Ok. Now its pretty well established in several news sources, that Nokia tried to get Microsoft to buy the company last year, but Microsoft decided against it, Tomi Ahonen writes for Communities Dominate Brands. That gives fresh insights and clues to what might have been driving Elop to such unprecedented madness from this infamous Burning Platforms memo the costliest management memo of all time to the ludicrious decisions about announcing the end of Symbian with no Windows Phone smartphones even to show, far less to sell; to the infuriating decisions to not support Nokias own-developed and truly excellent products from the N9 on MeeGo to 808 Pureview on Symbian, to not even releasing the N950 on MeeGo to the baffling decision on suddeinly terminating Meltemi mere weeks before phones were ready to be shown.
Elop is the worst CEO of all time, Ahonen writes, he has personally caused the biggest corporate downfall in the Global Fortune 500 history, after we eliminate management fraud and crimes. For management incompetence Elop is the benchmark. The worst CEO ever. We need not review all his damage, growing smartphone sales turned into historys fastest collapse. Growing profitable handset business turned into fastest losses ever in this industry. Market share collapse Nokia was twice as large in market share as the iPhone, four times as big as Samsungs smartphones when Elop started and grew more in 2010 than either rival but now Nokia smartphones (on all of its platforms, combined) is one sixth the size of the iPhone and one tenth the size of Samsungs smartphones. Nokia share price, Nokia brand value, Nokia loyalty, all destroyed in the past 2 years and four months.
I dont mean that Nokia was in great shape before Elop I never said that, I was warning that Nokia had problems at the time but Nokia was growing strongly, making strong growing profits, and towered over its rivals before the Elop Effect in February 2011. After Elop started to massacre the businesses of Nokia, its been sheer carnage, Ahonen writes. Now. Could there be a reason to the madness? What if we dont examine this from the prism what is best for Nokia and its shareholders. If we examine it from this angle Elop promised to sell Nokia to Microsoft.