Its Now Official, Nokia Shareholders Approved the Deal

So its over. Nokia shareholder meeting today approved the sale of Nokia's handset business to Microsoft. Congrats Microsoft for picking up Nokia's huge handset business at a bargain price. It is a poisoned chalice however, as under Microsoft ownership, the smartphone business will never turn into anything worth keeping at Microsoft. The Lumia/Windows Phone business unit will at some point be closed down at Microsoft after enough money is thrown into that endless pit...

A few quick notes from the shareholder meeting (I was not present, I only monitored news via YLE and Helsingin Sanomat). Chairman Siilasmaa admitted that yes, there had been offers from other potential buyers when they negotiated with Microsoft (who told you so?). And they revealed that Nokia's royalty per Lumia handset was 10 US dollars. And that Microsoft was paying now 20 dollars per handset of marketing expenses (on top of Nokia's millions) to support the handsets (that still were selling at severe losses every quarter).

Ok, its about time to close the episode in our lives that was called 'my first phone' haha.. Bye-bye Nokia, we will sorely miss you in handsets. My requiem to Nokia is here. And we wish the newer, slimmer, to be dropped from Fortune Global 500 next year, Nokia very much good fortune on its ways to new opportunities.

I will soon release my book on the Elop Effect, it needs to be recorded for history as the biggest management failure of any global market leader in economic history of humankind.

Comments

[uday deka]

I am still in disbelieve that a person can bring down a company to such an end. That a person can remain at the helm of affairs by doing a negative deed. But one thing I am sure is that this kind cannot always do the positive. This kind doesn't understand that it needs years of selfless hard work by a group of people to build a company to become a world famous.
But one thing is for sure is that Nokia board is dominated by highly incompetent people,
oh god
Oh god please help me to forget the past

[Stoli89]

I wonder if MSFT has indemnified Elop of any potential lawsuits going forward regarding his tenure at Nokia. I only say this because I never felt opposition to the D&S sale would be a viable approach. Nokia's long-term shareholders, if they hadn't already given up, were happy to get a partial reprieve with the MSFT offering. Shorter term shareholders reaped big profits. The government got some alternative investment vis a vis the MSFT server farm. No, the only viable approach is a shareholder lawsuit (for those holding shares at the time of Elop's employment contracting). It was here that Nokia's BoD demonstrated total incompetency and/or something more nefarious. The actions of Elop regarding the Burning Platform memo, killing of N9 (& N950 for that matter), distribution mismanagement, etc...this all points to an incentive scheme that was a self-fulfilling prophecy for those who knew Elop's contract terms. Since these terms were not public/investment information, it seems fair to assume investors would not expect a suicidal CEO. This reeks of insider manipulation and needs to be, IMO, deciphered by the courts.

99.7% approval was expected...half a carrot was better than no carrot at all. My issue is with those who ate the other half of that carrot. Hell, it's more like a whole bushel of carrots...but let's not be greedy. I simply would like to see Elop left holding only a pair of yellow shoes.

[uday deka]

A website 'Nokiapoweruser' posted that Nokia chairman Rico and exec vp Michael said that Nokia will return in future with connecting devices "we will still surprise people with leading edge hardware".
How you bloggers feel?

[Janne]

"Jolla is "now" the largest European phone manufacturer, according to Tomi. All hail Europe and Jolla. Sailfish for the win. They have sold out the pre-order phones. All FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY of them. :)"

I understood that as a joke by Tomi. A joke which actually is close to truth too, and underlines the demise of Nokia.

Anyway, DNA - the operator organizing the said launch event - says in the press release that there is thousands of pre-orders in Finland, and the phone is generally available from the stores in early December.

The pop-up store happens at one of the busiest squares of Finland, and some are actually travelling from overseas to be there. Talk about dedication.

Jolla has been in existence for two years, and most likely they are still finding the direction, but things are moving forward and their strategy is executed. Have you checked out what kind of people they are currently hiring?

Jolla's current CEO said (in an interview) that the reason why D.Phone thing has been pushed away was that Jolla didn't have actual phones to offer. However, he indicated that this doesn't mean the deal is off. Now that they actually have managed to create their phone I'd guess things move forward in many fronts.

[Louis]

Since people here like to endlessly re-litigate whether Meego was any good or not, here is an early impression of Jolla:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/29/5156446/jolla-smartphone-hands-on-preview

"Yes, it sounds very reminiscent of the Nokia N9, but in practice it's highly unintuitive and unwieldy to the point where the entire UI paradigm can be considered broken. Screen transitions and in-app animations go from left to right, inviting the user to swipe from right to left to go back, but that’s not how you’re supposed to do it. A notification pops down from the top of the screen, but if you try to swipe down to view it, you're liable to unintentionally close your current app, or more annoyingly, lock the entire phone. Then there's the fact that a swipe from the middle of the screen produces a different result than a swipe from the edge. It all adds up to a frustrating learning experience. The user is forced to adapt around the operating system rather than the other way around."

[N9]

@Louis: They should have kept the N9 user interface, which got excellent reviews. I guess this was not possible for legal reasons. But it is still too early too see how this works out.

[Willers]

N9 you can't patent a gui :-)

[www.youtube.com]

What a data of un-ambiguitу andd preserveness of precious experience on the topic of unexpected feelings.