Nokia Under Elop - His 3 Years: Performance Review - Worst CEO of All Time - All the Facts - In Pictures

Ok, we are nearing the end of Elop related Nokia stories on this blog, thankfully. Since we have just had the last Quarterly results where Elop was mostly in charge (July-Sept Quarter ie Q3 - Elop was removed from CEO post on Sept 3, 2013) we can now do the exact performance review covering the full 983 days that Elop was the cancer that was destroying Nokia. From the day he started, Sept 21, 2010, Elop was Nokia CEO for 2 years, 11 months and 12 days. This is the headline picture of epic failure:




(the above picture may be freely shared)
Note: All above data is indexed to last 12 months (4 quarters) under predecessor Kallasvuo. It compares like-for-like time, the last 12 months/last 4 quarters of Nokia performance under Elop, ending in Q3 of 2013, vs the last 12 months/last 4 quarters of Nokia performance under his predecessor, Kallasvuo, ending also in Q3, of 2010.


It is clear, that the 3 year period under Elop was a disaster. All metrics, every single conceivable metric for Nokia CEO shows not mild decline, but huge decline - this in an industry that was strongly growing. During his 3 yars at Nokia, the Nokia corporate revenues fell 40%. Nokia handset sales revenues fell 40%. Nokia handset market share fell 54%. Nokia smartphone sales revenue fell 69%. Nokia smartphone market share collapsed 90%. Nokia profits were wiped out to the tune of 92%. Nokia lost over 13 Billion dollars in shareholder value. From the day he joined Nokia, to the morning when it was announced he has been removed from office, Nokia share price had fallen 60%. When he started, Nokia's credit rating was near perfect; as he leaves office less than 3 years later, it was rated junk. This has been the worst performance of any CEO of any Global Fortune 500 sized company in a comparable period of time. It is a world record in corporate failure by CEO.

So that is what this blog is about. This is the story of how Nokia was destroyed. And to keep the words to a reasonable count, I have been drawing pictures for you. So it will be easier to see through the graphs and diagrams than just reading another 10,000 words...

NOKIA BEFORE ELOP

Nokia was a corporation in trouble before Elop joined. Elop was hired as a 'savior' to Nokia's problems. This is how bad it was under previous CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. Nokia had seen revenues decline from its peak in 2008. Nokia had seen profits decline severely from its peak also in 2008. Nokia had reported its first quarterly loss (although the full year was still profitable) - that loss was driven by Nokia's troubled Networking division, not its handsets units which were both highly profitable. Nokia's share price had fallen in the 4 years and 3 months Kallasvuo losing 56% of their value. Nokia's highly praised triple-A rating was downgraded to AA+. Nokia as a corporation was still healthy when Kallasvuo left, but not nearly as incredibly strong as it had been under the legendary Jorma Ollila the CEO who guided Nokia in its strong growth years across the turn of the Millenium.

So to be clear, Nokia had reported one QUARTER of a loss, but in annual terms, Nokia was a profitable company. Its big revenue growth had turned into decline but that decline was actually halted around the time the Nokia Board decided to seek a replacement to Kallasvuo, and Nokia revenues had returned to growth by the time Elop joined Nokia. Nokia's troubles were in its Networking division, its two handset units, 'smartphones' (Nokia called them 'converged devices') and 'dumbphones' (Nokia calls them 'featurephones') were both highly profitable at the time. Nokia's problems were mostly those of 'execution' of its strategy - some Nokia phones had been technically failures like the N97 flagship and others were incredibly delayed like the N8 flagship which was launched with a one year delay. Elop was introduced by then Nokia Chairman Ollila with a mission to fix those 'execution' problems.

There was no suggestion by Nokia management that Nokia's handset division was in trouble or that specifically its future, the smarthphone unit was in any way in trouble. We have since learned, that the whole issue of Nokia replacing its smartphone strategy came up late in the year with Elop in charge as CEO, it was not part of his hiring negotiations. We have also found out only after Elop left Nokia, that he had in his employment contract a new clause his predecessors did not, which would pay Elop under the extraordinary condition that the handset unit were to fail so badly under his tenure, that it would be sold. So yes, to be very clear, its been confirmed by Nokia and reported throughout in the press, that Elop had a contract, that would pay him a 25 million dollar bonus in case the handset division itself were to see its business collapse.

ELOP PERFORMANCE OVERALL

Lets examine Elop's big-picture Nokia CEO tenure first. I have again indexed the performance to Kallasvuo's time, but this time, to the PREVIOUS year under Kallasvuo, the one ending in Q3 of 2009, so we can see what direction Nokia was moving from Autumn 2009 to Autumn 2010. Now lets see the three big measures for Nokia overall - its total revenues, its profits, and its total handset sales (includes both dumbphones and smartphones). This was how Nokia was doing under 'failing' Kallasvuo and into his last year, and how the next three years progressed under Elop:



(above data may be freely shared)

Again, all performance metrics are worse under Elop with progressively worse performance. So on a corporate top-level basis, we see that under Kallasvuo, his last 12 months, Nokia revenues were flat, but profits grew strongly and handset unit sales grew mildly. Since Elop took office all three see massive falls. The revenues initially stay flat, then take a steep dive. The profits vanish and turn into huge losses, recovering now to miniscule profits, less than one tenth the size of profits Elop inherited. And the handset unit growth was turned into decline instantly.

So what do we learn? Elop took over a company whose overall sales revenues were flat. He turned them into decline. He took a profitable company whose profits were strongly growing, wiped those out to produce a huge loss in his 3 year tenure. And he found mildly growing handset sales, those he turned into declines. Lets be very clear. Nokia was not fully healthy when Elop came in, yes, that is true. He was supposed to save Nokia. Instead he helped kill the sick patient.

WHERE WAS THE DAMAGE DONE

So lets take a look at where the damage was done at Nokia. Nokia's business was in 2010 essentially in three almost identical-sized units, the Networking Division and the two handset units, the dumbphones unit and the smartphones unit. In Q3 of 2010, the smartphones unit generated 35% of Nokia revenues, the dumbphones unit another 35% and the rest was mostly the networking unit at 30% (the mapping unit 'Navteq' ie 'navigation' produced a few percent of revenue and made big losses). Lets see how these three units fared, last 12 months under Kallasvuo, vs last 12 months now under Elop, so we see where Nokia was damaged the most:



(above data may be freely shared)

The Nokia networking unit (known previously as NokiaSiemens Networks) has actually improved under Elop. Its revenues are flat, yes, but look at the profitability. When Elop started, here is where Nokia made its losses. Now, after 3 years of Elop, the Networking unit has returned to ultraslim profits again. This is not the healthiest recovery but it IS a recovery. The return to (super-slim) profits was achieved without really sacrificing any sales revenue, this is technically a good performance. However, when we examine Elop the CEO and his statements over the past 3 years, you hear a lot of 'handsets' and even more of 'smartphones' and even more than that you hear of 'Windows' and 'Lumia' and some 'Asha' but hardly a word about 'Networks'. Except for the mandatory replies to the quarterly results conference call with investment analysts, Elop has uttered hardly a peep about the Networks unit. His whole attention has been focused on the other side of Nokia, the handsets business, especially the smartphone unit. So one might argue, partly in jest, that the Networks unit was able to achieve profitability when Elop did NOT focus on wrecking their business, and mostly left them alone, to their own devices. They are clever people at Nokia, they knew what was wrong, and they fixed it, all quietly while the CEO was not watching.

In the dumbphones unit, Nokia performance under the 3 years of Elop rule resulted in dumbphone sales revenues falling by half, and profits by more than half. Clearly the handset unit has been damaged severely by Elop. But look at the smartphone unit - Nokia's flagship unit, the future of the company. The smartphone revenues have collapsed by two thirds, and the profits turned into losses. Yes, the Networking unit has actually fared ok under Elop, slightly improving. But the more Elop has paid attention, the bigger is the damage. Elop paid more attention to the dumbphones unit than the networking unit, and the damage was bigger there. But Elop paid most attention to the smarpthones unit and that has been utterly demolished under Elop. 

NOKIA PROFITS AND LOSSES

Lets dig a bit deeper. Lets see which unit performance has driven Nokia bad results and when. So lets examine the profits by quarter. And then unfortunately we arrive at this problem humans have with examining graphical data:




(Above picture may be freely shared)


The above data is pure quarterly profit data, and the picture looks 'mixed' and its difficult to find clear trends. There is 'noise' in the data, until we recognize there are seasonal moments in Nokia performance, usually Q4 calendar quarter is a particularly good period and Q2 a particularly bad quarter. Now when you see the data, you spot those quarters giving (mostly) exceptional points to the data.. How can we solve this? There is a good statistical tool that eliminates seasonality, it is called the 12 month moving average. It is good for spotting trends but it of course then always reflects the past 12 month period at any given point in quarterly data in this case. The above picture is redrawn now with 12 month moving average profits and looks like this:



(The above image may be freely shared)

When the seasonality is removed, the Nokia profits data shows very clearly the trends. Before Elop started, Nokia had a strong profit-growth period. Almost immediately after Elop joined, after Q1 of 2011, the Nokia profits turned into a crash-dive and by 2012 Nokia had an Annus Horribilus, until this year, the loss-making has gradually improved to now crossing back to slight profits. This 12 month moving average removes the seasonal peaks and gives us a tool to accurately see where the real trends are. Lets use this tool now to compare the three business units and see if any of the three business units has driven the above pattern. All three business units are here in this graph. These are all now in 12 month moving averages and the purple line helps identify Nokia corporate profits/losses from the three business units:


(The above image may be freely shared)

When you examine the data, first of all, the Networks unit (green bars) and Nokia corporate performance do not match at all. Nokia was generating strong profits all the way through mid-2011 while the Networks unit was generating losses. Yes, towards the end of the period, the Networks performance starts to mirror that of Nokia corporate, but not at the beginning. 

Similarly the dumbphones unit (orange bars) performance is not a good proxy for Nokia overall performance, as the dumbphones unit never becomes unprofitable using the 12 month moving average, while the Nokia corporate losses grow to be very substatial all through 2012.

But look at the blue bars, Nokia smartphones unit and compare to the purple line. They are in near-perfect synch. Nokia's overall profits and losses tend to be somewhat higher than the smartphone unit, but for almost every quarter when Nokia corporation made a profit, so did the smartphone unit. Same for losses. Same for profit (or loss) growth and decline. It is nearly a perfect match, what truly troubled Nokia in the past 3 years, it was not at the Networks unit, and it was not at the dumbphones unit. It was at the smartphones unit. Here are those two 12-month moving averages isolated so you can see clearly:



(The above image may be freely shared)

If you want to understand why Nokia produced a world record failure in the past 3 years, it was not because of perennial loss-making in the networking unit. It was not because of the gradually diminishing profits of the dumbphones unit. To see where Nokia suddenly collapsed, we have to examine the smartphones unit - that performance drove Nokia from growing profits in 2010 to massive losses by 2012. Something happened in the smartphone unit. Lets dig further.

ITS THE COMPETITION, DUMMY!

Lets burn some platforms, shall we? So, we saw already that the networking unit was the weakest and the smartphone unit the strongest unit Nokia had when Elop took over. So of course, if a CEO is going to 'fix' something, he should not mess with success and try to fix what isn't broken.. but lets do this 'management riddle' - which company is in biggest trouble:




(Above image may be freely shared)

Yeah. The Blue line in the above represents a company that had growing smartphone sales, and was profitable. The green line also represents a company that had growing smartphone sales and was profitable. The red line also represents a company with growing smartphone sales and profits. Each in fact set their company record in both smartphone unit sales and in profits that year. Which would you want to be? Which is strongest of the three? Which in fact - has so much a bigger lead in this industry, that is so huge, its difficult to find a paralle. None of the big PC makers we can remember, IBM, HP, Dell, Compaq, Apple, Lenovo, Acer, Toshiba, Asus, Samsung, Sony, Fujitsu, Siemens, you name it - none have EVER had any year in the PC industry, as big a lead.. as the Blue line in the above picture. How about cars? Toyota, GM, Volkswagen, Fiat, Renault, Nissan... Giant car-makers yes, none have had as big a lead in the car industry - in any year EVER - than the blue line company had in smartphones in 2010. When I tell you that the blue line was not just biggest, and more than twice as big as number 2, but from 2009 to 2010, the company represented by the blue line grew MORE than the two rivals, and I tell you the rivals were Samsung and Apple. You had to be utterly crazy at the end of 2010, to decide 'my company is in trouble and I must end this strategy'. Boeing would love to be the blue line. Pepsi would dearly love to be the blue line. Apple !! would love to be the blue line. But yes, Nokia in 2010 was the blue line. It was the dominant DYNASTY in smarpthones. It crushed the competition in 2010. Nokia was not just twice as big as Apple (green line) or 4x bigger than Samsung (red line) - Nokia GREW MORE in 2010 than either of those rivals - so no, Apple was not 'gaining' on Nokia in smartphones - Nokia WAS PULLING AWAY from Apple. 

I know you don't believe me saying so. Here are the official numbers from Apple and Nokia. You be the judge:

Smartphone sales year 2009 and 2010:

Nokia in 2009: 67.8 million smartphones sold, in 2010 103.6 million, growth of 35.8 million new sales
Apple in 2009: 25.1 million smartphones sold, in 2010 47.5 million, growth of 22.4 million new sales
(Sources: Nokia and Apple annual data)

It is a FACT. Apple grew 22.4 million in year 2010, Nokia grew 35.8 million (note the 103.6 million is the revised Nokia number, the initial number reported first by Nokia was 100.3 million which still would have been 32.5 million for the year and far more than Apple's 22.4 million). So - the FACT is that the iPhone was LOSING to Nokia in 2010, falling FURTHER behind, as Nokia was PULLING further ahead. The facts are irrefutable! Why were you then under the impression that every press article you read said that Nokia was losing badly to Apple. I cannot help it, if US tech press and business press were mesmerized by Steve Jobs and the 'Apple Distortion Field' but the facts are facts. What Nokia clearly needed in 2010 when hiring a new CEO, was someone who is good at communicating the facts, like Steve Jobs was for Apple. Nokia was falling severely behind in the propaganda wars, and the previous CEO, Kallasvuo, was not at his best in talking to the press or investors, haha.. He was 'too honest' like a Finn and didn't emphasize the good news enough 'like an American'.... Which was much of the appeal in Elop. While he wasn't exactly always strictly truthful, he certainly knew how to be interesting as a speaker and loved talking to the press and any large audience. But back to the facts. Nokia is the blue line in the above 'riddle' and only a 'delusional madman' would decide that Nokia was in trouble and write a memo about it.

BURNING PLATFORMS MEMO AND ELOP EFFECT

On February 8, 2011, Stephen Elop authored what is known as the 'Burning Platforms' memo. In it he was critical of Nokia and called his own products uncompetitive. It has since been compared to the disasterous Ratner Effect and like the Ratner Effect to Ratners jewelry sales, Nokia's handset sales immediately collapsed. Elop added to the Ratner Effect by also causing an Osborne Effect three days later (Osborne announced his future computer generation too early, with none to sell soon, that caused his current sales to collapse as customers waited for the newer better ones to be launched). I call the combined use of the Ratner Effect and Osborne Effect to destroy your company sales as the 'Elop Effect'. We can see how the worlds' most dominant dynasty in smartphones was duly demolished, in this graph:



(The above image may be freely shared)

This is what happened to the three companies right after the Elop Effect. Apple (green line) continued to grow, but at a slower rate than the industry, and with that peculiar strongly seasonal sales pattern that is the new launch of the iPhone before Christmas. Nokia )blue) collapsed. The one who took all the marbles? Samsung (red line).

And to be very clear to those who want to rewrite history. Apple did NOT - repeat - DID NOT - take the business that Nokia abandoned. It was Samsung who not just took all of Nokia's marbles, grabbed some from Apple as well. This is the five year performance of Nokia, Apple and Samsung selling smarpthones (all with latest market share ending September/Q3  to keep the numbers comparable with Elop tenure)




(Above image may be freely shared)

Yes. First - since the Elop Effect, ie from 2011 on, Apple has NOT GAINED market share, its market share has peaked and been in slight decline. Anyone who writes that Apple or the iPhone killed Nokia is a fool.

Secondly, obviously it was Samsung who stole most of Nokia's business. Or more precisely, as Elop abandoned it with his new strategy and horrid 'execution' of that new strategy, Samsung was most nimble to pounce and grab everything that Nokia left to take. Ironically, Samsung has been executing perfectly the abandoned Nokia strategy even to the point of migrating from its own smartphone proprietary smartphone platform bada to a Linux based new platform Tizen (which replaced Nokia's linux based MeeGo, with the same partner, Intel even). Yes, as Nokia cut product lines under Elop, Samsung expanded. As Nokia refused to exploit its natural strengths from larger screens and better cameras than on the iPhone, to lower-cost smartphones including ones with QWERTY inputs, Samsung did all that. Today after three years of Eloppian damage, Nokia is slowly returning to some of its strengths. So Nokia is following now Samsung (at least larger screens, better cameras) which was following Nokia's original strategy.... Talk about a failure in new strategy when you have to learn the solutions from your biggest competitor, who is still executing your old strategy. Remind me again why we had to do this new strategy thing?

 

(Elop had a 25 million dollar bonus clause added to his CEO contract, which would pay him if he was able to demolish the handset unit). Ah, yes. That was why. Lets continue. Was there an Elop Effect or is this all my imagination?

ELOP EFFECT PINPOINTED

So lets examine the evidence. We know the networks unit didn't cause the Nokia troubles the past 3 years, the Networks unit has gradually worked itself out of loss-making. We know the dumbphones unit didn't drive Nokia into severe losses, the dumbphone unit has remained profitable all through this period. It was the smartphone unit. But some say, the unit was severely in trouble well before Elop came along, and this was inevitable. That Elop came in when nothing could save Nokia, not even a miracle. Lets examine the evidence again. Since we know it was the smarpthone unit, and we have profit data after Nokia revised its accounting reports in 2011, and gave the smartphone data back to Q1 of 2010, lets look at the performance by smartphone revenues, smartphone profits, and smartphone unit sales. This is what happened in smartphone unit sales:



(The above image may be freely shared)

The unit sales established not just a Nokia record growth, but a world record growth in one 12 month period, for Nokia smartphones! And that strong growth is turned instantly into a world record collapse. The timing - immediately after Q4 of 2010 has ended ie during Q1 of 2011. This points to an Elop Effect (or something else that happened in that time). Lets next look at smartphone revenues for Nokia:



(The above image may be freely shared)

Yep. Same picture, slight variances, mostly that there is even no happy ending in this graph of revenues compared to units (the slight up-tick is missing at Q3 of 2013). Yeah. Something hideous happened right after Q4 of 2010 that turned Nokia's always-growing smartphone unit into perennial decline. Ok. That is what unit sales say and what revenues say. What about the profits? And now, to not smooth out any detail, I am not using 12 month moving averages as we did in the earlier part, lets find the exact point if possible, using profits as our guide. What happened to Nokia smartphone unit profits:



(The above image may be freely shared)

The Profit picture could not be more stark. Nokia smartphone unit sets a Nokia-record profit into Q4 of 2010, then suddenly it all collapses. During Q1 of 2011, the fall is catastrophic, and passes to loss-making into Q2 of 2011, after which the smartphone unit never recovers. So yes, you can measure by unit sales, you can measure by revenues, you can measure by profits. All point to a catastrophic incident after Q4 ended in 2010, that utterly collapsed Nokia smartphone business. Every single data point for the smartphone unit points clearly that the change in Nokia smartphones happened exactly in Q1 of 2011.

By the way, how badly did the smartphone unit collapse. Check out this. It does not get worse than this. This is world-record failure:



(The above image may be freely shared)

Yes. Nokia set a world record in growth in 2010, Nokia grew more than any rival, grew more than Apple's iPhone. Elop saw that, didn't like it, and generated a world-record collapse instead. Why? 25 million dollars of why. But does anyone else agree? Nokia's Chairman and Elop's first boss, at the time the Windows Lumia strategy was presented to the Nokia Board by Elop, and approved there, was quoted in Finland's largest newspaper just now some days ago, saying the Windows strategy had been a big failure. On Microsoft's side, earlier this year, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates singled the Windows Phone strategy by Steve Ballmer as one of his biggest mistakes. Obviously that Nokia has to resort to selling the unit now in Nokia Corporation's distress and throwing Elop out of the company with that move, is further proof that Nokia's current Board sees that the Windows adventure was a total catastrophy, so disasterous, that the only way out is to sell the whole bloody business unit to get rid of it.. Note, the losses are nowhere near ending - the latest losses are again increasing now into Q3.

WHAT CAUSED IT NOT

So we know the timing. Something severe happened exactly in Q1 of 2011. Was there a fantastic new smartphone by a rival maker that changed the industry, like say the Motorola Razr once, or the iPhone or the Samsung Galaxy is now. No. No new significant smartphones by rivals introduced in Q1 of 2011. Neither was there some other technology that came along that made smartphones obsolete at that time. In fact, the smartphone market has grown exactly 2.5 times larger from Q4 of 2010 to today. Well, did Nokia make some other mistake or change at that time. Maybe Nokia cut its marketing budget, like Blackberry did recently that expedited its decline in smartphone business? Lets see. The marketing expenses do bounce around quite a lot by quarter, so we need to take the 12 month moving average to find the pattern. This is Nokia handset marketing and sales expenses by Quarter, using 12 month moving average:



(Above image may be freely shared)

That picture is flat as a billiard table till Q2 of 2012, after which we see a significant fall forming. (Sorry, we don't have more precise info than the data for the combined handset unit, I'd love to see this for the smartphones unit). But no, back around early 2011, there is no dramatic change to Nokia marketing and sales budgets that could explain the collapse of Nokia smartphone business. What about average prices then? Did Nokia commit the pricing error of suddenly doubling its prices so its sales fell in half? Again, average prices bounce alot from one quarter to the next, but when we remove the seasonality to find any trends, this is what the end-user average sales prices have been for Nokia smartphones:



(Above image may be freely shared)

Remember, we are looking to see a dramatic jump in this data from Q4 of 2010 to Q1 of 2011, to show any pricing impact that could have caused the collapse of Nokia smartphone sales. Did that happen? No. We can see a slowing down of the price decline trend (that was driven at the time of Nokia moving aggressively to lower-cost smarpthones if you remember, before the Elop Effect ruined the strategy - and obviously has since been taken over by Samsung, stealing most of the low-end market as we've just heard in the recent results). Yes, the decline in average price slowed from Q4 of 2010 to Q1 of 2011, but there was still the same direction. What we need is a dramatic big jump. By dramatic I mean much bigger than those we can see, at Q3 of 2011 and Q4 of 2012. But nothing even that mild a jump around Q1 of 2011... No, what caused the collapse of Nokia smartphone sales in early 2011, was not a dramatic Nokia change in its pricing either.

What about the product then? Did Nokia release a total turd as a phone in Q1 of 2011? There was no antennagate like Apple had recently had. There were no exploding batteries as Sony had recently had. No, no lousy phones released. Nokia had just on its hands a hot flagship smartphone, the N8 which would go on to win many awards including cameraphone of the year. During Q1 Nokia released the highly praised E7 flagship with QWERTY slider, alongside the N8, which until the Elop Effect was very well reviewed and at least in China before the Elop Effect had strong sales for the Chinese gift-giving season at Chinese New Year. There were no bad phones from Nokia, quite on the contrary, after the ill-received N97 flagship, the much awaited N8 was highly rated as was the E7. So its not price, its not promotion, its not product. According to Philip Kotler's 4 P's (Wikipedia will tell us that the Four P's actually originated from Jerome McCarthy in 1960) if its not Price, not Product nor Promotion, then it is Place or 'distribution' which is the last remaining possibility of impacting our marketing success. (and please don't write about the newer P's I know some already count up to 7 Ps..)

WAS IT THE SALES CHANNEL?

Right after Elop unveiled his new strategy in February 2011, Nokia wrote in its next Form 20-F to the New York Stock Exchange and the SEC, about Nokia's competitive strengths like this:  

Our ability to maintain and leverage our traditional strengths in the mobile product market may be impaired if we are unable to retain the loyalty of our mobile operator and distributor customers and consumers as a result of the implementation of our new strategy or other factors.

(bold in original) Nokia continued:

We have a number of competitive strengths that have historically contributed significantly to our sales and profitability. These include our substantial scale, our differentiating brand, our worldclass manufacturing and logistics system, the industry’s largest distribution network and our strong relationships with our mobile operator and distributor customers. 

And Nokia added this:

As discussed above, however, the proposed Microsoft partnership and the adoption of Windows Phone as our primary smartphone platform are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Several of those risks and uncertainties relate to whether our mobile operator and distributor customers and consumers will be satisfied with our new strategy and proposed partnership with Microsoft. If those risks were to materialize and mobile operator and distributor customers and consumers as a consequence reduce their support and purchases of our mobile products, this would reduce our market share and net sales and in turn may erode our scale, brand, manufacturing and logistics, distribution and customer relations. The erosion of those strengths would impair our competitiveness in the mobile products market and our ability to execute successfully our new strategy and to realize fully the expected benefits of the proposed Microsoft partnership.

Yes, in other words, Nokia had world-leading carrier relations and retail channel management. It had been a key to building Nokia to its dominant position and yes, Nokia testified to the NY Stock Exchange and the SEC, if these carrier relations and retail support were to vanish, all other Nokia strenghts out of scale and brand would also diminish. So yeah. This is Elop at Q2 results. First, was it good or bad? "..our Q2 results were clearly disappointing." Was this planned or a surprise? "The challenges we are facing during our strategic transformation manifested in a greater than expected way in Q2 2011." And what exactly is the problem that so suddenly made a clearly disappointing quarter for Nokia? The only problem area identified by Elop in Q2 of 2011 results is "..to manage unexpected sales and inventory patterns.." That was the only problem Elop discovered in Nokia as his surprise disappointment in Q2 of 2011. Unexpected sales and inventory patterns (as sales were collapsing). So inventory? That is what? Distribution. Retail. Carrier relations.

Its exactly what Nokia warned about. Exactly what Ollila talked about. Exactly what Elop himself talked about later, when he looked back at his Burning Platforms memo when responding to a shareholder question in the Nokia shareholders annual meeting of 2012. Yes, his Burning Platforms memo had damaged Nokia smartphone sales. Yes, carriers did have a boycott against Nokia (and later, in the summer of 2011, would also add a separate sales boycott against all Windows based smartphones while Nokia wasn't then yet even selling those, but Elop admitted to this too, at the shareholders' meeting in 2012).

When Elop talked about Nokia's sudden profit warning in May 2011, he mentioned many things that were great and coming about Windows, or of issues that hadn't developed overnight like China's domestic TD-SCDMA technical standard, and of general but unspecified competitive pressures but the only explicit problem he identified was again in the "distribution channel". Elop complains about the lack of retail support or carrier problems in nearly every Quarterly results at some point either in writing or the investor analyst conference call, or both. I could go on and on. Every single time the three ratings agencies downgraded Nokia in the past 2.5 years, from AA ratings to Junk, they have never said it was because Nokia prices were wrong, its marketing was out of date, its products non-competitive or its ecosystem had fallen behind, etc. Every single time they specified that the retail problems or failing carrier support were the reasons - often the only reason - why Nokia was again downgraded.

SO WAS IT ONE-OFF PAIN FOR LONG TERM GAIN?

One could argue, that the change Elop suggested takes time to happen, and it would get better over time. Yes, one could argue that. If you are learning to high-jump, probably your first jumps are not very high, but with practise you can get to become better at it. Or then, again, you might attempt to learn jumping at a cliff, make your first jump over the cliff, fall to your death, and end your life as stuff-on-a-rock. So lets see, was this 'no gain with no pain' or was this poison. Lets now take three measures we can fit onto one graph, that help us compare the four relevant points in time, before and after the Elop Effect. So the measures I will use are Revenue Growth rate (or decline), then Unit Sales Growth Rate (or decline), and finally Profit or Loss. Each can be expressed as a percentage, and the higher (positive) number the better. For the four periods, lets first take the last 4 quarters before the Elop Effect.

(Above image may be freely shared)

So. Before the Elop Effect, last 12 months, the four Quarters from Q1 to Q4 of 2010, Nokia smartphone unit saw 20% revenue growth, 48% unit growth and had a profitability for the 12 month period of 9%. Elop didn't like that. His Elop Effect caused immediately the collapse and from the first quarter we have the full Elop Effect, ie from Q2 (because the Elop Effect happened in the middle of Q1) we find the next 12 months up to Q1 of 2012 to do the following. Revenue growth turned into decline of 40%, strong unit growth into big fall of 37%. And profits turned into losses of -10%. 

That was still selling mostly Symbian. So it was supposed to then be 'fixed' with the new promise of the Windows strategy on the Lumia smartphones from Q4 of 2011. Did it? Lets see how the performance 'improved' into the next 12 months to Q3 of 2012. Already bad performance got worse on every measure. Revenue decline worsened to 44%. Unit sales collapsed 50%. Losses doubled from the already-loss-making time to -21%. And finally there were those who said that Windows 8 would be the savior. That with Nokia's revised Lumia series, now with the new Windows Phone 8, from Q4 of 2011, to now, Elop's departure at Q3 of 2013. What happened? Did the new Lumia with Windows Phone 8 finally validate Elop's beleagured strategy? Revenue still fell 41% from what it was with the first Lumia. Unit sales fell even more than with the first Lumia at 51%. And those hideous losses were only marginally less atrocious continuing the loss-making at -17%.

Yes, the new Elop strategy for the smartphone unit was an instant disaster and a continued catastrophy. By any reasonable interpretation it was a total mess. Except if your name is Elop and you tricked the Nokia Board to add a clause into your employment contract, that actually paid you 25 million dollars for wrecking the Nokia handset business. For any normally intelligent CEO, the above would be cause for resignation and perhaps even suicide, but for Elop this was cause for celebration. No wonder he was always so upbeat and positive about the ever worsening Nokia results, and promising how things were going to improve. They DID improve for Elop, who came ever closer to his 25 million jackpot the more he ruined Nokia. That is why you see, the situation never improved at the smartphone unit, it only got worse.

GREATEST MANAGEMENT FAILURE OF ALL TIME

Am I being too harsh on little 'Call me the General' boy, Stephen Elop? Maybe this is normal in business. Surely there are far bigger disasters that management have inflicted on their companies. I'm sure there are, but not at the level Elop was at. Not when you're a Fortune 120 sized company. Not the US Fortune 500 list, I mean ranked 120 in the Fortune Global 500 which is far more exclusive. At that level there is nothing that comes even close. Consider New Coke. Yes, Coca Cola's disaster new drink. It caused Coca Cola to fall behind Pepsi for the first time in history (and Pepsi so celebrated, they gave every employee a day off and ran huge ads in the press). Or what of the recent problems Toyota had with its brakes that caused 12 million cars to be recalled. These are classic management blunders, costing tons, and surely they must be bigger. What of BP's oil spill with the Deepwater Horizon drill on the Gulf of Mexico a few years go? I've actually collected the five most notorious management mistakes that occured while Elop was alive, by Fortune Global 500 sized companies, who also were the market leaders or near the top of their given industries, for some contrast. Lets see how Elop's little smartphone mishap compares:



(The above image may be freely shared)

Yes. Elop has indeed set the record for management failure, not just in handsets but in any global industry. Worse than Mercedes Benz's A-Series, the car so dangerous, you could not drive it into any curve or corner without it tipping over. Worse than Coca Cola's New Coke. Worse than the Exxon Valdez tanker oil spill in Alaska or the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico. Worse yes, than even the Toyota brakes problem recall. And look, the damage was deeper and longer than any of those classic disasters. Incidentially, Coca Cola, Daimler-Benz and Exxon never fired their CEOs for those problems but Toyota, BP and Nokia did fire theirs. Congrats Stephen 'call me the General' Elop. Your name will be synonymous with world record failure and you did it with the Elop Effect. 

OTHER MEASURES - FORTUNE, INTERBRAND

So the ratings agencies dropped Nokia one notch from AAA rating to AA, this was seen as a major problem under Kallasvuo. Note, AA is 'so bad' it is still what the US treasury bonds are rated today. Second best ratings class in the world. But this was a severe problem under Kallasvuo. Did Elop get Nokia back its AAA rating? Of course not. The ratings agencies have issued several revisions of Nokia's ratings. Not once has it been up, invariably its been down. Down to A, to BB+ to B etc all the way down to Junk. Moody's rates Nokia now as Junk. Standard and Poor's rates Nokia now as Junk,. Fitch's rates Nokia as Junk. Is that cause to celebrate Elop or to fault him? What of the Fortune Global 500 ranking? Here is the trend: The Fortune Global 500 ranking comes out in the summer, so just before Kallasvuo was kicked out, we saw his last ranking and we get 3 more under Elop:

Fortune Global 500 Rankings for Nokia:
2010 (Kallasvuo) . . . 120
2011 (Elop) . . . . . . . 143
2012 (Elop) . . . . . . . 174
2013 (Elop) . . . . . . . 274
2014 (next CEO) . . . 374 (estimate, based on current performance - if handset unit is not sold)
or 2014 (next) . . . . . (dropped out of 500) - if handset unit is sold

So yeah, thats a dramatic fall. Not the biggest fall in Fortune history, obviously, as many companies have faced catastrophic conditions, wars, natural disasters etc. Or have sold major parts of their business (Fortune ranking is based on sales revenues, so if you sell a third of your company, you instantly shrunk by 1/3 according to Fortune) or faced an industry in severe crisis or have a national currency in crisis - the Fortune 500 list is denominated in US Dollars so foreign currency exchange rates apply for non USA based companies, etc. But for a healthy profitable company, in a growth industry, out of pure organic growth/decline (not though mergers or divestitures) and ignoring pure accounting fraud like Worldcom, Enron and Lehman Brothers - this is probably also a Fortune Global 500 record for true self-inflicted damage through purely 'organic' means. Genuine damage by management, not accounting tricks or exchange rate fluctuations etc.

Then what of Interbrand? They rank the most valuable brands on the planet (Coca Cola is number 1 again). Nokia has been in the Top 10 globally for the whole past decade. Yes, far above Mercedes Benz or Rolex or most such brands. Here is how Interbrand has judged the Nokia we've now seen under Elop in this new decade:

Interband Ranking for Nokia past 4 years:
2010 (Kallasvuo) . . . . 8th
2011 (Elop) . . . . . . . 14th
2012 (Elop) . . . . . . . 19th
2013 (Elop) . . . . . . . 57th

Interband also calculates the worth of the brand. In 2010 the Nokia brand was worth 26.2 Billion dollars. How much has it fallen? Today Interbrand rates Nokia brand worth only 7.4 Billion dollars. According to Interbrand, Nokia's performance under Elop has eliminated 72% of Nokia's value. Or in dollar terms, wiped out 18.8 Billion dollars. That is a bit more than what the Financial Times just calculated, as Nokia's market capitalization, Elop has destroyed 13.5 Billion dollars of Nokia shareholder value in his 3 years as CEO.

MISERY GRAPH

I will end on the 'history will remember you for this' graph. The Misery Graph. I have written many times, that Nokia legacy will be not how its given products were great or not, not on its patents or its loyalty or its profits or its maps or whatnot. Nokia will only be considered in the view of history on one metric - did Nokia win or lose the transition. What transition? THE transition it faced. Nokia took the world crown from past master, Motorola, when the handset industry shifted from analog mobile phones to digital mobile phones. Motorola dominated the analog era, Nokia became the biggest riding the new technology and digital. So what was the next disruption? Smartphones. Would Nokia only last one generation like most tech companies, who then die in the next 'paradigm shift' or would Nokia be the rare exception who masters the next shift as well.

So that is why we may judge Apple or Blackberry or Sony or Samsung or Huawei or Lenovo on different terms when it comes to smartphones, but in the long run judgement of history, Nokia will only be judged on one - would it die like Motorola, by missing the big shift, or would it manage to hold its lead through the difficult transition into the new age, from dumbphones to smartphones.

And my regular readers know this. The smartphone was not invented by Apple in 2007. It was invented by Nokia ten years before. Nokia's true competitor was not Apple in 2010, it was Samsung as we can see in the above graph early in this story - why? Because Nokia to phones is like Toyota to cars. Toyota makes cars of every type and kind, for every market, in every price range. From luxury Lexus to cheap taxicabs to rugged four wheel vehicles to vans to citycars to hybrids and just about anything you'd want. And Apple is like Porche, who produces only a few products and aims at the very high end of value with high profit per unit and ignores most segments. Has products which even over time are difficult to tell from one another. So while Toyota occasionally competes with some sports car against Porsche, obviously Toyota's main competitors are General Motors, Volkswagen etc, not a luxury-sports niche car-maker like Porsche. If Toyota made the strategic mistake of ignoring Volkswagen and Ford and GM and Nissan and Fiat and Renault, but only focused on trying to beat Porsche, they'd go bankrupt immediately, as their whole organization is built on optimizing the benefits of scale. From sourcing to manufacturing to distribution and sales. It would be suicide to suddenly focus only on one tiny rival, no matter how profitable that one tiny rival might be.

Nokia invented the smartphone. Then, Nokia led the migration from dumnbphones to smartphones - among its true competitors, those handset makers who were full-portfolio handset makers who made anything from slick superphones to ultracheap basic communication. Like Samsung, like LG, like previously Motorola, SonyEricsson, etc. In that transition race, Nokia was ahead of all its traditional rivals in 2010. Remember, we are not comparing Nokia performance now to pure smartphone makers like HTC, RIM/Blackberry, Apple, Palm etc. No, they do not need to manage a transition from dumbphones to smartphones. But Nokia's traditional rivals would have to. And against Motorola, Samsung, SonyEricsson, LG, Huawei, ZTE etc, Nokia was ahead of the pack in migrating its consumers from dumbphones to smartphones in 2010. It was so far ahead, it was ahead of the global migration average number, which includes the pure smarpthone makers of course (which all start at 100%, which pushes up the global average number obviously.)

That is why I coined this next graph the Misery Graph. Up to the Elop Effect, Nokia was safely above the global average in migrating customers from dumbphones to smartphones. Why 'misery' - because Nokia was the global market share leader in dumbphones (as well as in smartphones). If Nokia managed only to use its existing market share in dumbphones as it migrated to smartphones - Nokia would easily end up the biggest smartphone maker too (as it already was at the time) - and if it just continued on that path, successfully, and profitably, it would 'win this decade' and win the race to smartphones. As long as Nokia stayed on that path, that it held its migration rate above the industry average. If that held, today Nokia's smarpthone migration rate would be about 60% (the industry is at about 55%). But look what Elop did:



(The above may be freely shared)

Yes, Elop truly came and snatched defeat, from the jaws of victory. Nokia was first, among all full-portfolio handset makers, in leading the migration to smarpthones and the only one at the time, that was ahead of the industry average migration rate by end of 2010. Nokia was the only full-portfolio handset maker who had also achieved that difficult transition without missing a beat, all of Nokia's full-portfolio rivals like Motorola, Samsung, LG and SonyEricsson, had reported at least one quarter of a loss in their handset divisions while attempting this costly endeavour. Nokia had passed that test with flying colors, never once reporting a loss in its handset unit up to Elop. This was the ultimate measure for Nokia and Nokia was winning the war. If it maintained its global market share lead of dumbphones into smarpthones, it would inevitably win also the smartphone wars of this decade. That was at stake when Elop suddenly derailed the victory train. We know why of course, he had 25 million sweet reasons to cause the collision. But that is the end effect. Today Sony has completed its transition, all of its phones are now smartphones. LG is at 71% and Samsung at 70% migration. Motorola went bankrupt in the attempt and the migration was too costly for Ericsson who pulled out of the handset business altogether. Only Nokia was winning this war, until Elop demolished that. So here's three cheers for misery!

BUT WAIT, THERE IS MORE...

Hey, if this is my big 'lets do the proper performance review of Elop' then we cannot ignore a couple of his most famous ie infamous promises. The 150m promise or the 1-to-1 promise etc. So, lets take his most famous strategy promises and rate those too. Elop promised us a 1-to-1 transition from Symbian to Windows once the strategy had been fully implemented. He talked at one point about 1-to-1 revenue transition and at another point about 1-to-1 unit sales transition. Do you remember this graph from February 2011:



(Above image may be freely shared)

I want to correct that for the obvious omission, this is the same data but adding the missing year, remember, Nokia handset business was not static when Elop took over, it was growing. By revenues, driven by the smartphone unit, towards the end of the year 2010, Nokia handsets unit was growing strongly, so it looked like this:





(Above image may be freely shared)

So Elop promised, that after he announced, there would be no erosion of Nokia handset business - before Windows based Lumia would launch. That the dumbphones business (gray on the bottom) would remain essentially flat. That the light-blue part (Symbian) revenues would remain the same, then transition on a 1-to-1 basis to his new Windows based Lumia smarpthones. And by the time the transition was done, which we now know, happened at the end of Q1 of 2013, the revenues in the smartphone unit would be the same as they were when he announced this back after Q4 of 2010.

So we have a three-part strategy. Nice. Now we also have the final results, straight from Nokia's own Quarterly results in this fun game. Lets see how it panned out. This is what happened over at the Symbian unit:



(Above image may be freely shared)

Yeah. That was a total flop right there, to start us off. Symbian did not materialize in the way Elop promised. How much abandoned revenues were in that light blue sector that is now missing compared to the promise? Try 11.9 Billion Euros (16.0 Billion US dollars) wiped out, never to return to Nokia shareholders. Even if we assigned to that the minimal profits that the dumbphone unit managed around say 4%, we'd get lost profits of at least 478 million Euros (640 million US dollars). Ok. Can't be all bad, lets take the second leg, the migration from Symbian to Windows. We know that at least had to do better, didn't it?



(Above image may be freely shared)

So yeah, misery gets worse. One can certainly understand that the transition stage was 'challenging' and even a hyper-genius 'call me the General' type of strategic thinker like Elop might get the initial Symbian sales wrong, but you can't fail if you select Windows, right? The new Lumia would surely resurrect Nokia smartphones to its former glory and recover to the same level of revenues as Nokia had with Lumia. Elop talked specifically about 1-to-1 revenue transition in his shift from Symbian to Windows (and pointed out very explicitly, that MeeGo was excluded, that might be a wrinkle that Windows might not be able to match, but old Symbian.. definitely yes!). So did it? As we see from the above picture, Lumia failed spectacularly. It only now after full end of Symbian, has managed to capture 29% of the promise, ie Elop fails this leg of his strategy by 71%. Thats pretty bad, folks. What has this cost Nokia so far? Through Q3 this failure has abandoned more Nokia smartphone revenues at the level of 22.4 Billion Euros (30.0 Billion US dollars). As the Lumia series has not for one day generated any profit at all, we can't honestly say that this failure has cost Nokia any profits, but had Nokia stayed with Symbian instead, that would have even at a 4% profitability level been worth 895 million Euros of abandoned profits so far (1.2 Billion US dollars). 

Well the one good thing is, this was a 3 part strategy, and while the other two parts went bad, at least there was the solid featurephones foundation, that even a moronic Elop memo can't wreck. Or can it? Lets see how solidly the dumbphone division managed under this new Elop strategy:



(Above picture may be freely shared)

Yeah. Would you believe it, even the dumbphones unit revenues collapsed under the stupid Elop strategy. How badly? They fell 68% from the promise. And how much was wiped out of the rosy gray area in the promise to the sad gray area in the reality? That amounts to 14.0 Billion Euros so far and counting (18.7 B US dollars) and if we only say the profits lost would be at 4% level, Elop's failed third leg lost Nokia another 560 million Euros (750 million US dollars) of profits.

All three legs of the strategy failed. Comprehensively. This is the truth graph to show reality vs the promise:



(Above picture may be freely shared)

So yeah. The red part in the graph represents the extent of Elop's total failure across all three legs of his infallible strategy. How big is big? He is 48.2 Billion Euros in the hole compared to his promise. Thats 64.5 Billion US Buckaroos. His strategy failure is so thorough, his broken promises (red part of graph) has already grown to be bigger than all blue parts dark and light, and all grey parts since his strategy was announced - COMBINED !!! This strategy ever since Q2 of 2011, has already gone 57% into the red (and its only getting worse - the ratio of failure vs success of the strategy now in Q3 is 68%!)

Which brings me to his 150 million promise. That was the number of Symbian based smartphones that Nokia promised to deliver when Elop announced the Windows strategy. Well. How close did we get? Nokia gave us only 74.7 million smartphone sales - and that includes several million MeeGo smartphones. But lets use the 74.7M number. Even at that number Elop broke half of his promise to Nokia loyal customers and especially long-term loyal Nokia developers, partners, component suppliers, you know 'smartphone wars are won by ecosystems' Elop thinking.. 

Ok, then if the strategy failed on the revenues, maybe it succeeded at least on the 1-to-1 transition from Symbian to Windows, by unit sales? Or did it. This is the proportion of that failure:



(Above image may be freely shared)


Yes, again gargantuan level of failure. If Symbian was so hideously bad, that it had to be ended, how uch worse then is Windows Phone if it scares away 69% of those loyal Nokia owners who were offered a Lumia but went to a competitor instead? We can see how Elop got his job. He is excellent at promising utterly impossible things. Unfortunately for a Fortune Global 500 company CEO, it is a very bad tendency to over-promise and under-deliver. But hey, want to see that above picture with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth part, added. Are those 'successfully migrated' Lumia owners now all happily loyal Nokia customers or are they imprisoned bitter Nokia-haters who can't wait to get away from Windows Phone at the first chance they get? We actually know! There have been two global surveys by Yankee Group and by Bernstein that answered that loyalty question of early Lumia and Windows Phone owners. This is that above graph, corrected for Nokia satisfaction level:



(Above image may be freely shared)

So while nominally Nokia has 'achieved' 31% migration to Lumia, nearly half of those are so disgusted by their new Nokia toys, they can't wait to get rid of them and will never buy another Windows based smarpthone again. So only 17% of the previous Symbian user base is actually satisfied by their newest Nokia smartphone with the Windows system. In layman's terms, for every 6 attempts to convert 5 have been lost forever as loyal customers - four are already using a rival device and the fifth can't wait to go.

LUMIA VS SYMBIAN IN APPLES-TO-APPLES COMPARISON

So then they now celebrate how Window Phone is 'growing so fast' among smartphone operating systems. But we have to take this in context of Nokia, how would Nokia do 'normally'. We now have 4 periods of the very latest and best Lumia, under Windows Phone 8. How did it do, against the last 4 quarters of the same time period (ending in Q3) before the Elop Effect? Lets normalize the sales so that in 'Q0" the quarter before the first quarter, five quarters back, we 'zero' the sales, and then add incremental new sales per quarter. While we are at it, lets also see how the original Lumia did in its first four quarters, as they too started in Q4 and we end in Q3. Last Symbian new sales from Q4 2009 to Q3 of 2010. First Lumia sales growth Q4 of 2011 to Q3 of 2012, and now, Lumia relaunched with Windows Phone 8, from Q4 of 2012 to Q3 2013. This should be interesting. Lets see:



(Above image may be freely shared)

Yeah, no happiness here. Note, first, that the best performance was by Symbian. The note how similar original Lumia and 'new and improved Windows Phone 8' Lumia are, nearly identical for first 3 quarters (until Microsoft 'Osborned' the current Windows Phone line of Nokia, by announcing it cannot be upgraded to Windows Phone 8). But then recognize, these are actual unit levels, but the market has grown 2.2 times bigger from the blue line to the orange line, and another 1.4x bigger up to the purple line! So these Windows Phone devices are doing FAR worse than the graph would suggest. I wonder if there would be any more applicable statistic, that would accurately account for the change in the market. Hey, market share would do that! If we use the same idea, but instead of measuring actual unit sales in millions, we measure market share gains in points, we now have a harmonized scale that is applicable over time. How does Nokia old Symbian sales pattern compare to first Lumia and second Lumia. I think this graph would also answer the question - how much does 'carrier relations' and 'retail support' matter when you launch your phone. Compare:



(Above image may be freely shared)
NOTE - this above image is subject to easy mis-interpretation! Please read my explanation here of what it indicates and what cannot be inferred from the graph. This is not a 'normal' market share graph! The comparison here is not 'across' so you should not compare blue lines across - these are within the period, you can only compare each Q4 number (blue, red and white), or each Q1 number etc.

So why the confusion. The graph would suggest Nokia's Symbian market share gained 8% in Q4 of 2009, then another almost 4% to a cumulative 12% by Q1 of 2010. That is not what this graph attempts to illustrate. This graph has harmonized each period, to be comparable to the SAME period before, through the unit of 'market share' that is only accurate within that same period. To put it simply, if the world had not grown, the above would indicate real market share gains. But in reality, the actual market ALSO grew, but because I brought in different times into this graph, adding detail, we lose other detail (time comparison 'across' from one period to the next). You can make no infrences about 'market share' gains or losses based on this graph, I have that info elsewhere. By this graph, we can compare Lumia unit sales equivalent performance to a market that sells 1 Billion smartphones now, to Symbian unit sales equivalent performance 3 years ago when smartphones sold 298 million smartphones in the year. The only possible measure is what market share that unit sales level would have been out of that given point in time.

Let me show by example. Take blue line, go to the third blue line, Q2 of 2010 in our case for Symbian. The earlier graph (above) told us that Nokia had added 8.8 million units compared to 'zero quarter' ie Q3 of 2009, and in Q1 of 2010 that was 6.3 million, so Nokia had actually added 1.5 million smartphone unit sales going from Q1 2010 to Q2 2010. What does the total 8.8 million (cumulative) additions since 'zero quarter' for Symbian mean, if converted to Q2 of 2010 market share? The market globally was 61.7 million smartphones so this unit number is equivalent to 14% of Q2 market share in 2009. So far the math is on, and for any one number here, the math holds. BUT THEY CANNOT BE COMPARED ACROSS. Now the misunderstanding, if we now compare 'across' and compare to Q1, this graph now suggests Nokia market 'share' grew by 2 market share points. That didn't happen in reality, because the global market also grew, from Q1 to Q2 in 2010, and that growth rate was more. So Nokia real market share in Q2 had fallen from Q1. Nokia still GREW UNIT SALES - that is what we are showing here, but because we have not now included the market size across the data, we cannot compare the graphs across periods.

Why is this? Because each quarter is now comparable within the quarter. How many Lumia sales would we have to have now for example in Q2 of 2013, to match a number that would be the same performance as market share points as under Symbian. Lumia should achieve cumulative sales reaching 14% market share of Q2 of 2013, when the market size was 233 million units and Lumia should have sold 32.6 million smartphones from zero-level (achieved Lumia sales to that point) in Q4 of 2012, and added 32.6 million more Lumia in the next two quarters. That would not be 'better' performance than Symbian did the last time Nokia tried before the Elop Effect, when operators/carriers still supported Nokia. How much worse is Lumia now? Here we can now do the math - within one quarter, not across. Lumia latest achieved 2% gain. In 2010 Symbian achieved 14%. The failure is 12 points of market share or .. Lumia is achieving only 11% of the performance Nokia did regularly before the Elop Effect. Yes, 89% failure...

Yeah, I know the picture is confusing. Someone may know of a better terminology or better statistic, its literally a quarter of a century since I last studied statistics in my MBA studies, I have forgotten far more than I could hope to remember. But yes, that above graphic is not a measure of market share gains and losses. It is a conversion of unit sales to equivalent points when the market has grown to more than 3 times larger comparing oldest and newest data points. If you are uncomfortable with this methodology, just go back to the previous slide, and remember, that picture is 'flattering' to the Lumia, because even as they are far worse than Symbian, the market has ALSO grown dramatically, so the comparative performance is even worse, when market growth is included into the picture...

I wonder if I still had more I wanted to share? I do want to get all my pictures out, to discuss the Elop catastrophy, so that all the pictures and numbers are in one place, and I don't have to revisit this topic again in some weeks.... Ok, its been long already, let me go through my notes, I may have something more still coming, but am not sure. I'll still finish the blog obviously, regardless

BRING IN THE CLOWNS

Hey, lets do the clowns pictures? I prepared these for back when Elop's damage was only 2 years of age, so these are all accurate, but up to the end of last year, so keep that in mind, compared to now. These just go to show the incredible depth of the delusions of the Imaginarium of Doctor Elopssus. When is someting a 'Burning Platform' according to Elop - and when is something NOT a burning platform. This is interesting if you really take Elop at his word (we now obviously know, the only way to take Elop is to find what is in his bonus clause of his contract). This is Nokia in February 2011. See what Elop thought of the condition. And then see how Nokia fared and what Elop said exactly one year later, February 2012:



(Above image may be freely shared)

Note for context. Elop himself within 4 months had issued at least 11 statements that contradicted or redacted essentially all points he made in his silly memo of February 2011. Remember that we've now learned, Nokia's Board was livid about the memo and Elop's boss, Nokia Chairman Jorma Ollila reprimanded Elop for the memo. Elop himself admitted to Nokia shareholders in 2012, that yes, the memo did damage Nokia smartphone sales. Yet. Did Elop ever apologize for it. Did he ever even say in public he didn't mean what the memo said? No. He clearly went to the Donald Rumsfeldian school of truth-telling. Ignore facts, never admit you were wrong, even when your own words are played back at you, deny deny deny. Like Dick Cheney taught you no doubt. But yes, lets go on. There are MORE clowns. Now, what do you think happened a year after that, in late January 2013? Look at the ever-worsening Nokia situation and read what Mr Pretend-Patton, our Microsoft Muppet said then. This is the most unbelievable picture of delusion in a corporate CEO. This is like 'Comical Ali; if you remember Saddam Hussein's Minister of Propaganda:



(Above image may be freely shared)

Haha, I did like adding those silly clown-faces. By January 2013 I was utterly fed up with the shenaigans of Mr 'Call Me the General' Elop and just wanted this thing to be over with, and for the Nokia Board to fire the incompetent fool. Adding clown faces cheered me up in a little way at the time of ever worsening Nokia news. Did I have any other pictures or stats to share with you? Lets see. 

GROUP PICTURE

Hey, we gotta do the group picture. What is it that Elop wrecked that now is sold at fire-sale prices as damaged goods to Microsoft? The part of Nokia that by year end 2010 delivered 70% of Nokia revenues and all of Nokia profits. Where revenues and profits both GREW in 2010? The most healthy part of Nokia. The destruction for which Elop was now paid 25 million dollars as bonus - or as the Financial Times calculated, for every 1 Billion Elop demolished in shareholder value, he got paid 1.5 million himself.. nice job if you can find it..



(This image may be freely shared)

Yeah. Elop eliminated 65% of the smartphones unit, 56% of the dumbphones unit when counted at annual sales revenue levels and now this unprofitable crippled unit is shipped over to Microsoft (or maybe not, if Nokia shareholders decide that an Android option for Nokia would be far better value for them and reject this dubious 'value' of the deal to sell the unit to Microsoft)

Ok, I think we got all the main points and data here. I want to return to the first picture. There is no doubt, Nokia was having problems and was reporting disappointing results and its then CEO, Kallasvuo needed to be fired in the summer of 2010. I am not claiming Nokia was in perfect health. But we can see, Nokia's problems were not in the smartphone unit. Elop didn't work diligently to fix Nokia's problems. He took the best part of Nokia, the healthiest part, and demolished that. So lets keep in mind, his predecessor was already by broad consensus so bad, he had to be fired. Now compare the two, Nokia's bad CEO Kallasvuo, and literally the worst CEO of a major global industry leader, of all time. I have slightly updated the graph from the top, with the actual numbers as well as the indexed comparison, and of course added now the reasoning as well. How is it, that Elop was so misguided to deliberately wreck the company he was hired to run. We now know why. Elop had tricked the Nokia Board into adding a new clause to his contract his predecessors never had. That nice little one with 25 million reasons to destroy Nokia. Here are the two CEO's compared one more time. If you, my reader, can find any other Global Fortune 500 sized company ever, with a CEO with worse results than these, please tell me. And journalists out there - here is your Pulitzer prize, please write about the greatest heist in corporate history, how Elop swindled 13 Billion dollars out of Nokia investors to pocket 25 million dollars for himself

(The above image may be freely shared)

And yes, of course, I will be releasing a book about this. 

Comments

[Anoop SK]

Tomi, why are you making us sad again and again :-(

[Paul Ionescu]

Nokia was starting to show signs of going downhill when Elop came BUT probably it would have taken Nokia ~10 years to reach the bottom by having incompetent CEOs (BUT without Elop's help). Elop took Nokia to the bottom in ~3 years! Basically, Elop used Nokia (i.e. took Nokia for a joyride) for one single purpose and that was to support and serve Microsoft Windows Phones! The sad part of this is that Elop could not have achieved all these without continuous help from inside Nokia (i.e. board members, JO, etc.). It is still amazing that Elop didn't get fired immediately after the burning platform memo! One does not have to be a genius to realize that this kind of stunt can sink even a big company!

[E.Casais]

Wow, it must have taken you quite a bit of work to compile the information into this report.

A few remarks:

1) It would be more relevant to compare the performance of Kallasvuo from the time he took the helm (mid 2006), not just from 2009 onwards. After all, he was in charge before Android and iPhone appeared, and it is his long-term performance in the face of those disruptions that really count compared to the performance of a CEO who had to deal with the full blows of a competition now on a winning path.

2) For the same reason, I think the comparison with the crises at Coca-Cola, Exxon, etc, are interesting, but probably not that relevant. Elop (recklessly) engaged the future of the entire product portfolio of Nokia mobile devices; it was not just mucking up by launching one miserable model, or having one large accident in the production processes.

3) I really get a sour feeling when looking at the figures for Nokia Networks. You argue that benign neglect might have done it good, but the situation was really bad for a long time before that, and is just acceptable now (but far from safe). What really helped NSN out of the hole?

4) On the other hand, I am impressed by the performance of the feature phones business. Nokia knows what it is doing in that domain, and its strength in production and logistics shows. Keeping a decreasing business profitable when everybody is shouting "Feature phones are dead!" is quite an achievement.

Hopefully this is your last word on the matter for a while. I look forward to reading more on those interesting things happening in Asia or Africa, and less about how Nokia was run aground by a series of incompetent managers.

[Winter]

@E.Casals
"I look forward to reading more on those interesting things happening in Asia or Africa, and less about how Nokia was run aground by a series of incompetent managers."

I agree, Asia and Africa are changing faster than the eye can follow. South America is changing too.

Your commitment to Nokia is understandable, but the people that made Nokia great are still around. They will push Finland into the future. Helping them understand this future in mobile will do more for Finland than trying to punish Elop. Let him go destroy MS. They deserve each other.

[Sander van der Wal]

@E. Casais

Try looking at this post: http://www.asymco.com/2012/04/12/how-samsung-beat-nokia/. It argues that Nokia did not convert its portfolio of feature phones early enough to cash in on the surge in smartphone interest.

The "money quotes" are at the bottom:

"Samsung was able to convert its portfolio to smartphones while Nokia failed to do so. This is the sort of transition that can only come about from an explicit strategic intention on the part of management. Market demand can steer you in any number of directions, but a vision of a future should provide the compass for making the big bets.

The bet Nokia made many years ago was that there would be a continuing, substantial business in the “low end”. And low end meant feature phones. This strategy was still in evidence last year under the moniker “the next billion” users."

[Winter]

@Sander van der Wal
You see that the turning point for Samsung was halfway 2010? That was when Elop started.

Had Elop betted on Android late in 2010, he could have caught a lot of sales in the summer of 2011. Android phones were quite easy to produce by then. Now, all those Nokia feature phone users switched to Samsung.

But we know Elop decided to go for WP. For the first three quarters of 2011, Nokia had no credible Smartphone on the market. After that, they had a good one they did not want to sell, and a bad one no-one wanted to buy.

[foo]

Tomi,

Great article as always!

There is one argument that some people still use to defend Elop:

"Look at Blackberry -- it shows that Nokia's doom was inevitable"

The answer, in my opinion, is simple: both companies had problems, and had to make difficult decisions; but Elop made a series of dumb decisions:

- the burning platform memo
- pre-announcing the death of Symbian before he had anything better to show
- adopting the unpopular, not ready and feature-missing Windows Phone
- giving strategic control of the company future to Microsoft
- killing alternatives -- for instance, saying that N9 would die "no matter how succesful" it was

And so on.

Blackberry made one similar mistake: their OS was also not ready. But, unlike Windows Phone, their OS was popular and was fully controlled by the company.

Finally,

When we look at all of Elop's decisions together, we get a clear picture: he always acted to promote Microsoft's best interest.

He acted and talked like a Windows Phone advocate. He invited competitors (including Samsung!!!) to join the "ecosystem"!

That fact, by the way, puts down the argument that Elop somehow knew that Samsung would dominate Android, and thus opted for Windows Phone.

If he knew Samsung would become so powerful, why the heck would he invite the company to the Windows Phone bandwagon?

And let's not forget that Nokia was bigger, had better carrier relations and brand recognition than Samsung at the time. Even today, people say they would love to buy a Nokia Lumia... if it only had Android.

Didn't Elop made a market research before adopting Windows Phone? Wasn't it clear that Nokia would have to lift Windows Phone, and not the other way around?

Other silly arguments:

"Android wouldn't allow differentiation".

Bullsh*t. Just look at all the Windows Phones and see what is lack of differentiation: the same form factor, the same interface. Microsoft gave minimum space for customization because it wanted manufacturers to build generic products which depended on their OS (just like in the PC market)

"Microsoft would pay $1B / year to Nokia"

If the plan went as expected, and Nokia managed to sell 200 million devices per year, it would probably be paying more than $2B / year in royalties to Microsoft. So -- Microsoft would pay a grand total of $5B (for 5 years) and recoup the investment in less than 3 years.

As everything in this "partnership", great for Microsoft -- and terrible for Nokia.

***

So, that's the point that must be stressed out: Elop wasn't only incompetent -- he was working for the best interest of another company.

And failed miserably in both ends.

[foo]

E. Casais

> On the other hand, I am impressed by the performance of the feature phones business.
> Nokia knows what it is doing in that domain, and its strength in production and logistics
> shows. Keeping a decreasing business profitable when everybody is shouting "Feature
> phones are dead!" is quite an achievement.

Do you know how profitable the feature phone business is?

I wouldn't be surprised if Elop wanted to kill the feature phone business, going 100% Windows Phone.

The man was crazy, and destroyed everything non-Microsoft that he could find.

(Of course, Windows Phone was such a flop that he had to keep the feature phone business alive.)

[zlutor]

@foo: "but Elop made a series of dumb decisions" - well, well - whatever the reason was behind that "dumb decisions", Elop got a nice compensation package at the end...

I'm now just really waiting what the end of this story will be. It will be part of history - one way or an other...

[E.Casais]

"This is the sort of transition that can only come about from an explicit strategic intention on the part of management. "

And while Nokia did initiate the transition to smartphones, it was racked by so much infighting that this strategic intent failed to stabilize. Hell, you are the head of the feature phone business, selling hundreds of millions of devices at rock-bottom prices -- and you are clearly profitable; why would you disengage and let your fiefdom go to please those Symbian guys in difficulties, or those Meego nobodies, or those WP or Android sell-outs?

As I repeatedly said: there was a series of incompetent managers at Nokia, and one sign was their total inability to end internal feuds and make the whole organization work towards common goals. The belated and incomplete transition to smartphones is a result of this.

"The bet Nokia made many years ago was that there would be a continuing, substantial business in the “low end”."

And there were right. The best-seller amongst Nokia WP devices is the Lumia 520 -- a low-priced device. The new Motorola G is already shocking the market with its low price. And the next billion users is not a gimmick -- remember that there are billions of people for whom the price of an iPhone represents one month to one year of income; for them, only low-priced devices will do -- and that inevitably means "low-end" devices.

Notice that Samsung, which focused so much on the high-end and left its low-end Bada line in the limbo has announced that it will devote more attention to the low- and middle-range in the near future. Transition to smartphones does not necessarily mean transition to high-end only...

[foo]

@E.Casais

> Notice that Samsung, which focused so much on the high-end and left its low-end Bada line in
> the limbo has announced that it will devote more attention to the low- and middle-range in the
> near future. Transition to smartphones does not necessarily mean transition to high-end only...

Samsung strategists were intelligent enough to diversify their bets.

They made experiments with different OSs: Android, Windows Phone, Bada.

They manufactured high-end, middle- and low-end phones.

Android proved to be the bestseller, but they didn't kill the alternatives.

In all accounts, Samsung was the anti-Nokia -- and succeeded.

Elop followed the textbook on how NOT to run your company.

[RottenApple]

@Baron95:

You make the typical mistake of judging everything by share price. This attitude has hurt global economy more than everything else combined. I have no idea how many jobs were lost just to 'maximize share value'. Bottom line: Every company run with such an objective is doomed. And if that's what you attribute Elop's actions to, you just prove my point.

And let's not forget to achive 'just' that 17% drop the company was utterly decimated and annihilated. That may be nice for Wall Street locusts like you but not for the people actually working in such a company. The damage being done will eventually paid by others who had no say in what was happening.

I'd say people with your mindset better stay out of economics. You'd leave a barren wasteland behind in your relentless crusade to squeeze out as much money as you can.

[Timo M]

To say that Elop did good job running Nokia would be equally dumb to saying Jobs failed miserably leading Apple.

It took me a long time, years in fact, until I understood that people who knew nothing about the total Nokia dominance in mobile, Elop can be seen as having done decent job. Like looking from the USA, where Mr Kallasvuo failed to gain market share, Elop did gain few percentage points with WP and for almost 100 % of the population this was the first time they ever saw Nokia smartphones. Having never seen or known anything about Nokia's powerhouse mobile products and market dominance, being blinded by the brilliance of Google & Apple, this is understandable.

But the whole point of this blog is to correct that misconception.

When Elop announced the death of Symbian while saying we have no replacement either, not for a long time, I walked around like a zombie for days, not believing in such stupidity to be possible. His reasons are no longer secret, though.

[zlutor]

@Baron95: "Why is Tomi so emotional trying to convince the losers that Elop is the worst CEO, while the rest of the world is talking about him being in contention for CEO of Microsoft, or, at the very least lead what will be Microsoft's biggest division?" - can that be one possible reason because Elop executed a plan brilliantly - that apparently ruined a company what Tomi (as many of us) respected a lot?

For an outsider - yes, it is an achievement. Even such a big achievement that makes him good candidate for being CEO of M$.

But for the ones being Nokia fan - it is really painful...

So, yes. Elop is the worst CEO of Nokia - by default since during his tenure the crown jewel of the company, the part what Nokia is known of, the one made the brand a world recognised BRAND is going to be sold out for peanuts.

C'mon, let's be realistic: what a market verdict it is about a strategy that announcing its end - even together with selling the most known part of the affected company, the part what is behind its brand - rockets stock price back to the 'sky'?!

Such a brilliant strategy it was...

[Timo M]

ΩBaron95:

I was actually worried in the 90s and early 2000s that USA would be left behind in mobile and, despite Nokia¨s success, we would in the future be running Japanese OS in Taiwanese hardware and speaking in Chinese network. Or something similar. Ironically the thing I was worried about was having those ears on all our western communication, companies, banks etc. and them thus being able to greatly influence western freedom. The idea might be a bit far from the average phone user, but I am a bit paranoid :-) Oh well, NSA did it all even worse.

Still I welcome the success of Google and Apple. What I hate is what Elop did at Nokia. He destroyed everything. Nokia could have gone with Meego (Intel-Nokia venture) or Android (the most common prediction). Symbian was on terminal stage when Elop took over. Still making money, though, but to be replaced.

WP was non-existent. Zero market share. Nokia changed dominant position to zero. They eventually migrated probably less than 1/10 of their customers to WP. Every WP phone still makes a loss. All his other mistakes are catalogues here in the blog. That kind of incompetence cannot be justified. It is criminal and Elop should be in jail now.

Nokia should be Samsung and that is what pisses me off. You have no idea how much I hate Elop. Probably half as much as Tomi, which is more than I can handle.

I don¨t believe everything what Tomi says, by the way. Like when he said Microsoft will never buy Nokia, I drew different conclusions and bought Nokia stock. I was sure that with Balmer Elop would be gone as well and that would skyrocket the stock. Got lucky. That 100 % increase in stock value eases the pain that Elop is still a free man.

There are some weird characters (¨Ω) in this message, because I am writing this on my belowed Nokia foldable keyboard, which is not fully compatible with my iPad.

[Seurahepo]

I'd like to note a few things about this post.

The graphs are many, but the quality of them leaves things to desire. The 12 month average is very slow to react to changes. It shows the reality with a huge delay. A good quarter almost year earlier will cancel out a bad latest quarter and it is very hard to see sudden changes. Another problem with some of the graphs is that they do not show enough history.

I am sure Tomi knows how phone manufacturing works, but he chooses to ignore it as it does not fit his story. The Symbian device projects were around 18-24 months long, even when they were not horribly delayed like many were during OPK era. This means that when a CEO is changed, the effect of his actions will take a long time to be seen. A big ship turns slowly. Elop inherited a product pipeline (both hardware and OS) that was not good, actually it was a disaster. Mere months after Elop had become CEO of Nokia, Q4 2010, Android took the market share leadership away from Symbian. [1] There is no CEO in the world (not Jobs, not Ollila, not OPK) that could have prevented that in the one month Elop worked at Nokia before Q4 2010.

Unfortunately the worst part was not the unit sales, it was the user experience and price. I remember playing around with ZTE Blade in Q4 2010, in Finland it was sold for a bit over 100 euros. It felt more responsive than N8 with S^3, unfortunately N8 was around 3–4 times the price. Before that I had been worried about Nokia and Symbian, because their UX was from 2006 without much progress, iPhone was on a totally different level. But after seeing ZTE Blade I was certain Nokia were toast. Nokia was fighting war at two fronts. Apple had already taken the premium category and nice margins from Nokia, now Andoid devices started to undercut Symbian device prices, with better software library and UX.

The post tries hard to argue that Elop was some kind of superman who did all the decisions and that his actions happen instantly in some kind of a bubble that is unaffected by the surrounding market. That is simply untrue. Rise of Android would have happened in any case. The user experience of Symbian vs. iOS and Android would have been the same. Elop had little to do with the delays and problems of Symbian, Maemo/Meego and Nokia's hardware pipeline.

Elop worked closely with other executives to realise a strategy that was set *by the board*. The board decided the WP strategy, which was assumed to be the best option for Nokia by the board and by the executive team. If CEO does something against the will of the board, it has full power of changing the CEO. This did not happen.

Both Ollila and Kallasvuo have stated lately in Finnish media, that big mistakes made were made in their tenure. Nokia faced a huge disruption (or two) and Nokia just was not prepared for it. Their software and OS expertise was not at good enough level.

Tomi is totally correct, Elop was at helm when Titanic hit the ice berg, but the course and speed was set by the CEOs before him, and obviously the ice berg (or two) were not under his control.

[1] http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/01/31/android-takes-the-top-spot-from-symbian-following-strong-sales/

[Minna]

@Baron95: You still don't get it, do you? People don't buy Lumias because of WP. Those who buy them, buy them because of Nokia DESPITE WindowsPhone. A company can't be any kind of player if nobody wants to buy their products. Without customers there are no profits. And the idiotic mistake Americans always do is to think that they are in the business of making money. The only way a company can survive in the long term is being in the business of making money by producing something with a competitive advantage like Europeans are doing. That's why USA has a big track record of reverting to heavy protectionism and still failing while Europe has still e.g. a functioning steel industry.

USA has no "God-given right" to being a leader in the technology. You never did. Get off your annoying high horse and try to understand that there is a very real possibility that you Americans have more to learn from the rest of the world than the rest of the world has to learn from you. Fuck, you couldn't even fight the Russians and scare the living daylights out of them nor build a really deep diving subs like the Mirs. We Finns had to show you how it's done!

[Seurahepo]

@Timo

Nokia executive team assessed the Meego possibility and it just was not there. It was not ready. Nokia would have been alone putting thousands of man years into developement of an OS that very likely would not fly, with WP and Android were way cheaper for Nokia. The board could have chosen Meego strategy, they did not.

Android was a possibility, but not without problems. To differentiate enough from the others, how to manage Naviteq asset and how to make money in the cut throat competition are some of the clear problems, and there may be more that I am not aware of. In a hindsight it would have been interesting to see how Nokia would have done with Android, but no one knows. Of the big ones, only Samsung seems to make any real money out of Android, HTC is in deep deep trouble, Motorola has been losing money for years too. The board could have chosen Android strategy, they did not.

"WP was non-existent. Zero market share"

As was Meego, but still you think that could have been an option. And WP7 actually had shipped, Meego not so much, the Intel-Nokia Meego nor it's successors *still* have not shipped. Jolla will ship in a few weeks. But that will be the first. N9 was not really Meego, but a Maemo+.

"That kind of incompetence cannot be justified. It is criminal and Elop should be in jail now."

Which of his actions were "criminal"? He did what he could with the cards he was dealt with. And remember, the board, led by Ollila, chose the CEO and strategy. Elop just was executing it.

"Nokia should be Samsung and that is what pisses me off"

Nokia should make everything from fridges, TVs to ships and semiconductors. Fine, if they did they would had a chance.

"You have no idea how much I hate Elop"

I guess it helps to vent emotions into scapegoats, but just try to be rational.

"Having never seen or known anything about Nokia's powerhouse mobile products and market dominance, being blinded by the brilliance of Google & Apple, this is understandable"

I don't really know what you are trying to say. Yes, Nokia dominated "smartphone market" outside USA, when the competition was mainly RIM and Windows Phone. In 2007, started the age of "app-phones" or "internet-phones". RIM and Symbian were not seen that smart any more. iOS and Android devices were superior to Symbian and RIM. After 2007 Apple took the high end (and profits) and Android took the low end (the masses). Obviously this did not happen over night, as people upgrade their phones only every few years, and it took some time for Android to reach Symbian price points. Apple was (and is) just concerned about the high end and has not even been properly available in every major market, every operator until very recently.

"Dominating the market" by unit share, is not much dominating when your UX and price are low, and you are mostly dominating the emerging markets. Smartphones of Nokia were just featurephones with lipstick, comparing app phones and smart phones in the same market by unit share will lead to strange conclusions, as shown by this blog.

[B a r o n 9 5]

Hi Minna - I don't make the news. I just comment on the news. I told Tomi and all on this blogs and AllAboutSimbian EXACTLY that this would happen. That the European/Nokia/ST-Ericsson and DoCoMo bubble would burst ant it would be Google+AndroidOEMs (#1 by volume), Apple (#1 by profits) and Microsoft (distant #3) in control.

And that is exactly what has happened. You can scream as much as you want about "idiot Americans" and how the USA is doomed.

It still doesn't change the fact that Europe is out of it, and it is all US West Coast ecosystems and Asian manufacturing.

No amount of tantrum or emotional rants will change the *facts*.

Get used to it. Denial is not healthy. Particularly writing 10,000 words over and over and over again to try to deny obvious facts.

Tomi: Elop is the worst CEO in History

Microsoft: We want Elop to run Devices division post acquisition and are considering to be CEO of the whole company.

Tomi: Microsoft acquisition Deal is bad - vote against it

Nokia Owners (shareholders): Will approve the deal overwhelmingly

Tomi: Japan and the DoCoMo forked Symbian is the most advanced handset market and phone platform in the world and the iPhone has no chance in Japan

DoCoMo CEO: We were losing subscribers without the iPhone, but now iPhone is over 50% or mobile phone sales - #1 through #5 best selling phone models are iPhones.

You can chose emotional rants that are divorced from reality or you can choose to accept that what I told over 3 months ago was going to happen has happened.

Your choice.

Baron95 <-------- having so much fun watching the Tomi disciples coming unhinged. Thank you. I'm making another bag of popcorn to watch

[B a r o n 9 5]

Ooops. Obviously I meant to say what I told this blog over 3 YEARS ago (not months) has come to pass.

So much fun!!!