Open Letter to Nokia Shareholders

I just learned a few hours ago, via Kauppalehti in Finland, that there is now a buzz around the Finnish shareholders association, to consider getting signatures to get Elop fired (special shareholders meeting and all that). I had not in any way thought about writing any Nokiastuff today, but just reading some of the discussion at Kauppalehti's forum had me instantly motivated, that I should say something. Not to my regular readers who on this blog know my views very well - I was one of the first to demand Elop be fired, that is no surprise. But the honest discussion and debate that the Kauppalehti forum had in Finnish, among shareholders, with legitimate concerns. Is this Elop's fault, would removing him resolve anything, etc. So I instantly dived into writing from my heart, an Open Letter to Finnish Nokia shareholders, in Finnish, why I think yes, Elop should be fired and why it actually could result in reasonably rapid improvement in Nokia's predicament.

 

I am definitely not going to attempt a verbatim literal translation. That blog was written in Finnish, the first time I've done that on this blog for a whole article - and I am pretty sure, most who would read that article are not regular readers of this blog, so many points I felt I should be very clear on exactly what it is (and what it is not) about.

So let me more just summarize on this English version, as most who would read THIS version, will tend to be my regular readers and you are probably more than tired of my tirades against Elop by now. So here goes, the abbreviated version of my open letter

OPEN LETTER TO NOKIA SHAREHOLDERS

I have been very vocal about Nokia CEO mismanagement of Nokia and already called for him to be fired a year ago. As there now is a growing interest in removing Elop from office, I would like to offer a few pertinent comments.

WHAT THIS IS NOT ABOUT

Nokia had severe problems already before Elop joined, he did not create them all. Symbian is not the issue either, Nokia had decided to transition away from Symbian well before Elop joined the company. Also the selection of Windows is not the issue here, that was a decision blessed by Nokia's Board.

NOKIA DESPAIR STARTED LAST YEAR FEBRUARY

Elop caused personally the transition for Nokia from profitable business to loss-making business, and he did this in February 2011. Nokia's smartphone business which generated 40% of Nokia's profits and had reported growing sales revenues, growing unit sales, and most importantly, strongly growing profits, was instantly plungedinto declining sales in units and revenues, and became loss-making. The unit has not recovered since and the latest quarter its loss-making worsened. This was the Elop Effect, where Elop combined the fatal communication error of the Ratner Effect, with the fatal communication error of the Osborne Effect. I call this never-before-tested suicide concoction, the Elop Effect. That is where Nokia's current despair originates from. Before that point, Nokia's profit engine, its smarpthone unit, was reporting strongly increasing profits, now ever worsening losses. Elop at least partially admits this was damaging (he admitted to Nokia shareholders meeting that yes, his memo did damage Nokia smartphone sales). Since then he has acted to try to recover the smartphone unit to profits, and has been unable to do so. Since this is a self-induced disaster by the CEO, and in 18 months since he has not been able to fix the costliest communication error in corporate governance, he is clearly unfit to manage Nokia and should be fired now.

TWO EXAMPLES

 

That is not the extent of why. Since then Elop has continued to mismanage Nokia. I have listed on this blog huge strategic blunders and miniscule management mis-steps, but let me only mention two giant errors here. First about the N9. Nokia's N9 the new smartphone running Nokia's new MeeGo OS, was not launched by Nokia into all countries. But the German weekly newsmagazine Der Stern reviewed the N9 to incredibly glowing ratings, with the astonishing endorsement, that the magazine recommended its readers travel to another country like Switzerland or Austria to buy the N9. Understand, this is not a technology magazine, Der Stern is a general weekly newsmagazine like Time in the USA, yet it chose to review a smarpthone not even sold in Germany and so loved it, recommended readers fly to other countries to go get one. You can hardly ask for a better review ever and this may be the best review of any Nokia smartphone ever given by a mainstream non-technical magazine in any country of all time. Nonetheless, Elop refused to let the N9 be sold in Germany!

Any CEO with the slightest amount of sense would understand this is a rare opporunity and if the N9 is so highly thought of by one of Germany's largest papers, Nokia should jump through every hoop to capitalize on this, including having contests whose winners will be flown to Austria or Switzerland to pick up their N9s and of course the smart CEO rushes to launch the N9 in Germany immediately - this was Nokia's most expensive and most profitable smartphone at the time. Only a complete moron would refuse to let the N9 be sold under such incredibly stong reception - while Nokia's smarpthone unit is generating a loss!!! So Elop has decided he rather force Nokia shareholders suffer for bigger losses than let his decision be overturned by the love of Nokia by the German market - mind you, Germany is Europe's biggest handset market by a wide margin. 

A similar management mistake from Britain. The D&AD awards are the 'Oscars' or 'Olympics' or 'Nobel prizes' for technology design. And yes, the N9 won the D&AD awards to prize this year, in Britain, beating out not just other Nokia Lumia devices but get this, the Apple iPad 2 !!! Who beats Apple at design? This is a rare moment of Nokia handset design heroism. Any high school graduate would understand to instantly celebrate this massively in all major markets - Nokia beat Apple for goodness sake, in design of all things - and then launch the N9 in Britain immediately! You don't need to be a company desperately making losses, any profit-making company would jump at this opportunity - but far more so should Nokia, whose smartphone unit dives deeper into losses. The most profitable smartphone in Nokia's portfolio beats Apple in the UK and for some uncomprehensible reason the CEO refuses to let the N9 be sold in the UK. He is making decisions that clearly are not in Nokia's best interest. He must be fired for this.

Lets take my second example since the Elop Effect, this is from now just a few weeks ago, when Nokia gave its latest profit warning. Nokia ended its Meltemi project. Meltemi was an OS for low-cost smartphones. Deloitte tells us that this year over 300 million smartphone with an end-user unsubsidised price of under 100 dollars (no contract) will be sold. Windows Phone will never fit this price range but here is where most of Nokia's current Symbian based are sold. This is where Nokia's actual mass market customer base exists. And this market will also include the transition from top-end 'featurephones' now and into this decade. As Mary McDowell talked so often, this was Nokia's next billion customers, and the smartphones for them. No competitor to Windows Phone, and equally, a price point where Windows Phone cannot be made now or in the foreseeable future, If Nokia is to have a mass market position, Nokia needed Meltemi. Elop just killed it. Here is the rough part - the Meltemi project was at most only 2 months from - some say as little as 2 weeks from - launch !!! He killed Nokia's future, that was within weeks of ready. Why? There is no conceivable reason for this and it destroys essentially the whole Nokia strategy for the Emerging World markets where 5 out of 6 humans of the planet live, and where Nokia's smartphone market share still last year was around 50%

Stephen Elop pushed Nokia from a healthy growing-profits profit-making growing company into a loss-making shrinking company. Since then he has tried but not been able to fix that problem he personally caused. But he has since made a long series of mistakes to make Nokia's situation far worse, like the N9 and Meltemi examples I showed here. There is no question Elop is a horrid CEO who is damaging Nokia continuously. He has to be fired if for no other reason, for the sake of Nokia employee morale.

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN 

Would changing the CEO matter at this point. Actually yes. For all its current problems, there is one overarching problem that Nokia has. Look at Elop's statements at Nokia profit warnign last year in the spring, and Nokia Q2 results, and Nokia Q3 results, and Nokia Q4 results, and Nokia Q1 results, and Nokia's shareholder meeting, and Nokia's new profit warning, and Nokia's Q2 results. What has Elop said every single time is a huge problem (often its the first problem he mentions)? the problem with Nokia sales channel and its lack of support of Nokia sales and/or the carrier/operator lack of support to Nokia sales. Its not a problem that competitors have crated superphones with antigravity levitation and time travel. Its not production problems that have Nokia batteries exploding or causing cancer in pussycats. Its not problems by natural disasters like floods or fires or whatever. No, time and again, Elop says his problem with Nokia is the sales problem. 

Nokia used to have by far the best sales channel support and best carrier support in the handset industry, the envy of all rivals, a source of competitive advantage cherished in business papers. Nokia sales was legendary. And it suddenly vanished what? When? On February 11, 2011. The Elop Effect caused the sales crisis. And Élop has now tried and tried and tried to fix it. He's fired his sales staff, he's brought in new guys (from Microsoft). He's intervened personally and brought in Microsoft's Ballmer too, into those delicate carrier negotiations to try to restore sales. And what do we hear from every single major financial statement form Elop? The problems with sales and/or carriers. He has tried and he has spectacularly failed, in fixing this problem. A problem that will kill Nokia. If your sales channel refuses to sell your product, you die, its that simple. This is not open to any kind of debate. Elop states it very cleary this is the biggest problem Nokia faces and 18 months since he caused it, he has not been able to solve it. In fact, he's only made it worse.

Don't take my word for it. Did you see what S&P, Moody's and Fitch have written about Nokia? Just before the Elop Effect they so loved the new CEO and his management of Nokia, that Nokia's rating was by each of the three ratings agencies one notch below perfect! This right as we emerged from the deepest economic crisis of our lifetimes. But since then each of the three have issued only one type of update on Nokia - downgrades. Nokia is now so poisonous for them, that all three rate Nokia as junk. What was it they said why they downgraded Nokia? Not that Nokia had too much staff or old factories or its operating system or handsets were not modern, no. Every single time, every one of these three ratings agencies, stated that a reason - in most cases the biggest reason for the latest downgrade - was the sales problem.

I have explained on this blog many a time what various mistakes Elop has made that has angered and infuriated and enflamed those carrier relationships and the vital sales channel. He has made these worse. He is now seen as the personification of Nokia's sales and he is hated for it. The carriers have seen how Elop tries to use Microsoftian tactics from lies to deceat to bullying to threats - including the ultimate red flag waved at Nokia clients - Skype. Elop actually threatened he'd put Skype on Lumias even if the carriers said no. And this Microsoft Muppet then drags Microsoft's very own dictator-bully-in-charge, Steve Ballmer into some of those carrier meetings. And again, to rub more salt into the wounds, Elop hires ex Microsofties to push his sales to the same carriers. He is the very embodiment of poison. No carrier will now deal with him.  Elop is to Nokia carrier relations what water is to fire. He is now personally the cause of carriers punishing Nokia - because the carriers have all the time in the world and they know Elop will be gone, so they now just wait it out and every week that goes by, Samsung picks up more of Nokia's loyal customer base. 

So I am 100% convinced that if Elop is fired, the poisoned carrier relations that stiffle Nokia sales can start to heal. How to heal them the fastest, obviously, is to hire the next CEO not from inside Nokia or from the West Coast, but from - of course - the carrier community! One of their guys, who truly understands carrier business, to come run Nokia which serves those carriers. This is not rocket science.. And I'd add, get one from here in Asia, as half of the global market is here, obviously a current CEO and therefore, likely from one of the local operators/carriers, not a global carrier group CEO. Still a far more competent CEO level exec than what Elop was when he was hired far above his skills to take over Nokia.

If Nokia fired Elop now, immediately, and Nokia chairman Siilasmaa perhaps steps in for the interim while Nokia announce they will seek a replacement, and then Siilasmaa would call the top CEOs of hte 50 biggest carriers/groups over the follwoing week - and in every case tell them he, Siilasmaa is personally guaranteeing they will hire a CEO from a carrier/operator - it would restore the trust and faith in Nokia and the carrier sales boycott would end very fast. Not total happiness in every case, but the worst would instantly be over and Nokia would start to heal. The point is, that these current sales problems - are indeed caused by the very specific person of Elop, he is seen as the evil at Nokia by the carrier community and until he goes, Nokia will continue to be punished. The sooner Elop is fired, the sooner the healing can start to happen. (I am adding some relevant links to the deeper analysis for those who might be interested, here to the end of this blog)

So I urge all Nokia shareholders to join together to fire CEO Stephen Elop. He made massive mistakes, his management judgement cannot see the obvious best interests to Nokia and the current sales crisis cited not just by obscure bloggers such as myself but by Elop himself in every major financial position of Nokia for the past 18 months - and also by each of the three rating agencies every single time they downgraded Nokia. Elop started this mess, he has not been able to clean it up, and Nokia is only getting worse and worse into trouble. He has to be fired now.

I have always been, and always will be a big Nokia fan

 

Tomi T Ahonen   :-)

ADDITIONAL LINKS TO RELATED ARTICLES

SMARTPHONE MARKET

Full market analysis of the world smartphone situation now, Q2 of 2012 and if you need earlier data, here is world market situation in Q1 of 2012 and here is the full year analysis of smartphone market in year 2011.

A comparison of the performance of the four biggest smartphone makers, Samsung, Apple, Nokia and RIM (ie Blackberry) over the past few years, with illustrative graphics.

And here is my analysis of the preview to this year 2012 in the smartphone market share battles, where you may want to read how I previewed Nokia, Windows Phone, Symbian and MeeGo for what I expected to see.. 

NOKIA MARKET

Latest analysis of Nokia Q2 results by me including my views to the near future

Graphical illustration of how Nokia smartphone sales have collapsed from February 2011 with historical pattern showing past few years of strong growth, including comparisons to Apple iPhone and Samsung smartphones

My latest analysis why the hope that Nokia could climb back to 20% (or 19%) with Windows is not utterly completely impossible with all the latest data and facts that we know - please note, I did accept a year and a half ago, that this was possible for the Nokia-Microsoft partnership while I thought it unlikely. Now it is utterly impossbile. Read why. 

Reality of all those hyped USA and China market surges powered by Windows Phone and Lumia are now revealed to be lies. The truth about Nokia Lumia and Windows Phone performance in USA, China and other markets.

ELOP AS CEO

Comprehensive (truly epic length, 30,000 word 'essay' or in fact online mini-book about the strategic blunders of Stephen Elop as Nokia CEO but before you start to read that (will take you probably an hour to read that) start with the humorous and short 'summarize Ahonen' contest winners, where that 30,000 word blog was summarized into 140 characters of one Tweet. Very funny and still factual comments there and as a bonus - there were two original cartoons created based on my blog, that are very funny in summarizing some of the biggest blunders of Elop's time as CEO. Read the Summarize Ahonen blog first.

My view to the latest changes Elop has announced about Nokia's strategy now and into the near future.

The 'final analysis' on the true effect of the Burning Platforms memo and how it wiped out 13 Billion dollars of Nokia revenues and destroyed 4 Billion dollars in Nokia profits, indeed the costliest memo ever written. 

Here is Stephen Elop himself admitting to the Nokia annual shareholders meeting that yes, the memo did damage Nokia smartphone sales.

My 'last' blog to discuss what was wrong before Elop took over at Nokia and specifically what was not wrong, with all the evidence, graphics and facts, showing that Elop decided to fix something that was not broken (and broke it while doing so)

Elop's infamous world record - he has achieved a true world record in destroying market share of a global market leader in just 12 months, not just in mobile handsets, mind you, in any industry ever, cars, TVs, PCs, airplanes, anything. A true world record in management failure. Here my blog recognizing this Stephen Elop achievement in world record in market share destruction.

And what of the very latest strategy we heard about at Q2 results a few weeks ago? This will only make Nokia's situation worse, not better. This is a strategy that even Apple ran away from and Samsung would never be dumb enough to try, yet Elop is now embracing in desperation.

NOKIA RETAIL PROBLEM

My latest big article outlining the Nokia retail problem and explaining it in great detail, how this is strangling Nokia and that Elop's actions are making things worse.

My latest blog updating Nokia's retail problem and how Elop is making things worse, not better (the retail specific part is last in the blog)

And for those who can't believe this is such a big deal - here is the analysis of the ratings agencies, S&P, Fitch and Moody's in each of their downgrades of Nokia and why they did so (every time, it is because of sales channel problems).

And I have not invented this massive problem, as its verified by the CEO himself. Here are Stephen Elop's comments to the Nokia shareholders meeting verifying retail problem is true is here.

MICROSOFT VIEW TO NOKIA

The view from Microsoft's side, first, here is how Microsoft lost its mobile future now with Windows Phone and Nokia its last attempt, that also has failed. 

And here is the very latest on that angle, with graphics, showing why Microsoft 'threw Nokia under the bus' abandoning Nokia Lumia with no upgrade path to Windows 8.

LUMIA LINE

Then on the Lumia line specifically. Here is my definitive analysis of why the Lumia line is failing and cannot succeed even in the US market, from marketing to product design: 13 reasons why Lumia failing.

To add to that, here is my latest analysis of why Lumia is failing, with links to the infamous '101 faults in Windows Phone' (With more Windows! See, now upgraded to 121 faults!)

The blog discussing how poorly Lumia received, cannot even sustain 1-to-1 conversion of existing Nokia smartphone customer base

Here is my latest analysis of the Lumia troubles in the US market specifically.

SKYPE AND CARRIERS

I have often mentioned Skype as a cause of friction between Nokia sales and the carrier relations. Here is the big picture article explaining why carriers oppose Skype specifically, even more than other OTT services like Blackberry Messenger or Apple's iMessage or Whatsapp etc.

And this too, that carriers hate Skype, is something Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop himself has fully openly admitted such as to the Nokia annual shareholders meeting (with links not just to his transcript but to his video from the shareholders meeting) 

OTHER RELATED

My blog is not a 'hate blog' about Nokia. I tell the truth here, when things are bad - and they are really bad for Nokia, I do call it. But I have also been critical here of other companies in trouble from Motorola to Palm to Sprint. And I am also of course happy when things are good for Nokia. Here is for example my very positive blog story about the 808 Pureview earlier this year.

If you'd like a more theoretical 'big picture' view to the industry and Nokia's troubles, in the context of other mobile handset industry giants who collapsed like Motorola, Siemens and Palm, you may want to read this essay on The Cliff Theory.

Also some have said Nokia is like Kodak. That sounds nice but is not a strong analogy. Kodak is like Motorola, and Nokia's nearest analogy is IBM.

I have from time to time given my views of how to 'save Nokia' or earlier when the situation was not so bad but still Nokia had problems like under previous CEO Kallasvuo, how to 'fix Nokia'. I do not have such a blog out now, that is current, but here is my latest from April of this year. If you read that article honestly, and imagine it was followed in April, you probably will agree with me, that today Nokia would already be far more healthy than it is under Elop's continued management. My April 2012 solution to how to save Nokia (which is partly no longer valid today) 

And there are some rumors that Nokia might be bought, we heard a few weeks ago about possible Lenovo or Samsung interest. I speculated who might be interested to buy Nokia and what parts of Nokia might be valuable to whom, if Nokia were to be split by the new buyer. 

Comments

[Michael (Ex-Nokia employee)]

I think a CEO from a carrier sounds sensible, but I would say a big carrier like Vodafone who used to be a Symbian partner, someone who knows the industry and someone that the other carriers will recognise.

As for strategy:

- Get rid of Elop, and Jo Harlow.

- Scrap the Windows phone program at the earliest sensible point, everywhere except possibly the USA (and perhaps there too, Tomi how do the figures look? Not great from what I recall of previous postings)

- Give Jolla free licence to Harmattan 6 including UI. (I presume seeing as Jolla came about from the Bridge program that Nokia already has a controlling steak so if it was successful in the future it could be brought back in to Nokia..?)

- Reinstate Nokia's future - (smart)feature phones - Meltiemi program. (If the staff have been made redundant, then get Dexia or Accenture to do it in the short term).

- Bring out some more copycat dual sim S40 products to capitalise on that work in India/Africa etc, whilst waiting for Meltiemi to be ready.

- Prepare transition for users S40->Meltemi.

In the short term, Nokia needs something to sell so.....

- Create a couple of really top end Android devices with good features (i.e. don't make it cheap (..N97, Bolt, etc)). Put in the pureview sensor in one of them (though not the flagship one as that's got to be Samsung GS3 levels of thickness). Also some mid range. (There is hopefully a skunkworks somewhere in Nokia that has android up and running somewhere?).

- Make it purely android jellybean, no skining. And give it an unlockable bootloader - the tech blogs (and consumers!) will lap it up.
- Make sure most of all that it's desirable and "Nokia".

- In the longer term, I don't know if meltemi is scalable to top end, but if it is then put the android vm on it and then the problem of the 'eco-system' is gone, for the time being..

- Team up with Adobe/Google/Mozilla to push HTML5 as the next app platform.

- Bring out a qwerty android

- Now, advertising - Did people see the Nokia N8 advert (was on British tv anyway) whereby a blind man was trying to convince us that the N8 takes great photos...!!!!!??! Fire the person/company that made that decision.

- Create some really simple, happy, advertising. Nokia has a lot of history and research in this area, I'm sure it can be resurrected.

- Create/Partner to create some next gen battery tech.

The only thing with this plan as I see it is that #1, Elop might not get fired. #2, it might take too long to get android up and running. #3, the agreement with MS may not allow some of this to happen.

Am sure there's other business considerations that I've not considered.

[aikoN]

Fork Nokia into 2 different Companies:

- Lumia as Microsoft OEM (Elop can keep his job)
- Asha as "the last real" Nokia.

- Sell NSN to Huawei

[Titaniumc]

Great article, concise and balanced.
Obviously Elop must be fired, the only strange think is that it wasn't already a year ago.
I think that a personality from the carriers community is much needed as a way to signal the intention to become again carrier frinedly rather than carrier ostile as Nokia actually is. But it don't necessarily must be the CEO, just someone able to influence the CEO decisions. Let's define him the Nokia strategist more than the CEO.

Concerning the strategy of Nokia it can only go forward. WP8 as an OS can survive but not as the strategy in the sense used by Elop, i.e. push WP8 at Nokia expenses but use WP8 in the measure it help Nokia (if in anyway it helps Nokia).

Then Nokia must be open to other options (like Samsung do): android and possible new OSes (new MeeGo licensed from JollaOS not anymore developed internally)

Nokia as to look at the next wave of innovation and from where it will come. I.e. new OSes coming from partnerships with Chinese Operators.

In short Nokia must be carrier friendly and OS agnostic

[JD!]

Why wait, send me the appointment letter... I can be perfect fit for Nokia, as I have no knowledge of leading a company, no knowledge of carrier functioning, No knowlege of Selling handsets.
I bet, I can still do better than Elop for saving Nokia!

[vladkr]

I really hope this open letter will change something, and you did well to write it, especially if people start to react.

I used to be a Nokia share-holder but I finally got rid of it as it gave me absolutely no power on decisions taken at the company.

We have even no news from the lawsuit filed in May against Nokia by US shareholders.

Nokia looks like a zombie, which goes straight, without thinking, whatever happens, which can't be explained anything.

So, I don't want to seem pessimistic, but it was told, and repeated many times since Feb '11, that the MS strategy, as it was promoted and executed will fail. It was more than told, it was obvious.

In 18 months, nobody pressed the emergency stop button while the danger was visible, why would anyone do it now the train is already derailing?

My only hope now is that Nokia/MS won't throw a wrench in Jolla's gear, like GM did with SAAB (with the sad ending we know about).

@Aikon: That's not just me who is sure about this fact; Nokia is rated as junk by all credit agencies, which mean its value is pure speculative. If you look at stock value over the last month, you'll see its variations are not related to any reliable information.

[vladkr]

Sorry for the double post, but to add few words to my last comment :

Elop was a predictable risk, see this article from 2008 :

http://www.siliconbeat.com/2008/01/11/microsoft-beware-stephen-elop-is-a-flight-risk/

[aikoN]

@JD
Sorry, pal, you don't have Steve Balmer on your speed dial...

[vladkr]

@JD:

If monkeys can be sent to the space, why don't we send Elop to the space, and make monkeys run Nokia ?

Even a ficus or any other plant would run Nokia better than Elop, I hope I don't upset you with my words, sure you won't do worse than Elop.

What's sad, it's not just a disaster for Nokia, it is for Salo, for Cluj and other places where premises were closed, it's quite bad for Finland as well.

One man, lot of harm.

[aikoN]

@vladkr
what I mean is that it doesn't mean how much one share is priced today. What is important is that shareholder with the most number of shares are in charge. I am talking about the power to rule Nokia, not about the stock price.
May be I'm wrong... I don't know.
May be Microsoft or someone else used some money to become a major shareholder and to rule Nokia as they want. It's just a game, strange game where Elop works for Microsoft, but gets his salary from Nokia.

[vladkr]

@aikoN:

Sorry, I misunderstood you, but I see your point now (and actually agree with it).

[Tomi T Ahonen]

To all in the thread..

Thanks for great conversation! Please keep it going. I just wanted to mention that I added a categorized listing of links to my major blogs about Nokia situation this year, to the end of this blog. Some of you who are regular readers, may have wanted at some point to find some specific blog I wrote about Nokia, but as there are so many errors that I have exposed here on this blog, plus my rants against Elop, you may have become frustrated (especially with those blogs often being so long). So now you have them in one place. You may want to bookmark this blog haha..

But yes, please keep the discussion going. As I am on summer vacation, I won't even try to get to every comment now, but I will return with some comments

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[John Phamlore]

I still haven't heard an answer from those who think Nokia has such great IP: Where's the evidence that Nokia can produce its own LTE baseband chip, and it would also help if such a chip were backwards compatible such as apparently Qualcomm's is for the US market at least.

From what I have been reading Intel bought Infineon and Infineon was supposedly working with Nokia on LTE; however, Infineon was more working on compatibility with China's own version of LTE:

http://gigaom.com/broadband/is-td-lte-replacing-wimax-as-intels-pet-technology/

But this article exposes what killed Nokia and what was the company whose alliance with Nokia left Nokia for dead: It was Intel not Microsoft.

http://www.wired.com/business/2012/08/ff_intel/

Observe that Intel actually didn't have a real phone strategy until mid-2010, when they were forced to hire a former Apple employee Mike Bell to embark on a crash course to produce an Intel phone. Observe that Mike Bell in the article hired former employees from Apple, Palm, Qualcomm and Android developers, but no one is mentioned with the slightest connection to Nokia, despite Nokia having been an alliance with Intel for about a decade prior to Bell's hire in mid-2010.

Nokia's alliance with Intel will go down as one of the most senseless business alliances of all time. Intel brought absolutely nothing of value to the table but instead induced Nokia to support WiMAX, the true cause of Nokia's being boycotted by the major American telecoms. This flirtation with WiMAX, which ended shortly after Nokia settled with Qualcomm and essentially surrendered, caused Nokia to be totally unprepared for the coming LTE world. Nokia thus had to buy its chips from its former arch-rival Qualcomm and terminate all of its previous technology.

The real question is what could have possibly led Nokia to have decided to ally with Intel. The best answer I have argued is that Nokia allied with Intel due to Nokia decision early 2000s to switch to Linux as its operating system of the future.

It's Linux that killed Nokia.

[Name]

It was a risk-averse, oversized layer of management and a constant urge to do things over that killed Nokia. The growing dependence on Microsoft technologies and services (Powerpoint, Exchange, Sharepoint) can't have helped, either.

All topped off with a CEO who thinks he's Napoleon and a board of directors that one might charitably assume is asleep at the boardroom table.

But maybe you're right, after all: Linux did kill Nokia - Linux in the form of Android.

[TimoT]

It is too late for Nokia. It is one thing just to have an incompetent CEO but whole another matter when the board is equally incompetent and biggest shareholders are also blind believers. Add to that Elop's clearing of the house of any possible dissidents, replacing them with Microsoft moles and Nokia is well beyond any salvation.

Only hostile takeover could save Nokia but there are few candidates willing to do, especially when the details of the Microsoft deal are unclear. Strategywise it is like late 1943 for German troops, the Generals already knew the war was lost but still they put up a helluva fight for another year and a half.

Nokia will fight still (2 years max?) but it will be fighting losing battles everywhere with ever-increasing costs. Eventually Microsoft will accept defeat and cut losses.

[new_guy]

@Cyan @aikoN
This was a takeover pure and simple in the best interests of M$
See my comment:
http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/07/the-sun-tzu-of-nokisoftian-microkia-mirror-mirror-on-the-wall-whose-the-baddest-of-them-all-waterloo.html?cid=6a00e0097e337c8833017743314e30970d#comment-6a00e0097e337c8833017743314e30970d

[tired]

@spawn
Outsourcing harmattan to jolla would work in 2 ways;
1) familiarity - existing team working on harmattan. plus point for both nokia and Jolla
2) reputation - Nokia regains some of it's good reputation as a company that cares about it's customers by keeping harmattan going. Plus point for Nokia.
3) Publicity - Nokia gets (2), Jolla gets a publicity boost as the go to guy for Nokia.
4) Income - Jolla gets paid for it's work NOW instead of investments. Plus point Jolla.

Only draw back is if Jolla hamstrings harmattan by limiting harmattan functionality. that would really suck balls.

Nokia Ecosystem is still in place. Even though parts have been sold and are no longer part of Nokia. dying yes, dead no.

[John Phamlore]

Tomi keeps mentioning how important carrier relations are and how Nokia used to pay careful attention to them. But there is apparently no explanation of why long before Elop, Nokia had almost no relations with the two major US carriers.

The problem was with its support for WiMAX, Nokia had declared nuclear war on the major US carriers:

http://www.nokia.com/NOKIA_COM_1/Press/Press_Events/Nokia_Technology_Media_Briefing/Mobile_WiMAX_white_paper.pdf

The one thing major US carriers would fight to the bitter end, and I shudder to think what extremes their executives would take to avoid, is being re-regulated as a public utility, as merely dumb pipes for the Internet. Everything Nokia said in the above white paper was complete poison to the major US carriers, from saying only the licensed spectrum was valuable, to offering a means to disintermediate the carriers from every other part of the business they are now seeking a stranglehold on.

So the old Nokia had to be put to death as punishment, and as a warning. And so it was.

[naikoN]

Do you really believe that somebody will change CEO just a couple of weeks before the BIG announcement of greatest (the beta period is over,... again) mobile phone(s) ever made? WP8 is coming and Chris Weber is scaring the shit out of Sammy.
If Stephen Elop was allowed to continue his internal crusade removing all that was Nokia, why does it has to be changed now?
Small shareholders have no power. Big american shareholders uses nokia to lift their MSFT stocks. There is no way back.

Good bye Nokia, we're sailing with Jolla Mobile

[Lasko]

'If Elop is fired now Nokia will rise again.'

No, and that's what people just don't want to understand. If Elop is fired now Nokia has a slight chance to stop the downard spiral, but that's it. Period.

There is no way Nokia will magically transform into the market leading, multi-billion dollar company it was before. It took over two decades to get where Nokia has been, and all you can do is pressing the reset button and then hope that you'll be there where you've been in another two decades. Nokia as it was is no longer the Nokia it is right now. Brand? Ruined. Carrier relationships? Poisoned. Manufacturing capacity? Closed. Innovational strength? Gone. Engineering? Outsourced, fired or lost. Intellectual assests? Sold.

Nokia is no longer a creator of mobile software or mobile hardware with a huge amount of talented engineers beeing able to innovate, it has been successfully transformed into a run-of-the-mill OEM, with software from Microsoft and hardware from Compal, having serious financial and executive problems.

Whoever may take the ungrateful job to clean up after Elop will have to start from zero - including all the burdens Elop's scorched earth policy executed in perfection has brought.

Thanks for everything Nokia from the past, but the case is closed, the patient is drawing its dying breath.

[jack1059]

Sadly lasko, I think you may be right with your assessment.