Sherlock Holmes and the Hounds of the Basket Case: Clues on the trail of Elop, Ballmer and Nokia's Board

Ok. Now its pretty well established in several news sources, that Nokia tried to get Microsoft to buy the company last year, but Microsoft decided against it. That gives fresh insights and 'clues' to what might have been driving Elop to such unprecedented madness from this infamous Burning Platforms memo - the costliet management memo of all time - to the ludicrious decisions about announcing the end of Symbian with no Windows Phone smartphones even to show, far less to sell; to the infuriating decisions to not support Nokia's own-developed and truly excellent products from the N9 on MeeGo to 808 Pureview on Symbian, to not even releasing the N950 on MeeGo to the baffling decision on suddeinly terminating Meltemi mere weeks before phones were ready to be shown.

Elop is the worst CEO of all time, he has personally caused the biggest corporate downfall in the Global Fortune 500 history, after we eliminate management fraud and crimes. For management incompetence Elop is the benchmark. The worst CEO ever. We need not review all his damage, growing smartphone sales turned into history's fastest collapse. Growing profitable handset business turned into fastest losses ever in this industry. Market share collapse - Nokia was twice as large in market share as the iPhone, four times as big as Samsung's smartphones when Elop started - and grew more in 2010 than either rival - but now Nokia smartphones (on all of its platforms, combined) is one sixth the size of the iPhone and one tenth the size of Samsung's smartphones. Nokia share price, Nokia brand value, Nokia loyalty, all destroyed in the past 2 years and four months.

I don't mean that Nokia was 'in great shape' before Elop - I never said that, I was warning that Nokia had problems at the time - but Nokia was growing strongly, making strong - growing - profits, and towered over its rivals before the Elop Effect in February 2011. After Elop started to massacre the businesses of Nokia, its been sheer carnage.

Now. Could there be a reason to the madness? What if we don't examine this from the prism - what is best for Nokia and its shareholders. If we examine it from this angle 'Elop promised to sell Nokia to Microsoft'. We know for a fact, that those discussions were going on during 2012. Very seriously.

A MICROSOFTIAN ANGLE

So first, lets be clear. What was it that Ballmer was expecting of Nokia. Ballmer sent Elop to go prepare Nokia for a purchase. So much is clear. Elop met with Ballmer regularly when Elop 'went home' to his family living in Seattle, right next to Microsoft's HQ. Yes, Elop 'commuted' to Espoo Finland on long-haul flights and kept a second apartment in the Helsinki area.

But yeah. What did Ballmer expect. Nokia had 34% market share in smartphones in 2010 when Elop was made CEO. It was to be expected that some of that market share would be lost, due to the natural long-term market erosion that Nokia had seen very steadily, losing about 5 market share points per year (Nokia invented smarpthones, started with 100%, and especially after the iPhone in 2007, the number of competitors in smartphones had mushroomed massively, of course Nokia was losing some market share in any case).

Furthermore, a shift away from Nokia's home-grown Symbian and its new MeeGo platforms to the modest-sized Windows platform would result in some further loss in market share, almost every analyst conceded that back in Spring of 2011. Surely Ballmer knew that he could not expect Nokia to hold 25% or something like that when Microsoft might want to buy it. How much were they expecting? We can see that from Nokia's strategy projections and the various analysts. They expected something in the order of 15% to 20%, a strong 'third ecosystem' behind Android and iOS, but ahead of Blackberry in a 2011 time-scale. This will be what Ballmer would have had in his mind as a nice acquisition in Nokia, to be his handset factory for the Windows 8 future of converged products.

Elop made a total pig's breakfast out of that plan. Nokia had lost half of its customers in less than 8 months after the Elop Effect - a world-record collapse in market share, not just in mobile phones or smarpthones, but in any industry. Toyota's problems with brakes, Coca Cola's problems with New Coke and BP's problems with its oil spill didn't cause this bad damage this fast. So Ballmer would have seen a potential disaster by Q3 of 2011 with Elop in charge, when Nokia's smarpthone market share had hit 14%. 

Then came Windows Phone launch, and we know, it was the costliest new phone launch ever, by Nokia, by a wide margin. Supported by many carriers giving it the biggest carrier push ever, and that supported by the biggest push Microsoft had given any phone - to the degree some buyers received free Xbox gaming consoles if they bought an early Nokia Lumia. We know what happened, the Nokia market share collapse continued. Six months after Lumia launch, Nokia's market share was under 10% at 8% and by year-end when Windows Phone 8 was launching, Nokia's global smartphone market share was literally one tenth it was two years before, at 3%. Why on earth would Ballmer want this disaster of a badly-managed company.

THE MOTIVATIONS TO ELOP'S MADNESS

So with that perspective, that this ship was sinking so badly, no way would any sane Microsoft CEO want to buy it. Not from what it had been to what had been done to it. But now, lets turn to Elop. Elop clearly had pitched the idea to the Nokia Board, that Microsoft would like to buy Nokia. Elop knew Microsoft, Elop knew Ballmer, and Elop could privately talk with Ballmer back home in Seattle, where nobody would even know. As we have since heard, for example, in the summer of 2011, Ballmer and Elop conspired to consider buying RIM ie Blackberry, but decided against it. So they've been cooking up these plans for a while.

We do not know exactly when it is that the idea was first brought to the Nokia Board (or it might be out there, if someone has seen news reporting on it, please share in the comments and I'll update the story). We do know that Elop made a long series of decisions and announcements that were seen as 'stupid' and often caused severe drops to Nokia share prices (or stopped the growth of Nokia share price, like with the unveiling of the N9 running MeeGo). Why would an idiot CEO want to stop growth of the share price and actually wish for a decline in the share price? If he had some personal play in the share - illegal obviously, insider trading and manipulating the stock price. Or if he wanted to make Nokia more appealing to a buyer - to Microsoft.

So. Lets examine some of Elop's decisions now with the prism of 'would this be in the interests of making Nokia more appealing to Microsoft in an acquisition'.

And the picture becomes very clear. Why call Nokia's own products bad, when in fact they were not. When in fact they were award-winning, market-dominating and where even Apple would only weeks later agree to pay Nokia in royalties for Nokia patents, not the other way around. Why the Burning Platforms memo? To cause a severe drop in Nokia sales, retail sales support, carrier support, Nokia brand and - Nokia share price? That cannot be in the best interests of Nokia owners (shareholders) or Nokia employees or Nokia partners or suppliers, or Nokia retail channel and carriers, and end-users. Any CEO to release that memo would be a madman - but what if its his intention to make Nokia more appealing to be bought by Microsoft? It did help cause a severe drop in Nokia share price. Together with the stupid announcement of the Windows shift and end of Symbian with no phones to sell - helped push Nokia share price to under half what it had been in less than half a year. A big achievement, if the objective is to get Nokia ready to be sold to Microsoft?

The non-support of the N9? What the f*ck. The only smarpthone ever to be regularly considered better than the iPhone - no Nokia phone before or since achieved that - and the one running MeeGo the only smartphone OS rated in any side-by-side user reviews on par with - or even better than - the iPhone's iOS. Any sane CEO would have taken the N9 and been seen on every single magazine and website and television tech show with that phone, celebrating its excellence. Not Elop. One day after it was unveiled, Elop said, no matter how well it will sell, he will not release other MeeGo devices.

Yes, What the Fuck is the right response. That is a madman speaking. This is the device that beat the iPad for the 'Oscars' in industrial design (the D&AD Awards) - who wins against Apple in design, ever? This is the smartphone so highly praised, German newsmagazine Der Stern - newsmagazine not tech magazine - reviewed it and recommended Germans to fly to Austria or Switzerland - another country - to buy it, as Nokia refused to sell the N9 in Germany. What CEO refuses to sell such a hot product in its biggest markets?

Yes, utter sheer madness. But would it make sense if you're selling Nokia to Microsoft? MeeGo was a far better OS than Windows Phone, and MeeGo was ready for Tablets and netbooks, something Windows Phone would not be for at least another year (Windows 8/Windows Phone 8). MeeGo had dozens of partners and the first non-Nokia devices were already out, such as Fujitsu's first netbook running MeeGo. MeeGo was pure gold for Nokia - China Mobile, the world's largest mobile operator/carrier had already selected MeeGo as their default smartphone OS - China Mobile is as big as AT&T plus Verizon plus Sprint plus T-Mobile in the USA, all added together - and that number doubled. That is how enormous is China Mobile. And they were Nokia's partner with MeeGo. Any sane Nokia CEO would launch MeeGo and all MeeGo devices as soon as possible and as broadly as possible. Not just the N9, but its sister phone the N950, and the others in the pipeline - as the phone that became the first Lumia, the Lumia 800, etc.

Elop effectively killed MeeGo one day after it was revealed to the press by promising there will be no more. Is that in Nokia's best interest. Hell no. But would that be appealing to Microsoft, afraid of MeeGo as a strong laptop, netbook, tablet and smartphone platform with Intel as co-developer and dozens of equipment makers lined up, and several carriers committed to it, including China Mobile? You betcha! Microsoft was afraid of MeeGo. Ballmer wanted MeeGo dead.

So Elop's decision to kill MeeGo makes some sense if we examine it as Nokia 'appeasing' Microsoft and trying to keep it happy in the merger talks. I would argue its very cunning power-play by Ballmer and Elop and the Nokia Board were utterly defeated in this ploy, because obviously Nokia ended up not being sold, but had to destroy its future platform anyway. This is like Chamberlain and Hitler in Wordl War 2, British Prime Minister thought he had gotten a solid promise from Hitler not to grab anything more in Europe, but like Hitler in world history, Ballmer in tech history just took what he wanted, gave promises to Nokia and conveniently ignored those. Ballmer wanted Symbian dead and MeeGo dead. He got both.

Same with Meltemi, Nokia's low-cost smartphone operating system running Linux. It was only weeks from the launch of the first low-cost smartphones. Elop killed the unit, fired the people in charge and why? The future of smartphones is not the high end where Lumia fits and Windows Phone can be sustainable, maybe, price-wise. But everyone from Nokia to Microsoft has said that Windows Phone does not suit low-end smartphones under 100 dollars. Meltemi would have fit smartphones costing under 50 dollars, where lowest-end bada and Android smartphones are priced. Elop killing it with phones ready to launch is total lunacy by the CEO if we think of Nokia's best interests (and those of Nokia shareholders). But what about selling Nokia to Microsoft. Yes, Microsoft wanted Meltemi to be dead. Dead explicitly BEFORE any phones are shown to the world. Right then, in 2012, the discussions were the strongest about the acquisition by Microsoft.

We saw the time-line. Soon after Meltemi was killed, suddenly Ballmer and Elop had a falling-out. We saw Ballmer talking of launching Microsoft's own products - and the Surface tablet emerged. We saw Elop talking about Windows not being the only way forward. We can pretty well pintpoint when the love ended, and Microsoft started to feature other makers with Windows Phone handsets etc. And the stories came out that Nokia actually has to pay more lifetime to Microsoft in royalties, than the marketing support Microsoft paid Nokia to help launch Lumia etc.

So we can see, the marriage dance ended somewhere in the summer of 2012. I'll go back and dig through the exact comments and actions, but yeah. The Microsoft decision was clearly made then. Ballmer was no longer at all happy with Windows Phone. Soon we'd even hear Bill Gates saying that while many things are going well for Microsoft, Windows Phone is a total fiasco (i forget his exact words right now).

So then what happened? Elop hoped for a miracle with Windows Phone 8. He didn't get that. He promised the Nokia shareholders' meeting miraculous levels of growth in Lumia sales. He slashed and killed any remaining Symbian sales (why? the 808 Pureview was for example sustaining high sales and Symbian - higher average sales prices than the Lumia series) And he's now playing accounting tricks to try to convince everyone that Nokia is 'profitable' such as selling the Nokia HQ building for the Q4 2012 quarter, and assigning all its income to the handsets unit, to create the thinnest sliver of 'profit' for the handsets unit - a profit so slim if the Headquarters building revenue had been assigned by more conventional accounting principles such as by headcount or business unit revenues, the handset unit would not have been profitable.

Yes, Elop is now just doing stupid things because he's an incompetent manager, and pushing Nokia ever deeper into the ditch. Any sane CEO would look at the disasterous Windows Phone failure in the market - come on, before this alliance, Windows has 5% market share in smartphones, now 'with Nokia' it has 3%. This after Nokia has sacrificed 31% of its smartphone market share on Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo. 

There is much more, I'll return to this theme shortly. But I wanted to post this to begin with.

And Nokia Board - please, now its time to dispose of the useless and self-destructive Elop and his Microsoft-Mafia. He had one card to play. He played it very poorly. Nokia is far worse today than it was in September 2010 when that smooth-talker con-artist Elop took control of Nokia. If you fire Elop now, and announce not that Nokia will end Windows, only that you will explore other platform options including Android - that news - Elop gone and Windows no longer the only path - will bring Nokia's share price to a strong growth path. You know, Board Members, that the carriers/operators and retailers are punishing Nokia - not because Nokia is evil, not because Nokia phones are bad, but because of Elop and Microsoft and Skype. Elop has said so many times, that carriers and retail do not support Nokia sales, and he admitted clearly in the 2011 Shareholders' Meeting that the reason behind carrier hostility to Windows Phone smartphones is Skype. So too have said essentially all Windows Phone partners and so have said Nokia and Microsoft sales staff either current or past. This is a dead-end product that cannot ever help Nokia back.

Whatever else you decide over the meetings you have, please make the first decision to fire Elop and the second to announce that Nokia will introduce Android (or MeeGo or Sailfish) based smartphones to be produced alongside Windows, soon. That is the best way forward to Nokia. Then please hire some CEO from a carrier/operator to help Nokia regain its trust in its most important customers - the carriers/operators.

Nokia shareholders - do you feel you've been treated fairly in this. Elop has been manipulating the Nokia share price against your best interests, in his futile attempt to sell your company to Microsoft, at a fraction of what it should have been worth. HIs actions cannot have been motivated by anything else except to create a fire-sale of Nokia at below-market value. And we now hear from Huawei for example, that while they are interested in Nokia, Elop has never even entertained bids from others than Microsoft. Is that in your best intereest? When we heard in the past year or so, that Samsung, Sony, Lenovo and Huawei have all been interested in acquiring Nokia but Elop refuses to talk to them? Is that really the best for you, as Nokia shareholders. And why are you allowing Elop to remain in charge after this 'treason'. And why are you allowing the Board to remain in power too? Just asking...  

PS to my regular readers - please post comments on the various instances that you can recall, about what all Elop has done which would make sense in the light if he was trying to sell Nokia to Microsoft. I'm not going to remember all, but I'll write a longer blog examinging the major issues, and greatly appreciate your comments and reminders. Thanks! 

Comments

[Interested to know]

Great write-up. Elop's actions have been criminal. I hope someone in Finland wakes up and starts assigning blame- there is a lot to go around.

[So give me #jolla phone instead!]

In this land of former great Nokia, how do you think that kind of re-assigning is going to happen. Even the Lumia market share is one of the biggest in the world in Finland. And, don't get me wrong, I'm definately against the current" strategy" and its implementation and all the cruel consquences of it; loss of market share, killing of Meego and N9, and dropping own OS-development, and the thousands of jobs lost in Finland, alone!

[Spawn]

One thing related to Meltimi that puzzles me. Why would you abort your Linux based Qt platform (MeeGo) that is ready for production and shipped (N9) to start a complete new Linux based Qt platform (Meltimi) without reusing anything* while knowing there is not much time left**? And then if they finished (weeks before release) you abort. Why***?

* It was from scratch, Suse based, nothing of MeeGo got reused
** Elop himself visited the devs, gave them "freedom and full support to unleash the next billion" just to abort little less then a year later short before release.
*** Was that to silent Mary McDowell and the support she had in the Nokia BOD for a while till it was to late?

[m]

@LeeBase, yes everything has made Nokia less desirable for purchase, yet the disaster has been great for Microsoft. The destruction of a competitor for third place, the killing of a Linux-based platform, their utter dependence on MS for survival. Obviously, Elop imagined that things would magically go a lot better. Perhaps he thought that dashing Nokia on Microsoft's rocks would prove his eternal love, and they'd take him in as a lover, but instead MS just says "Look at you, you're pathetic, broken", even though it was Windows that did it.

Elop made the mistake of giving everything away for free to MS and destroying everything else, not realizing that the feelings of loyalty weren't mutual, and that he wouldn't be rewarded for spoiling the company for their sake.

[TE]

http://conversations.nokia.com/2012/01/03/theres-something-about-mary/

I always thought this post about Mary Macdowell was loaded against Elop. Could she be the next CEO?; Qwerty ot Touch? Qwerty;

[JF]

Bill Gates on CBS: "We didn't miss cell phones. But the way that we went about it didn't allow us to get the leadership, so it's clearly a mistake."

[Winter]

Playing the devils advocate. An alternative hypothesis would be that Elop should covert Nokia customers to WP. Beyond that conversion, Nokia had no value. Any sale of Nokia to MS would only be a payout for collaborating.

In this alternative, any project or product that could compete with or distract from WP had to be killed. The share price of Nokia would then also be irrelevant to these strategists.

[birdy]

So Elop killed most of the online services (Ovi), to not conflict with the ones from Microsoft?

[Winter]

@birdy
Who can read the mind of these mad master strategists? However, anything that might make existing Nokia platforms attractive could delay Lumia uptake.

The message was clear: if you want a Nokia phone, you must buy a Lumia. And the people responded that they did not want a Nokia that badly.

Btw, that was also the strategy of MS with Vista and W8: If you want a new computer, you have to use Vista/W8. And people answered that they did not need a new computer that badly and bought a tablet instead.

[Sander van der Wal]

Microsoft's capabilities are truly amazing.

On the one hand they are able to forecast that Nokia's own new shiny operating system MeeGo would not be ready in time (the Business Week story, reported fact). That way they would have a change to get Nokia on board with Windows Phone. For this cunning plan to work, they would need to put one of their own, Elop, in the drivers seat as Nokia's CEO. So they convinced Nokia to dump OPK and appoint Elop as the CEO.

And on the other hand they are completely unable to predict everything else happening in the mobile software business. The success of iPhone, the success of iPad. The troubles with Windows Phone itself. The rise of Samsung. The rise of Android.

yeah, right.

What happened is that both Nokia and Microsoft came to realize independent of each other, what an incredible threat iOS and later Android were to their mobile businesses. Microsoft saw what happened in the States to their own mobile business, Windows Mobile. And Nokia saw their key markets in Europe and later Asia being obliterated. We are talking 2008, 2009.

In 2010, Nokia dumped OPK and appointed Elop. They kept working very hard on MeeGo.

Early 2011, it became clear that the MeeGo strategy was not going to work because it would not be delivered in time (reported fact). A new strategy was hatched. Windows Phone and Android were investigated, Windows Phone was choosen.

I would not be surprised that close ties with Microsoft were one of the reasons Elop was choosen as the CEO. After all, there were not that many options for Nokia as plan B in 2010, the time OPK was ousted. They could keep working on MeeGo, they could reassert Symbian, they could go to Android, they could go to Microsoft, they could buy Palm, they could start another project. All the reasons for not choosing Android were as obvious in 2010 as they were in 2011.

This makes going with Microsoft a good plan B. So you pick a Microsoft manager as your new CEO. But Plan A was at that time to go with MeeGo.

[timple]

When Elop ended Symbian on Feb 11 there was a strange article in Newsweek or Businessweek - I can't remember exactly - which was an interview by Elop to justify the decision. There were some very strange things there - like Nokia employees being castigated because they actually chose Symbian devices as their own personal devices (like what would that say if they all toted iphones???) But the strangest was a story he recounted where he was looking at his options and reviewed the Meego products and had an "oh shit - it's not going to be ready moment". At the time the N9 was not announced so it passed without comment. Then shortly after they announce the N9 - well before the L800...

Tomi - you have an opportunity for a fabulous classic business book - because Nokias fall from the top is one heck of a story - just don't make it too personal!

[Jusu]

There is a movie about Facebook (Social Network). Story of Nokia would also be a great drama. Maybe Danny DeVito could play Steve Ballmer and Philip Seymour Hoffman Stephen Elop? Tomi should do screenplay and (play Mr Bond in a supporting role)...

[e_lm_70]

Tomi, you miss two very important points:
- Nokia - Microsoft secret agreement, has been told to be valid till 2016. Nobody will every buy Nokia for keep producing only Lumia or DumbPhone till 2016.
- Nokia account now 80% of total Windows Phone sales. Microsoft did push HTC when they presented together the new HTC WP8. Even with Microsoft push, Nokia outsell the competition on WP by 5:1. This show one clear factor: People don't want Windows Phones ... but still there are people that recognize Nokia as valuable mobile phone producer.

If Microsoft would acquire Nokia, the brand of Nokia would be diluted, sales of Microsoft Lumia will be not as good as Nokia Lumia. Microsoft with surface shown that they are no capable to sell any relevant amount to HW to the customer.

Yes ... maybe Microsoft was interested to have direct control of Nokia, but once they realize that Noka brand is what make the sales, and Nokia with Elop does exactly what Microsoft request to be done ... there is no point to waste money for get worst result.

Lumia is now making ground in many markets, the momentum is good, it has to be seen if this will go on.
The money, we have been told already, Microsoft with more then 5m Lumia sales will get most or all the profit. So money wise, Microsoft get already all the benefit from a possible success of Lumia

Tchuss

e_lm_70

[Spawn]

One more: When Elop aborted MeeGo the major reason given was that 'we can do only one device till end-year and thats not enough'.

1) the second device, the N950, was ready since a while, Elop knew it.
2) there was that theird device ready.
3) hw-teams had a bunch of more prototypes.
4) Lumia had how much devices beside Lanku last 2 years? One!

Also the 808 was supposed to be fated by Elop in similar ways (eg no US) and that changed only later (on pressure?). Same N9-question applies: why would you make a product and not sell it if there is demand?

One central point: his statement and reasoning that the battle of devices became the battle of ecosystems. This marked the central strategy-shift where Nokia stopped to compete with Samsung, HTC, etc and started to compete with Android. It wasn't any longer Nokia vs competition but became anybody-WP vs anybody-not-WP. The later included Symbian, MeeGo, Meltimi but not S40, Smarterphone. Last two not have ecosystems and that's where the circle closes.

Think about it. Nokia makes devices (core business) and back then ecosystems (Symbian, MeeGo). It aborts competition on devices and its ecosystems, adapt the ecosystem ontrolled by anotger and makes fighting for that ecosystems market share its core strategy. Still today I ask myself how Nokia wins if WP wins? If eg Samsung wents all in WP, Elop welcomes them, Samsung eats 90% WP market share, how does that align to Nokia profit goals? It doesn't. Its insane, flawn by design.

[Louis]

@timple: You mean this?

http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/57372-stephen-elops-nokia-adventure

"At its current pace, Nokia was on track to introduce only three MeeGo-driven models before 2014—far too slow to keep the company in the game."

@Sander: "What happened is that both Nokia and Microsoft came to realize independent of each other, what an incredible threat iOS and later Android were to their mobile businesses."

Pretty much. The mistake for Nokia, in retrospect, was not to just switch to Android, since WP failed on its supposed strengths, which were agility and service stack.

[Louis]

@Tomi: "This is like Chamberlain and Hitler in Wordl War 2, British Prime Minister thought he had gotten a solid promise from Hitler not to grab anything more in Europe, but like Hitler in world history, Ballmer in tech history just took what he wanted, gave promises to Nokia and conveniently ignored those. Ballmer wanted Symbian dead and MeeGo dead. He got both."

This is a bit gauche. Also, wrong. Ballmer wasn't concerned with either Symbian or Meego. He was concerned about the iPhone and Android, which were finally bringing actual computing and mobile together. Elop was concerned about the same thing, and then backed the losing side.

[Olavi]

Probably this "news" about Microsoft wanting to buy Nokia is only a distraction from the recent spurn from Huawei. The sad truth is that Nokia is in a state where there will be no good to anyone, least of all to Microsoft. Microsoft already has control via Elop and the people he brought in. Microsoft got rid of Symbian and Linux phones leaving Nokia only with Windows. Microsoft already got most of the patents, maybe the only worthwhile ones, farmed out to patent trolls. There's simply nothing left of value. One motivation that is being overlooked is that Nokia has been crushed just for the sake of crushing it. Sure it was a fairly large company when this started to happen, but if we look at the history of Microsoft they have a habit of crushing smaller companies apparently simply because they can.

[zlutor]

@timple: "But the strangest was a story he recounted where he was looking at his options and reviewed the Meego products and had an "oh shit - it's not going to be ready moment". At the time the N9 was not announced so it passed without comment. Then shortly after they announce the N9 - well before the L800..."

Oh yes, the famous 'oh shit' moment...

That can either be true or not I can not judge. But whatever Nokia has releases with WP7.x could have been released with Meego, to - without any real additional effort, I guess...

Not to mention what (technical/technological) advantage WP7.x - and maybe WP8.x - could show against Meego. Otherwise the list would not be so short...

If I were in the chair of Elop I would push Meego - and maybe WP, but from WP8 only - and let Symbian die gradually with honor...

I might have some difficulties justifying introducing WP into the portfolio later on then... :-)

[Z1lIjch]

"One motivation that is being overlooked is that Nokia has been crushed just for the sake of crushing it."

After beating Motorola and abandoing CDMA it's not even completely unlikely that after many years they must have hated the companies' guts.

Another possibility, is that they are more interested in their mapping unit and patents than in the actual devices, since those can be gotten elsewhere.

[ejvictor]

Add to list...
1) De-funding and killing Symbian foundation.
2) Shuttering 'all' Nokia retail stores..
3) Killing Nokia's innovative line of accessories and outsourcing to partners.
4) Erasing dozens of Nokia consumer and developers facing web sites.
5) Slashing Nokia betalabs and killing innovative social software.
6) Buy and Trash Smarterphone OS