He may have been handed a turd-filled chalice, but as far as I could tell his actions were basically to try and piss into it anyway (predictably ending up with little but dirty hands to show for his efforts).
Nokia appears to have had internal culture problems for years, but Elop didn't exactly do much to help things. Trashing the existing platform (including the long-in-development in-house product that was realistically their best chance of any kind of future) to instead latch onto an external platform that was itself busily being defecated upon by its parent company was a foolish idea.
I thought Windows CE was actually reasonably good for its intended purpose way back in the days of the XDA, and I know several folks using Windows Phone 8 now who like it a great deal, but the transition between the two has been fumbled in that the app marketplace is vital for such devices and the Windows platforms have generally poor app stores compared to Android or iOS.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
