A little over a year ago I had the Twitter contest to guess what market share Windows Phone will achieve in smartphones in Q4 of 2012. We are now only days from finding out. Here are all the entrants to that contest from November 2011. So I thought we could have another Twitter-based guessing game contest. I asked my followers to send in their submissions of what date they think we will hear that Elop will be gone.
So its not the actual date he departs Nokia, its the date we hear about it - when Nokia officially announce it. This could be that Elop is fired (as I have advocated on this blog now for more than a year, he is after all the most incompetent CEO in charge of any Fortune 500 sized company today). It could be that Elop resigns. It could be that he departs for any other reason - or if he hangs on for long enough, that Elop retires from the CEO position.
If Nokia reassign Elop to any other duty that does not include CEO, like President for example, that counts. Or if Nokia is bought in some acquisition, then that is the date. Or if Nokia is split in two, with two CEO's - then that is the date. (Except if NSN is separated into its own independent entity, that doesn't count as Elop has been in the process of disposing of NokiaSiemens Networks ever since he took over. I mean, if the Nokia handsets unit is split into smartphones and dumbphones and those become independent entities with their own CEOs and separately entered to the stock market, that kind of thing, like what happened with Motorola before its handset part was sold to Google). But if Nokia is in a merger where Elop turns out to be the new CEO of the new entity of the two companies, in that case we count Elop still continuing as the CEO.
I asked my Twitter followers to submit an actual date of when they think the announcement comes that Elop will be gone. I kept the contest open for 24 hours on Twitter and received 105 entries. I have now posted all entrants here to this blog, and then we'll have a count-down, to see who guesses the exact date or comes closest. The winner gets his or her choice of 3 of my published ebooks: my Almanac, my Phone Book, or any of my Pearls series of ebooks. I will also award to two nearest guesses a runner-up prize of one ebook of their choice. All my books, hard cover books and ebooks are here, Tomi Ahonen books.
PS anyone who comes here as a Microsoft or Nokia fan-boy trying to claim Elop is a success as a CEO, your comments will be deleted without mercy. Elop has presided over a world record collapse of a global market leader. He literally exchanged growing dominating profitable business for declining, miniscule loss-making business. He has managed a management fiasco that will be studied in MBA courses for decades to come. The damage to Nokia under Elop is greater than what New Coke was to Coca Cola; what the Exxon Valdez tanker spill was to Exxon; worse than what the brakes global vehicle recall problem was to Toyota; worse than the Deepwater Horizon oil rig spill to BP and worse than what the A-Series launch (car too dangerous to drive into corners) was to Mercedes Benz. Elop's self-caused damage to Nokia is literally the world record in corporate managemnet failure.
The name Elop is synonymous with the biggest management failure of all time, his name will go down in infamy. Mr 'Call me the General' as a strategy 'genius' is to winning what water is to fire. In reality he is only a Pretend-Patton, utterly clueless in any strategic thought. And I'm not the only one calling him a massive failure, Elop is a finalist for the worst CEO of the year at CNBC for example. So I have not invented these problems, Elop caused these himself. Now its time to see how long it takes for the Nokia Board to fire his sorry ass. And this is the Twitter-contest to see who guessed the departure date most accurately.
This is the full list of contestants, in chronological order of their submission, by year and month:
Elop Firing-watch
During 2013
January 29 - Nicolas Kaiser @nikai3d
February 1 - new_guy (from blog)
February 6 - MoZeal @MoZeal
February 11 - Nicola De Filippo @niqt
February 11 - Michael (from blog)
February 18 - 99centimos @99centimos
February 24 - Matthew Aguilera @Matt_Aguilera
February 25 - Balagopal @balagopalks
March 1 - Baba Megan @jmumbo
March 31 - Onigold @Onigold
April 2 - Oscar-Panuko @OzkarGmz
April 8 - Giacomo Di Giacomo @gdg69
April 8 - MickyFin @MickyFin
April 14 - Jukka Pirilä @JukkaPiril
April 18 - Jonas Elofsson @AFV_Jonas
April 20 - Harry Järn @h_jarn
April 24 - Chris Knight @stryqx
April 28 - Dara Junzi @Dext_r
April 30 - Nagaraj M Shenoy @NMShenoy
April 30 - Peter Frederiksen @Pedling
April 30 - Omar Moya @miusuario
May 1 - Dundar Cetin @dundarcetin
May 1 - Jani Ahomaki @loves2travel2
May 4 - Ben Eng @jetpen
May 7 - Sami Hero @samihero
May 7 - Joonas Ahonen @ahonentj
May 11 - Minsuk @gabal_kr
May 14 - Jennifer Bensko Ha @dupkaspike
May 16 - Davide Magini @Polemix
May 16 - Emmanuel Marchiset @EmmanuelM01
May 25 - @GorrTom
May 27 - Inês Pereira @slayraa
May 29 - hfvienna @hfvienna
June 1 - Mandar Lele @mandarlele
June 1 - Edward Batten @edwardrbatten
June 6 - Josep M Porta @porabajo
June 14 - yalnte @yalnte
June 20 - duvin @duvin1
June 30 - udhien.net @udhien
July 1 - Timo @pispalanpicasso
July 2 - André Koot @meneer
July 10 - Vitor Hugo @vitor_hugo
July 19 - John Waclawsky (via blog)
July 20 - Milla Peltoniemi @tunturikissa
July 20 - Rich s @Rich_Enduro
July 20 - Magnus Alburg @mgrubla
July 24 - Jakub Lipiński @jakublipinski
July 26 - Yeswap @yeswap
July 27 - Magnus Dahl @twittmdl
July 31 - JD! @hmmJD1
July 31 - Anton @corbas_ai
August 14 - Sanjay Tourani @sanjaytourani
August 15 - Ben Fletcher @BenFletch
August 15 - Glen Browley @gbrowley
September 1 - aizaz ul haq @piousprince0
September 6 - Morgan Schylander @shma666
September 13 - Franklin Nwa @franklinnwa
September 13 - Tired (from blog)
September 21 - Pirkka Poole @Pierkka
September 20 - Timothy Jasionowski @timoj
September 20 - Henrique Martin @henriquemartin
September 27 - Duncan Stewart @dustewar
September 30 - Earendil Star (via blog)
October 3 - Zoltan Sekeres @zoliton
October 10 - Henri Servomaa @hts
October 11 - symbianfoundation @kok_andy
October 15 - Dave Koelmeyer @davekoelmeyer
October 16 - Mikey @anti_nomy
October 17 - ejvictor @ejvictor
October 21 - Jaume Teixi @JaumeTeixi
October 22 - Jouko Ahvenainen @jahven
October 24 - Jarmo Laaksonen @jarmolaaksonen
October 31 - Simon Rees @Simon_D_Rees
November 5 - Stephen Ballot @stephenballot
November 25 - SteP @debexpert
December 5 - biatch0.bat @biatch0r
December 20 - KeesMulder @KeesMulder
December 23 - evan kirstel @evankirstel
During 2014
January 1 - That Black Hausa Guy @sanisabo
January 3 - Jon Arne S. @jonarnes
January 5 - Musa'b @Musab_2012
January 10 - Agus Setiawan @agusset1awan
January 13 - vladkr (from blog)
January 14 - Kevin Ahoy @FlightsimGeek
January 15 - So Vatar (from blog)
January 20 - Sergio @sergior
January 25 - anthony contoleon @anthony_p_c
February 22 - Alberto Mardegan @mardy
March 13 - Vedhas Patkar @vedhaspatkar
March 24 - Manuel Vidonis @vidonism
April 30 - Fra @fravaccaro
May 15 - bill fasse @billboxer
June 30 - Tilman Jentzsch @blickwechsel
July 14 - Buttface Elop @elopbuttface
July 19 - Sami Mäkeläinen @smakelainen
August 29 - Antonio F Crespo @afc1971
October 1 - XPilot @XPilot
November 20 - Baba Megan @jmumbo
December 15 - Kim Bruning @Kim_Bruning
During 2015
January 8 - Kai Keinänen @kaikeinanen
Feb 11 - Yousif Abdullah @yousifabdullah
July 13 - Tero Lahtinen @terolahtinen
July 15 - Gerard van der Weyde @gjvdweyde
Sept 10 - Anonymous Ex-Nokian @ExNokian
During 2016 (or after)
June 30 - ihatesheeps @snagdragon
That is it. If you have made your entry and see I have recorded it wrong, please let me know immediately, as I can still go back and see the Tweet to see what your exact submission was. I have tried to get all correctly, but of course as I have transcribed from Twitter to here, I may have made a mistake. We will use your original Tweet (or original comment here on this blog) as your official entry and I will correct any mistakes. If you sent a submission but it is not showing, let me know, I will add you, but your entry had to be received before the contest closed on 29 January 2013.
Good luck to all entrants. I will return to this list from time to time, highlighting who is next in line.. And I hope to be able to celebrate the winner soon, as obviously I hope Elop is fired 'any day now'... Thank you for playing!
But if Elop wanted to drive Nokia into the ground why didn't he just stick to symbian and let run into the ground even with the anna and belle uprgrade it is still far behind iOS and Android in useability. Meego as you wrote on Feb. 14th in your autopsy text "First, we cannot blame Elop for this. He did not kill MeeGo in February 2011. He was one of the finalists for CEO, who had to propose a plan to solve Nokia's severe crisis. That involved painful cuts no matter how you looked at it. The Board approved a plan in September, where one part meant MeeGo was dead. Elop didn't kill MeeGo now. It died last September and the Board approved that plan where MeeGo would go." Meego was a system with promise but no real ecosystem to support it. BB10 and Ubuntu phone OS have the same problemm right now. Windows phone had atleast somekind of ecosystem round 75000apps during the 800 launch. One more thing if Elop wants to drive Nokia into the ground why must the company post profit during Q4 and cut its Dividend in order to back up cash reserves, I mean give a dividend to the shareholder so that the company would be faster out of money the stock will fall to the summer low it must god forbid if it would go up. The last thing why did Elop make the 920 such a good phone that you have to wait to buy it?!? i mean they could just have sold the old 900 with a wp8 upgrade that would have done trick atleast then you could get one now.
Posted by: Hans Hellström | January 29, 2013 at 05:28 PM
@Hans Hellström :
1- Elop is distributing Nokia's assets to friends (Patent trolls + Microsoft). That takes time.
2- keeping Nokia alive, letting its share to follow a roller-coaster pattern allows well informed people to speculate on it, and then to make a lot of money.
--> The longer Elop keeps Nokia in a bad shape, the more he (and his friends) makes money. (think that variations on Nokia's share are very ample and frequent, and he controls movements every time he opens his mouth)
Posted by: vladkr | January 29, 2013 at 06:18 PM
@vladkr Maybe but that's bit of long shot since sock price has doubled since summer when Tomi was so sure that Microsoft or someone would buy Nokia. The patents sold were mostly Meego related stuff sold to Jolla. If elop controls the stock movement with his mouth isn't it in everyones intrest for the stock to up?!? since the short sellers took quite a beating during the stock rise during christmas. You also have to remeber that the stocks in IT/technology sector are quite volatile like Apple, Nokia, Rim and others with the exception of Microsoft whose stock has been hovering around 30USD for the past 10 years(2008 fianacial crisis excluded). When it comes to patents it would be much easier to run the company right into the ground and not even bother to make course correction it would be hell of alot cheaper to buy them. People tend to forget that Nokia was on a collison course and heading for doom long before Elop took over the markets where changing with iOS and android. @John why would 4,4 million people or even 5-6million if Nokia would have had enough to supply buy a WP Device from Nokia alone in Q4?
Posted by: Hans Hellström | January 29, 2013 at 07:21 PM
@ Hans Hellström
and small extension:
> Meego was a system with promise but no real ecosystem to support it.
MeeGo and Symbian formed one ecosystem through Qt. And right now BB10 and Ubuntu Phone would be part of that same ecosystem.
> BB10 and Ubuntu phone OS have the same problemm right now.
You seem to have missed that there was an Android runtime for MeeGo and BB10 ships with an Ansdroid runtime.
This means they have access and form one ecosystem with Android.
How will you beat that with the failed WP eco-ghosttown?
Posted by: Spawn | January 29, 2013 at 07:30 PM
@Spawn Yes but that would require the app maker to put in the BB10 conversion which i doubt that every one has made and it takes time. Ubuntu cant run android apps http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/02/the-ubuntu-phone-os-doesnt-stand-a-chance/ and building up an ecosystem takes time. So if WP market place is so DEAD does it have over 400+apps submitted every day and why would they have to hire extra staff at microsoft and cancel Xmas holidays for the app submission staff because no one is apparently putting apps there.Can you give me one reason that we shouldn't let windows phone succeed since I think its good from a customer point of view that there is competetition that pushes development of better products and not a duopoly between Android and iOS and like Apple and google are any more evil than Microsoft? Altough my money on the new competitors is on Jolla simply for the reason that Jolla can run android apps and UI looks good.
Posted by: Hans Hellström | January 29, 2013 at 08:02 PM
@Hans Hellström :
Sold Patents were mostly 3G, 4G/LTE and other radio technology (just make a research on your favourite search engine for keywords "Nokia", "Patents", "Mosaid" and "Vringo")... and that will be only part of the story.
Nokia did not sell Patents related to Meego (Samsung was ready to pay billions for the whole package). From Nokia's point of view, Meego (and even Meltemi) cannot survive, neither at Nokia, nor anywhere else.
And no, the share price doesn't have to be high to be interesting to traders; cycles allowing to buy shares at low prices, and sell them when higher few times a year is much more paying, especially if one knows when the share will dive or rise.
Example :
If one buys Nokia shares just after Elop Osbourns Lumia 710/800/900 at 1.32 Euro each, can sell them when Nokia announces a new Pureview Device (Lumia 920), when the share reaches 2.7 Euros but before Nokia informs the 920 will be released only 3 months later, in some countries (1.92 Euros - buy) and then sell again when Nokia announces Q4 results are not as bad as expected.
So, if one invested 132,000 Euros in July (100,000 shares), (s)he doubled the pot in the end of August : 270,000 euros (that's 138KEuros earned in 1.5 month, doing nothing).
If the same person invested again these 270KEuros in the beginning of September - 1.82Euros/share, (s)he would have bought 148,352 shares, which in mid January (not that bad Q4 press release) were valued at 3.5 Euros = a total of 519,230 Euros.
So in less than 6 months, a trader who invested 132,000 Euros earned 387,230 Euros, doing absolutely nothing.
Imagine that people like Elop and friends can invest tens or even hundreds times these values (through ghost-companies), you can imagine easily how much they could earn in just 6 months with this little game.
It's much more exciting than waiting for a hypothetical 40Euros/share which will never come back
Posted by: vladkr | January 29, 2013 at 08:30 PM
@sure but then again that can be applied to any other company stocks go up and down and I find bit farfeched maybe it's true maybe not i really dont care since this can be applied to almost every single other company that is listed on Nasdaq or any other stock market around the world there is always shady backroom deals going on but what can we learn from this: When Elop buys you buy when he sells you sell we all make money that way. When it comes to patent's you are right but companies buy nd sell patents all the time nothing special. Elop was the outsider to shake up the company that's management was too in love with it's own products and failed to see problems when they emerged. I dont see really any other way to go android perhaps but then again they would have just been a another android maker in the basket. I think they should have persisted another 6months with meego and the jumped on the MS train if that strategy would have failed. Elop is Gambling on MS unlike RIM nokia can survuve without MS if it totally fails. Nokia's problem during Kallasvuo was software. This could still pay off in the long run the apple train is starting to loose steam their OS is starting to get stale and iPhone hasn't really changed all that much and it seems that Apple will do the same mistakes as Nokia why change something when it's earning us a shitload of money and I dont see Cook making any big changes why should he?. If Apple continues on the path that it is now we might see an even bigger crash than Nokia and the those who have now bought shares will make a ton of cash on Nokia
Posted by: Hans Hellström | January 29, 2013 at 09:29 PM
I totally missed this contest, but for the sake of bragging rights, I'm taking July 3.
Posted by: glonq | January 29, 2013 at 09:48 PM
But Tomi Elop is a success as a CEO anyways according to this paid article http://politiken.dk/tjek/ECE1881012/nu-rykker-windows-phone/ (in danish fyi)
Posted by: firecracker | January 30, 2013 at 08:18 AM
Tomi, Daddy Tomi :-)
It would be interesting to put the guess in a graphical view (nb of guesses per week), this would show the 'consensus' of when Elop would be fired...
Posted by: EmmanuelM | January 31, 2013 at 08:22 AM
Tomi, I think you missed my entry, here is the tweet https://twitter.com/qwazix/status/296212726261366784
Regards,
Michael
Posted by: Michael Demetriouq | February 03, 2013 at 12:08 PM
14th April 2014
Posted by: CapitanSevilla | February 07, 2013 at 08:36 PM
Nov 11th 2013
Posted by: Med0paW | February 18, 2013 at 08:22 AM
Donno the date but like to see him off and humiliated publicly for embarrassing the world of Nokia ASAP.
Posted by: Prem | June 13, 2013 at 08:59 AM
30 days to go.
Posted by: nasiola | June 24, 2013 at 09:59 PM
@Tomi
"It could be that Elop resigns. It could be that he departs for any other reason - or if he hangs on for long enough, that Elop retires from the CEO position."
Just to make sure: if the unlikely event takes place that Elop is assigned as CEO of Microsoft, it apparently counts as "otherwise removed from office as Nokia CEO"?
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