android was no sure way to succeed (see HTC, Sony and where they stand today).
I personally blame Microsoft. They were very slow with the development of Windows Phone in the early years.
WP 8 was what WP 7 should've been. MS has always been playing catch up, in terms of features and support.
I mean their phones didn't have the ability to select multiple pictures or SMSes till late 2012. What the heck is that? And not to mention how phones like the lumia 900 lost support within 2 months of release. Now I understand there were complications in bringing WP 8 to older devices, but wasn't this supposed to be planned?
From late 2012-late 2013, all flagships on WP had only a snapdragon s4 dual-core processor (which was already an year old in 2012 btw). All this happened because MS couldn't offer timely support.
Also, Nokia too was desperately releasing devices at times. I mean the 1520 came in a couple of months since the 1020, with snapdragon 800. Couldn't they have waited and given a proper 1020 with a better processor that could eventually get 4k videos, continuous focus and fast captures - these are features you'd expect from Flagship Camera Phone. And same is the case of the 900. They would've known that MS would not support WP7 devices soon. So they shouldn't have released the 900 at all.
So I guess the only fault by Nokia was releasing some wrongly timed devices.
WP 8.1 was again a catch up, though it did reduce the gap a little.
If MS had developed WP faster and dealt with it better, Nokia would've stayed in the phone business, made lots of profits, while WP itself would've gained a much higher market share than it has today. And yes, you could've played Candy Crush on WP then, too!
Also Nokia should've timed some devices better, so they had a smaller loss.
So ya, Elop is partly to be blamed, but I guess lack of enough support from MS as a partner was the main cause of what happened to Nokia. And that, I believe is the actual conspiracy by MS. Providing half-sized support so Nokia eventually weakens, but WP isn't gone. Then buying Nokia and becoming a devices and services company.

While he is definitely not the best, I don't think he is the worst CEO in the world. Not even the worst CEO in the Nokia itself. The worst CEO in the Nokia is whoever it was when they didn't catch the hint on iPhone hype and playing save with Symbian. If Finnish want to look someone to blame, they should blame this CEO instead.

You don't write a book to restate a known fact.;-)

Objectively speaking,
Supposing Nokia had adopted Android earlier, they would have retained their relevance, maybe even remain ahead of Samsung. Though I love WP but Nokia made a bad decision by not embracing Android. Posted via Windows Phone Central App on Android

More proof that the previous CEO destroyed Nokia.  It was sinking as Elop arrived.

If true, he is in a very large category.  I worked for a couple of them.

If Nokia Shares start getting down during Mr Elop's tenor then Yes he is a worst CEO.
If Nokia didn't bring revolution after 3310 and Elop did same then Yes he is a worst CEO.
He sold Nokia to Microsoft and then join Microsoft. Thousands of works got unemployment then yes he is a WORST CEO.

I am telling this since begining. He the worst CEO of the Millennium He is the Devil in Human flesh

Yeah sure

it's not like he had an easy job. Symbian was dying fast and had to make a tough choice: jump on the google bandwagon, get help from from old buddies at microsoft, or go his own way. At the glacial pace symbian moved "go his own way" was probably the first option off the table. That leave google or MS, one of which he knew people at, but the other had traction. eh... it's kind of a toss up for me. Not very obvious. Now why I'm sitting here with a lumia 920 waiting for a better phone as my contract winds down? That's all on Nokia. And maybe my love of  sub-5" phones but they should've asked me.

I would back him for choosing windows platform but he disappointed with the way he dealt Nokia

Absolutely not! Elop may have not been a great CEO, but anyone else would have turned Nokia bankrupt. If they had released a high end Android device or stuck with Symbian, very few devices would sell. The whole fact that Nokia = Windows Phones made sure that the company stood out and a had a chance against the higher powers.

What is their opinion of the previous CEO that actually ran Nokia into the ground ?  Sorry guys but Nokia was sinking when Elop arrived.

Well the current Apple CEO isn't doing too well, given bendgate, and hairgate.

Whether he was a bad CEO or mediocre is immaterial. For the record I don't believe that he was the worst CEO. What is more important is that, logical as it surely was for Nokia under Elop's reign to adapt WP as their "modern" smartphone platform and even more manifestly logical as it was for Microsoft to choose a marquee Cellphone company in Nokia, the sad reality was that MS has clearly been the problem or culprit from the get-go. From all that I have read, it seems obvious that, at least until the installation of Satya Nadella as CEO, MS' approach in convincing Nokia to support their new mobile reboot platform WP7 was less than a half hearted, poorly focused attempt to show the world that it could compete technologically with its nemesis APPLE and later Google in the world of mobile communications. Even at the time the decision was made to pursue the acquisition of Nokia handset business, they were not truly focused on competing seriously with Android and iOS but merely on launching ever-improving OS (even when that meant sacrificing/alienating early WP7 adopters not to mention App developers) versions for WP. They didn't offer much support to Nokia and there were a number of instances of Elop complaining vociferously about his old employer MS in the dismal marketing of WP by Microsoft. After all Nokia was fulfilling their side/share of the partnership in designing & building excellent handsets (poor battery life notwithstanding) whereas MS was doing d*** all in the marketplace for WP not getting all Carriers to push WP, not fronting the re$ources needed to train personnel at all the North American Cellular Carriers on the advantages etc. of the WP8 platform etc. etc. So maybe Elop may have been a bad CEO at least from the Finnish perspective, but from almost every other keen observers' perspective, it's Microsoft that has truly failed WP and one can only hope that Mr. Nadella's impact will be swift enough to give the great WP OS a fighting chance against the Android and iOS relentless advance.

No matter if here still exist, remember two weeks ago there's a new  explaining that nokia will  slow down development for here maps on WP in favor of iOs and android. http://www.wpcentral.com/nokia-here-maps-will-wind-down-our-windows-phon... So, calm down the coments that Nokia still alive in WP mobile devices.  So for me that book it's 1000% correct that Elop it's the Worst CEO in history

Good to see some greedy fellows here, I believe most of them are kids as they might have missed the era when nokia is the most innovative and future forward organization... Other companies just jumped in the cellular ship for profits, a market completely developed by nokia, there only fault is they overlook the competition from android and then ios, those bad words for nokia just shows how ignorant a regular consumer is...... Nokia for ever...

The first iPhone arrived in 2007,this we all know. It took Nokia 3 years to realise that they had fallen behind the times and to start making moves to change that. Enter Stephen Elop and if you ask me, Nokia were already past the point of no return mark! So how good or bad was the then CEO? Major mistakes were made & the then top ranks at Nokia were too set in their ways & not forward thinking enough to keep the number one spot that Nokia once had. So I think its a bit unfair to want to blame it all on Elop. Posted via the WPC App for Android!

It's so easy to write a book. Its lots harder to turn around a company that has lost its way, which very few people in Finland will even acknowledge is what had happened to Nokia. At least Nokia is still there, restructured and refocused just as it has done several times since it began 150 years ago. In the tech world alone I can think of a couple of failed HP CEO's who did far worse than Elop but HP still stands. Anyone remember Worldcom? How about Enron? Lehman Brothers? Gil Amelio?

Yes absolutely, we are doing this discussion cause nokia is a company too big to fail, when elop decided to go with WP nokia has nothing in hand except ashas and few Symbian belle devices all having hard time to compete, though at the time of release wp is lacking the basic features that are even present on the mediocre belle phones this even pushed back the wp adoption...

Without Elop's run Nokia, WP may not be in existence today... He's a better speaker than leader it seems

WP comes as a lifeline to nokia... Though they are able to pave there own path if they have opened there eyes few years before...

MeeGo!

Yeah...

I agree, I totally agree

Ha! Blackberry CEO rules this ring. Elop tried hard but still managed to sell Nokia handset division alone for 7 billion (for 10 years??)

He might not be one of the best for sure, but he isn't the worst; he just didn't have many options to go with.

nokia's failure wasn't Elop's fault, it was doomed long before his entrance, people should blame the CEO before him, who made a high end phone(n97) with the same CRAP internals of the lowest one(5230) using questionable tech like resistive touchscreens, and used a decade old OS that wasnt designed with touchscreens in mind, its a hard choice but one that you HAVE to take in order to keep on the race, see what microsoft did with windows 8 for reference

Everyone except Apple was using dated OS'es at the time. As it were, the N9, bad as it was, could outperfom the iPhone at every turn, but had a less intuitive UI and much smaller app-support. Plus a complete lack of publicity! I actually liked the resistive touchscreen, as it allowed me to use my phone during winter without having to remove my gloves! :-)

people have temporary memory. Now everyone point their finger to elop in case of Nokia's failure. Infact developers of Symbian destroyed Nokia. A company is not just some building and people to come in and go out. The strategy of Nokia, even before elop was not good enough to breathe among iOS and Android. Developers for those platforms were almost symbian developers but with more consumer to meet, they left symbian and started playing in those platform field, when they found themselves, realized that android did its job, "Symbian died!" meego, belle or any other thing which popped out from the developer was nothing except "Bada" like fate(No major support, Not many apps to attract, Not any low end market to hold infrastructures of Mother company). Nokia was almost died. in europe there is no second chance as there are many chances in US or Far east. Nokia N96 was the last model which was heard as latest phone from the company in most markets, but in regions without any strategy to hold market and market share li Middle east, even now, too many Nokia models were and are available and those markets are limited to maximum 10% of global marketshare. Elop accidentally or deliberately did the best choice that in order to recover what is remained from the Nokia, dealt with MS to produce only WP. Right now there are too many models of android handsets in the world that are unable to be stable for one week steadily and you have to restart the phone every week(in some cases everyday). If microsoft could change brains in the stability direction, Lumia 525 would be able to set a global record of selling. Advertisement and market controlling of others who absobed the market share to any price, failed both Nokia and Elop to find the right way. Elop was 50/50 in management and now he is not CEO, he is under supervision of many strategy makers in Microsoft, so he is able to do better here. He is a good manager but a poor executive in chief.

Anyone remember Léo Apotheker? Former CEO of HP who thought it would be a good idea to get out of the PC business? He was so bad that he took a multibillion dollar business into record losses and plummeting stocks and was fired after less than a year! He may have been the worst.

I think he did the best he could within the position Nokia were on the ropes as far as smartphones were concerned and android is incredibly crowded and so impossible to get noticed in.
Especially as Samsung are practically taking over android.
So a platform that performs well has little or no competition and friends within Microsoft allowed him to try and do with Nokia what Samsung did with Android.
From a user perspective he did a great job.

Depends on perspective; Elop himself is doing just fine, and every MS affiliate will have appreciated his efforts... IMO Nokia should have presented the Meego-running N9 a year earlier and poured all efforts into what was at the time (and arguably still is) the smoothest UI/OS by far. Chances are they would have made a much bigger impact, and have left WP as the fourth alternative.

I think we probably need to read the book to make up our minds

I absolutely MUST weigh in on this. All of the mobile devices I have owned were Nokia phones, with one exception - My Samsung Focus. I have been a life long Nokia AND Microsoft Fan. I stuck it out with Nokia nearly until the end. My phones (6340i, 6102, 6555, 6650, e71x, 5230) - the last 3 of which were Symbian S60v3/5 devices. While the hardware of these devices were amazing, and Symbian had NEXT GENERATION features before EVERYONE else... (ie REAL multitasking, Flash support... just to name a few) - they could not match the bling of new devices. The user experience on the Nokia 5230 was WOEFUL. The user interface WAS never going to catch on in the US, it was slow, unresponsive, and buggy. This is at a time the iPhone's experience was butter like (tho lacking many power user type features). Android was catching on QUICK. Developers of major app's wouldn't PEE on the Nokia OVI store if it was on fire. Nokia was LOST. They never could have created a decent GUI or user experience quick enough with Maemo,meego - whatever they called it. The core of Symbian was extremely powerful - but had major issues. Memory leaks, memory/CPU starved hardware... made for a completely unstable experience. The webkit browser was a total disaster. I didn't see a path for Nokia to survive. It was one disappointment after another. N97 anyone? X6? - OPK was to blame (and the other management in Nokia during the 2000s). HE fiddled while Nokia burned. Google and Apple ate Nokia's ENTIRE market share before his eyes. I never understood how Nokia ended up in the position it was when Elop arrived. I couldn't take anymore and needed a new start on phones. I went to AT&T and saw the Samsung Focus. I loved the responsive/smooth interface. The stability was also WAY past anything Nokia was offering. It was for sure hard to let go of some of Symbians great features: Program Manager, REAL multitasking... etc. It was a trade off I was willing to make. I cannot see how Elop is being blamed. I was on the RIDE until nearly the last exit. It was a SAD one.

Amen to that! I totally agree with you, Nokia was offering phones like the 5230 as an alternative to the iPhone, the Galaxy S and the Nexus One. While the user experience with Android was good and even better with the iPhone, it was a total disaster with Symbian. Buggy UI, slow, unresponsive resistive touch screen that also used to get dirty between the two resistive layers resulting in an image quality far from being crisp and sharp, and a web browser and email hub way behind the competition. Nokia was doomed at that time. Going Android was not a sure bet either, we'll never know if it would have worked or not, Nokia had already lost its user base in favor of Apple, Samsung and Htc. Elop might have his responsibilities, but he is not the only one to blame.

Yes...the worst CEO in history....

He executed perfectly.. well almost since Microsoft didn't get the map services whcih should've been part of the deal. Elop did everything right, from Microsoft's perspective.

Nokia was already doomed by the time Elop got on board. They could have gone with Android, but the brand was no longer strong enough to stand up against the lights of HTC, Sony and the beast that is Samsung. At least WP gave Nokia a unique selling point. Its just a shame consumers tend to by what's currently trendy instead of going out of their way to make an informed decision.

Some sour grapes over there for sure, but hard to argue that he failed.  The company ended up having to sell it's phone division to survive.  I'd call that a failed attempt to turn the company around.    What can be argued is whether it was inevitable or if someone else, making different choices, could have made a difference.   Seems to me the stage was set before he took over with shortsighted decisions by his predecessors.  

Yep! Surely agreed

What some forget is Microsoft isn't a company built around the short-term but the long-term. When they support a company then take them or a major division of them over it is a strategic planning on their part for the long term. The deal with Nokia was never about "saving" Nokia's mobile division but what patents they were getting out of the deal so Microsoft can recoup their total investment and to be able to turn a profit with. The people who think that Microsoft intended to save Nokia is just living in a fantasy. Elop was appointed by Microsoft, Nokia couldn't refuse it. Microsoft didn't get everything that they wanted because the Finns realalized what was really happening and saved what they could from the division before it was sold. They also got the time limit inserted into the sale instead of loosing the right to manufacture phones and still retain rights to the name. It's all a matter of perspective wither you believe Elop was the worst ceo. If you wanted to see Nokia continue its mobile division as it was, then he was.. If you wanted to see it change and adapt to the current market he wasn't. Personally I think he did the company a favor for the long term. They now have the time to completely reorganize and start over. They can now see what is happening with the world's strongest companies in this and learn from them and from their own mistakes. Microsoft makes it's money on patents and software not on hardware and that is all they care about . This will never change. Nokia has a chance to start over if they choose to and can now sell it's software to anyone. If they can make enough profit in the next couple of years we might see them reentering the mobile arena, but if they don't I seriously doubt that we will. Posted via Windows Phone Central App

Whether Elop or Ballmer is more to blame, Microsoft did not have to screw Finland the way they did. I'm glad Nokia still has the maps division and some other aces up their sleeves - they have the smarts to pull through over the next few years, and they will.

Good people always end up bashed. How horrible.. just SMH.

100% agreed,Elop ran Nokia to the ground,Nokia should have gone the android route as well as Windows and should have not sold out,almost every phone 10 years ago was a Nokia and from Next year no more Nokia,and the company was sold for a song,I'm sure Nokia was worth more than WhatsApp Posted via the Windows Phone Central App for Android

I think he whas a crap ceo to save nokia if they where staying on meego they would done good

There are worst CEOs than Elop. But, not opening up Nokia to Android was a mistake. He shouldn't have gone exclusive with Microsoft, or found another way out after WP. But, as a last ditch effort, he managed to get the Nokia purchased by MSFT.

The CEO before Elop is the worst..he always prioritize the Symbian and he know that Symbian is lossing its market share...if Elop didn't sign a partnership with MS...Nokia will be completely lost like a bubble

I am Pekka Nykanen, author of the book. I'd like to clarify what we mean by "one of the worst - if not the worst". We have not come across a case comparable to this. A CEO arrives in a company with a worldwide (excl. US) household brand name and a clear number one position in the marketplace (Symbian 36% vs. Android 25% in smartphones, Q32010) and growing sales. After less than three years Nokia's position in smartphones was 8th and market share 3-4%. That is why we say one of the worst CEOs, if not the worst of all times. There are of course cases like Enron with criminal acts and horrible mergers but we have not accounted them. The book is currently only in Finnish. We are working on to get translated.    

Steven Flop.

Stephen Elop's he destroy Nokia we heat him fuking a tidy smallest Trojan horse from MS .. I hope to see him in hill

    Some people just need to let go of the past. Elop was in a no-win situation trying to bail Nokia out of a situation that they put themselves. If Nokia had gone with Android instead of Windows, they would have been another HTC, high quality devices getting overlooked because of Samsung's marketing muscle and they would have been put up for sale sooner. Microsoft was paying them to use the WP OS exclusively so it was mutually beneficial. If they had gone with Android, they would not have had any money coming in. People need to look at the facts and stop living in some fantasy world.  

Sorry but the title "Worst CEO" has been won already by former CEO of HP Leo Apotheker.

For the people of findland,,he is THE WORST, I get,I understood it.... But its all about greed with this people,MSFT really MASTERMINDED the acquisition of NOKIA devices and services...by 20016 Nokia is back in the game designing phones for MSFT etc....