Re: ROFL
I hope Elop achieves, for his new employer, exactly what he achieved for Nokia.
What, epic success?
For Nokia Group, Elop delivered handsomely, securing a $7.2bn price for a business that had made itself totally unable to compete in its core market, and that the buyer then had to write down (plus another half a billion of costs) a year later.
The state of Nokia Phones when Elop joined might have been salvable, but I doubt it. The business unit had its chance and blew it in the five year period 2005-2010, and Elop worked in the best interests of his paymasters, Nokia shareholders. Spending another five years trying to sort the business out, and claw market share in the largely profitless Android market would have been hugely risky (eg look at Blackberry bobbing about in the bowl, trying the resist the flush), but Elop instead found somebody willing to pay to take the wreckage away and then executed that strategy perfectly. And Nokia even got to retake the brand and control of most of the IP.
Old school Nokia fans might be blinded by emotion, I'm, not. Elop demonstrated commercial genius, and I take my hat off to him.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
