Second picture in the Nokia Destruction Saga - Greatest individual Management Mistake Ever Made - Nokia vs Competition in one picture

I launched yesterday a series of short articles about the Nokia collapse where each blog article looks only at one specific aspect of it, and is illustrated by one picture. Both of these are rare for me, usually my blogs are longggggg and comprehensive (and very repetitive) and text-only, like this about the 20 risks Nokia listed in its Form 20-F which now have all turned out to be true and are haunting Nokia. So today in the Nokiasaga, we look at Nokia's two main competitors in smartphones over the past few years, Apple's iPhone and Samsung's smartphones on several platforms but most famously led by the Galaxy series on Android. So lets start with a riddle:

MANAGEMENT RIDDLE - WHICH OF THESE THREE IS ON THE BRINK OF DEATH?




This graph may be freely shared

So yes, in the picture we have Apple, Nokia and Samsung but not necessarily in that order. Which of the three companies is in deep trouble, so hopeless, its CEO destroys the platform and invites employees to jump off the 'burning pltform'?

Blue company has seen growth in smarpthone sales - so strong growth in fact, that it set a company-record in smartphone unit sales in 2010. It also finds its smarphone unit profitable, in fact it sets a new company record for most profits by that unit, ever, in 2010. Blue company considers itself a mobile company and states that smartphones are critical to its success in the mobile industry.

Lets compare to Green company, which totally differently from Blue company, in 2010, sets a company-record in smartphone unit sales in 2010, and its already-profitable smartphone unit sets a company record for most profits in that unit, ever, in that year. But Green company thinks that smartphones are vital to its future in the mobile industry, which it considers is its primary business.

Well, what of Red company, which totally differing from the first two, actually in 2010, sets a company-record in smartphone unit sales and the profitable smartphone unit also sets a company record for biggest smartphone profits in 2010. Red company however, sees mobile as its future and says that smartphones form the critical part of its success in the mobile industry.

This riddle would not trouble any first-year MBA student for any time at all. The three companies are performing in exactly the same way, reporting exactly the same internal performance benchmarks of excellence. There is no difference between the three. If you have a growing, profitable business, and its profits are growing - you have a successful unit, congratulations. Unless there is any other info to the contrary (illegal dealings like some banks did, or perhaps cancer-causing business like cigarette-sales etc or your technology is polluting or something like that) - these are three HEALTHY businesses of excellent condition. Only a pure madman would terminate any of those three.

Especially if 'smartphones' are the stated future of YOUR company main business. It doesn't matter at all whether you are company Blue or company Green or company Red, if you set company record growth and set company record profits in this smartphone business which is the future of your company industry, then you are SUCCEEDING. DO NOT STOP THIS SUCCESS.

Any first year MBA student gets this. Elop did not. Nokia had a highly profitable and growing smartphone business when Elop joined Nokia in the middle of 2010. That smartphone business grew so well, it set a new Nokia record for growth in 2010, and its profits were growing so well, the smartphone  unit not only set a Nokia record for profits for the unit - the profitability itself grew towards the end of the year. It was only getting better.

Only a certifyable idiot would call this growing business success a Burning Platforms problem at Nokia. Which is before we figure out which of the three actually is Nokia? Who do you think? Apple must be company Blue, right, in 2010, iPhone 4 and so forth, the huge runaway global success that was so the darling of all the techie press with Steve Jobs on every magazine cover holding an iPhone. So which is Nokia, company Green or company Red. How was Samsung doing in 2010? When did the Galaxy launch?

Actually Apple is not company Blue. Nokia sold 28.6 million smartphones in Q4 of 2010, thats the blue line. Nokia is company Blue. For the full year 2010, Nokia sold 103.6 million smartphones according to the latest Quarterly data as reported by Nokia. Apple is company Green, the middle line, and as we know, Apple sold 47.5 million iPhones in 2010. So company Red is Samsung which sold 24.0 million smartphones in 2010. Nokia in smartphones was literally more than twice as big as Apple and more than four times as big as Samsung in 2010.

TWICE AS BIG AS NEAREST RIVAL

This is incredibly rare. I have to emphasize this point. Toyota has most of the recent years been the world's biggest car maker. GM ie General Motors of the USA has been in most of the other recent years. When was Toyota last so dominant in its industry, that it was twice as big as GM - or any other rival? Try 'never'. Yes, Toyota the car giant, has NEVER been twice as big as its rivals. How about GM? When was GM last twice as big as its rivals? NEVER HAPPENED. Volkswagen? Never. Fiat? Never. Nissan? Never. Renault? Never. 

What of the PC industry? HP is currenly the world's biggest PC maker by one analyst house and Lenovo is the biggest by another expert's opinion. When was HP last twice as big as its nearest rival? Never. What of Lenovo? Never happened. Dell, surely Dell at one point? Nope. How about Apple? It was once the world's biggest PC maker in the era of the Apple 2, but even then it was not twice as big as its nearest rival. IBM? Never in the PC era. Toshiba? Compaq? Acer? Siemens? Asus? Never never never never and never.

Can you understand how rare - and massively dominating - such a position is, when you have the luxury of being TWICE as big as your nearest rival. Nokia was MORE than twice as big as its nearest rivals. So yes, Nokia is company Blue and not only is it setting Nokia records for new sales per year, and Nokia records for profits in the smartphone unit, Nokia is so utterly towering over its rivals, that almost any major tech company CEO would jump to take that market position in a second. If you TOWER over your rivals, and you are setting records in growth and profits, you are the hero and this is the goose that lays the golden eggs. You do not shoot this goose, in the face, like Dick Cheney.

GREW FASTER THAN RIVALS

Now the most astonishing part. Here is actual sales for year 2009 and 2010 and the absolute growth for Nokia smartphones, Apple iPhones and Samsung smartphones. Look at the amount of growth in 2009-2010

COMPANY . . . SMARTPHONES 2009 . . . SMARTPHONES 2010 . . . GROWTH 2009-2010
Nokia . . . . . . . 67.8 million . . . . . . . . . . . 103.6 million . . . . . . . . . . . 35.8 million
Apple . . . . . . . 25.1 million . . . . . . . . . . . . 47.5 million . . . . . . . . . . . 22.4 million
Samsung . . . . . 7.0 million . . . . . . . . . . . . 24.0 million . . . . . . . . . . . 17.0 million
Source: Company data
This table may be freely shared

The gap between Nokia and its rivals was not closing in 2010, it was GROWING. Nokia grew more than its rivals. Nokia smartphones unit was growing more than Apple iPhone or Samsung's smartphone unit. Remember, these are absolute numbers, don't be fooled by the propaganda and spin-doctors, whether at Apple, Microsoft or Nokia who may talk about 'growth rate' as a percentage. The growth 'rate' measure is mathematically skewed always to show the smallest rival to seem to have the biggest rate, when in absolute terms it might not be so. For real competition, real growth, you have to always compare by absolute numbers.

Let me show by simple example. If you grew your 'number' by 20, and I grew that same 'number' by 10, you grew more. This could be smartphone sales. It could be our bank accounts. It could be Olympic polevault jumping heights or whatever. You grew twice the amount I did. Now lets show how 'growth rate' can distort the reality. If you were the biggest at 200 measures (in smartphone sales or bank account balances or whatever) your addition of 20 was only 10% growth rate. But if I only started from 20, a far smaller starting point, and added only half what you did, ie 10, my growth rate is still 50% - a number 5 times bigger than your growth 'rate'. The growth 'rate' number is misleading when comparing rivals of different size, but the absolute growth number is always correct.

Apple grew in 2010 by 22.4 million smartphones. Samsung grew in 2010 by 17.0 million smartphones. Nokia however, grew by a massive 35.8 million smartphones, ie by far the biggest growth. The gap between Nokia and Apple was not shrinking in 2010, it was growing. NOKIA WAS NOT LOSING TO THE iPHONE - NOKIA WAS WINNING. (I know it sounds so totally 'counter-intuitive' and surely every news article you read at the time suggested Nokia was doing a death-dance, but I don't deal with fantasies and imaginariums here. If you want to believe in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny and any myths that Apple was growing faster than Nokia in 2010, enjoy your delusions up there on whatever planet you live on. Here at the CDB Blog we deal only with the hard facts, not entertaining myths). The reality is - those are actual reported numbers by Nokia and Apple direct from their quarterly results. Like Bill Clinton said, its just math. If you live on Planet Earth, your reality will tell you, Nokia grew 35.8 million in 2010, in smartphones, more than Apple which only grew 22.4 million. And as Nokia already was more than twice as big as Apple, and Nokia already was profitable, and Nokia's profits were growing, this the very definition of winning. Nokia was winning the smartphone wars against Apple's iPhone in 2010. The math is undeniable.

Same is true of Nokia vs Samsung. Nokia was more than twice as big as Apple and more than four times as big as Samsung in smartphones - an the gap was only growing larger, in Nokia's favor. This, while Nokia's smartphone unit was profitable, and producing ever bigger profits.

If you suggest Nokia is somehow on a dying platform, ie 'burning platform' on fire, and it must be terminated as the loser - it is like today, if Apple looked at the massive dominance of the iPad over the Kindle and Galaxy Tab and other tablets, suddenly said, hey, we are losing, lets abandon the iOS platform for the iPad, lets switch to the smallest tablet platform we can find - ironically yes, Windows 8. If Tim Cook suggested that today, he'd be burned on the stake and Steve Jobs would turn in his grave. For Nokia to look at the smartphone wars in 2010, find itself more than twice as big as its nearest rival, growing faster than the competition, in a highly profitable business, setting new Nokia records for profits (with plenty of hot new smartphones coming down the pike too, for early 2011 launch) - only a complete lunatic, a Microsoftian Misguided Muppet could write a memo suggesting the Nokia smartphone platform was 'burning' and Nokia had to jump off it.

ELOP EFFECT

Yet, that is bizarrely, unbelievably, what Nokia's new delusional CEO, Stephen Elop did (and how on earth could he have tricked Nokia's Board to believe this fairy tale, who knows?), in what will go down as the costliest and maddest, most destructive management decision of all time. The Elop Effect. Elop wrote his Burning Platforms memo, which caused what is commonly called the Ratner Effect, and then compounded that with the sudden announcement of the Microsoft partnership while having no phones to sell - but collapsing instantly current Nokia Symbian based smartphone sales due to what is called the Osborne Effect. Nobody has ever tried these two self-destructive management mistakes together - until now. The Osborne Effect bankrupted the Osborne computer company while the Ratner Effect nearly did the same for the Ratner jewelry company (which only survived by firing its CEO and rebranding). Elop Effect combines those two suicidal management actions into this, the worlds' most destructive management mistake ever, called the Elop Effect. Here is what happened to Nokia's record-setting domination and growth, instantly after the Elop Effect. Compare how the rivals did under the same period:




This picture may be freely shared

Yes, this is the full picture of the earlier one we saw, the riddle. Now I have identified Nokia as the blue line, Apple as the green line and Samsung as the red line. You can also see where the Elop Effect happened and what happened to Nokia smartphone sales instantly after that.

Nokia's smartphone unit was instantly plunged into loss-making. Nokia issued a profit warning only weeks after this new strategy was announced and Nokia's smartphone unit has produced an ever-increasing loss ever since that day. In the latest quarter for which we have data, Q3 of 2012, Nokia's smartphone unit was generating a loss of 48% per smartphone it managed to sell. The sales have collapsed so comprehensively, Nokia went from 29% market share to under 3% now for Q4, ie very literally, Nokia has scared away nine out of every ten customers it had just two years ago. This is a world record in market destruction of a market leader, in any globally contested industry in human history. No car company has fallen this much this fast, not Toyota with its brakes problems, not Ford when launching the Edsel, not General Motors when it went through its bankruptcy. BP didn't see this rapid collapse of its business with the oil spill, and neither did Exxon with the Exxon Valdez oil tanker disaster. New Coke when launched, a textbook marketing disaster, did not cause this much total market loss for Coca Cola, and then - Coke wisely re-introduced its 'old platform' ie Coca Cola Classic, to regain its market. 

We are witnessing the making of the world record in market failure by a global brand leader. Stephen Elop took the most rare 'sure thing' of utterly dominating his industry, holding victory in his hands, and cast it away. He literally snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Nokia's brand is damaged, Nokia's dumbphones business is damaged, Nokia's credit rating has had a series of downgrades and is now rated junk by all ratings agencies. Nokia's share price which had been growing 11% since Elop started at Nokia and passed 8.20 Euros in value, is now down to about 3 Euros and Nokia is frequently the target of takeover speculation or bankruptcy.

This decision to judge Nokia's market dominating and massively growing, profitable smartphone business as a 'failure' and 'burning platform' which Elop decided to destroy, has to go down as the worst management mistake of all time, and yes, worse than New Coke. As this was Elop's idea, his decision, his communication and his strategy and his execution - this is obviously Stephen Elop's personal management mistake. Thus Elop is the most incompetent CEO that has ever held corporate office. Having set the world record for management failure, Elop is thus, the world's worst CEO of not just technology or of last year but yes, when you set the world record for market self-destruction you are the worst CEO of all time. Stephen Elop, do the right thing and resign, now!

I will return with more analysis of Nokia's plight with more pictures soon. 

Comments

[foo]

@interested "How many billions have shareholders lost because of Elop?"

It depends.

If the shareholders had MSFT stock, they would gain a lot of money with the partnership, even if Nokia failed.

Of course, this is only a conspiracy theory...

[m]

@Tomi: "Nokia problems were of 'execution' in the overall corporation, from networks to dumbphones to Navteq to smartphones."

Then I think that Elop should be judged relative to a baseline, low-performing executive. It is not a crime to be a low performer, or to fail to succeed at noble goals, or to not fix all the problems in a company. I think instead that you're comparing Nokia+Elop against "what Nokia could have been" if a competent, pro-Nokia CEO came on board instead and actually fixed the problems.

Unfortunately, doing this emphasizes Elop as a failure and an idiot, and overshadows that he is a criminal. I guess that if your goal is to get him out of Nokia, that's fair. But while he has failed at your ideal goals of letting Nokia succeed, he has been very successful in achieving his own goals of destroying Microsoft's competitors. I think this is a more important aspect, because it's not illegal to be a hapless failure, but it is illegal to wilfully destroy company value. I think that what he intentionally destroyed is much more important than what he failed to fix or maintain.

Meanwhile, by comparing Elop to projections, instead of sticking to only the facts about what he destroyed, you make it into an opinion, which can be easily dismissed by people who don't already agree with you.

I came to this blog long ago because the real story is rarely told in the news, and you've been telling it like it is. But now I am still in search of the cold hard facts about this tragic saga, and more and more I have to filter opinions out of what I read. But then again, this is your blog, and you have a right to your opinion, and I can't expect it to be only what I want it to be.

Sorry to be critical, I truly am hooked on this blog and the insight that you provide, which is simply not existent in the news media.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi all..

Many great comments and suggestions and 'requests' - thanks!

Don't worry, I have a 'series' of blogs already planned, several of the pictures for upcoming blog chapters to this saga are already drafted, and am working on some of the finer details to get it as right as possible. For example market share - is a different matter than losing to the competitors (today's blog) - but rest assured it is coming, as is the true cost of this debacle, as another blog, and many more - and even those of you who may have followed my Nokia 'policing' for the past two years, I hope to be able to surprise you too with a few new angles and aspects - and pictures.

vladkr - great comment on the cost adding the share price. So yes, remember the Edsel by Ford, considered one of the biggest management blunders ever - its total cost in modern money was only about 2 Billion dollars. Or the Exxon Valdez oil spil in Alaska? Under 5 Billion. Kinda puts Elop's 77 Billion dollar cost into a stark context, doesn't it.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[geektech]

With all those phone models Nokia is comming with and not a single one sell, i think they should come with one Windows N8-mare!

[foo]

@ukd

We can't "prove" that Nokia wouldn't eventually fail; but we *know* Elop strategy failed from the moment it was announced.

Choosing Microsoft as a partner was risky. Going 100% Microsoft was a criminal mistake.

Even if Windows Phone reached 20% of market share, Nokia wouldn't get half of that. Because, remember, Elop was inviting competitors to join the "ecosystem"!

Let's make this clear: even in the best possible future scenario, where Microsoft would become the promissed third ecosystem, Nokia wouldn't have more than 10% of the overall market share!

And then it came the Elop effect.

And he killed all the alternatives -- Symbian, Megoo, etc -- so there wouldn't be a way to proceed without Microsoft.

"Plan B is that plan A must work".

Except it didn't.

[vladkr]

There is one point on which Elop "saved" money : how he fired people.

Like most European countries (actually even better than most EU countries), Finland has strong social protections ; it's quite hard/expensive to fire experienced workers.

But our Top Elop team managed to bypass this problem :
Nokia didn't fire employees, it "moved" them to another company Accenture, selling whole business units; no need for compensations.

So employees have changed employer, then they have a new work contract, and work experience reset to zero.

-> Even in Finland, it's not a problem (and costless) to fire a worker with zero experience)

This is a SCANDAL - at least as much as Nokia's dereliction, which to me, is not denounced enough (a single line in a YLE article).

It's maybe legal, but it's ugly for sure !

[MikaA]

Given the hostility around the net towards Microsoft, we could soon start counting next how quickly Microsoft is now going to go down the drain. Windows 8 doesn't seem to be a success either, and given their blunders with Nokia, there are quite a bit of people who are annoyed towards them (and Nokia as well). With the Surface release, Microsoft apparently managed to piss of their OEMs, and some companies (like Valve) have announced their intends to start delivering Linux based games.

In a way there seems to be a repeat of Nokia coming up soon; get too big, comfortable, and fail to react on the growing market demand and make several mistakes in the execution to piss off your long term partners. I suppose Microsoft needs to learn it in a hard way why this is not any more acceptable business ethics on this decade.

Disclaimer: I do use Microsoft stuff at work every day, but given their recent business moves, I fail to see how I could support them any longer unless they do a radical change of course. Their software empire has its good sides on standardization, but then the other half of that was based on long term trust that they do not intentionally break things, and what else are Office 2010, Windows 7 and 8 than breaking that what worked before - and knowingly so?

[Thomas]

Here's an alternate history. Maybe some Nokians can comment?

1. The CEO before Elop fails in his mission, turns to channel stuffing (which hints at a big problem in itself), and gets fired when this is discovered.

2. In the meantime, Nokia is dithering or infighting about producing the next platform. This one is about software, not hardware, which is out of the comfort zone. But they're on top of the world, why force a decision?

3. New CEO needed with new software skillset. Elop is a software exec, great. Elop arrives, reviews and is briefed about what's going on, and, for better or worse (your call), comes to the conclusion that Maemo, MeeGo or whatever the name of the week was, is not ready for production. Everyone else already has a fresh new unix-style OS, Nokia is failing to produce one. What to do?

4. Look at the alternatives. Settle with the Symbian cash cow of last generation and dwindle? Become one more Android maker? Ballmer is waving this great big shiny lure and MS has to know software, right? Decide to go with Windows Phone.

5. Due to the infighting, Nokia internally needs to be brought to heel. Write burning platform memo. Doing something so drastic points at the internal problems being huge and Elop being relatively weak. Maybe the incumbents would have smothered the efforts to switch, Innovator's Dilemma style.

So where did Elop and the board, including the titan Ollila, go so wrong? Note that their projections obviously already showed the sales crash that Elop himself reported to the press right after the burning platform. During the fall planning, this should have been a big, bright, red flag to indicate that WP-only is NOT the correct strategy.

[Louis]

@Thomas: The history is right, but then you have to try and put it in context:

(1) Nokia is a large company with manufacturing capacity, but at this point not much soc/baseband control, and it needs scale.

(2) WinMo is dying and WP7 is totally unproven and about to be Osborned by WP8. (Nokia knew this, surely, even if nobody else did.)

(3) Android is gaining momentum, on the carriers' deck, and has access to the otherwise 100% proprietary Google app stack, which Nokia and MS are not close to being able to copy. (And Google/any other 3rd party developer won't put in the effort to do it themselves as they do on iOS.)

(4) There is a lot of hardware expertise on Android out there.

So, basically, going with EITHER WP or Meego is a large bet that an "other" platform will come out of nowhere with no 3rd party backing and challenge Apple. This seems basically speculative, which is why about 2/3 of the risk factors from Tomi's other post basically amount to "WP might not get scale."

[Tester]

@Thomas:

Elop ... comes to the conclusion that Maemo, MeeGo or whatever the name of the week was, is not ready for production.

Your theory fails right there. MeeGo was ready for production. In fact they were able to ship it long before the first Lumia. Behold the Nokia N9!

[Kenny]

Thomas, what's wrong with Nokia being one more Android maker? It's better to have a small share of a huge pie than a huge share of a tiny pie. Nokia probably captured 75% of the WP market now. Yet it is still losing money and dying. What if Nokia has just 5% of the Android market? It would be selling many times more phones than it is doing now. Get it?

[ukd]

@Kenny

Competition with Android is not as easy as it is with WP.

The ASP for Android phones is just too low for someone like Nokia. There will be $50 Android phones this year. Nokia would be having very hard time trying to compete against Samsung in high end. When was the last quarter Nokia had a significant market share of high end phones? That is, something like over 30% from phones sold for over $300? With the $300 I mean the price Nokia is getting from a phone. Not the price a consumer is paying for it.

The problem is that selling the WP for consumers is not easy.

[Tester]

@ukd:

That 'cannot compete against Samsung' argument is not valid. Remember, when Nokia abandoned Symbian for Windows Phone it still had more than twice the marketshare of Samsung. It would have been a completely different situation for entering the market than now.

Many people have said, and I agree, that Lumia would sell like crazy if it ran on Android instead of WP. From a technical standpoint these are great phones. They only have one major problem: They run on an unpopular operating system.

[Firecracker]

I don't like this destruction! I mean Ballmer was hired by Apple to destroy MSFT and Elop is hired by MSFT to destroy Nokia when is all this destruction going to end?

[ukd]

@Tester

I didn't say it was not possible for Nokia to compete against Samsung. I said it would have been hard.

In early 2011 Nokia no longer had a big market share in expensive phones. It would have been hard to sell expensive Android phones like Android. Not impossible, but hard.

If Nokia decided to make Android phones in 2011, when would they have been able to sell those? At the same time they had those first Lumia phone? One month earlier?

How successful would Nokia have been with Android phones and why? This is one analysis we have not seen yet.

[Tester]

@ukd:

>>If Nokia decided to make Android phones in 2011, when would they have been able to sell those? At the same time they had those first Lumia phone? One month earlier?

Let's just hypothesize a bit.
Yes, I think the phones would have been ready at the same time as the Windows Phones.
There would just have been one tiny difference: A switch to Android wouldn't have caused half the disruption of existing hardware sales as the WP switch did. It would have appeared as a logical evolution from previous offerings, not a total change of course. Yes, sure, Symbian would still have lost marketshare in 2011, that was inevitable, but let's not forget: People like Android - people do not like Windows Phone. The negative buzz surrounding Nokia would have been considerably less and therefore the damage of switching the operating system.

The switch to Windows sent one incredibly damaging signal to customers, i.e. they wouldn't need to bother with Nokia anymore if they wanted a decent new smartphone. This meant that instead of waiting a few months until Nokia could deliver something more modern they jumped ship immediately and bought a competitor's Android phone.

[ukd]

@Tester

While it's true that Android was more familiar, there would not have been a migration path from Symbian to Android. Qt for Android was not ready and running native code on Android is not very smart.

What would have happened if everything happened just like it did, but Nokia was selling Android phones? What would have happened? How many Android phones was Nokia going to sell in Q4 2012? I've not seen any estimations about that.

[cycnus]

@ukd

But user will feel more at home with android
Symbian and android were bro (at UI/UX)
both offer the same level of multitask
both offer the same level of homescreen/widget
both offer the easy access of filesystem through USB (no zune/itunes)
both offer the //same// level of openness

[ukd]

@cycnus

Look and feel doesn't make it same. For companies, it should be compatible with the legacy applications. WP is not, Android is not and even MeeGo is not compatible with most corporate legacy applications. Very few of Symbian's applications at the early 2011 were made with Qt. For corporations there was, for most of the time, really no real migration path for those applications they already had.

The iPhone is really admired phone. It doesn't look like Symbian, it doesn't feel like Symbian and it doesn't multitask like it. It's very good phone with extremely high ASP. The model it offers can't possibly be flawed because people want to have it.

[Kenny]

Nokia had a huge a huge and loyal user base in developing countries like India and China. Many of them would buy a phone just because it is a Nokia. There is no question that they will buy Nokia Android phones. Android is an upgrade to Symbian and it can be made in all price segments from budget to high end.

So what happened in India is that many loyal Nokia users bought Lumia and were bitterly disappointed. The OS is a downgrade from Symbian and missing many key features they were used to like bluetooth file transfer and mass storage. They have no use for file transfers using expensive data via SkyDrive. Lumia phones were unreliable and buggy unlike the Nokia quality they were used to.

In China Nokia's market share went over a cliff. If I remember correctly about 70% down in 1 year. Attempts to push WP on the China market failed miserably.

WP are expensive due to hardware specs and unsuitable for developing countries because it needs a PC with online data and 3G for the phone. The OS is a downgrade compared to Symbian. Instead of leveraging its brand name in developing countries Nokia is actively destroying its market there while gaining little in developed countries.