Blaming one person (the CEO, Stephen Elop) is a bit too much. True, he positioned Nokia well enough for it to be sold to Microsoft for the cost of packet of Walkers crisps. There are other things at play however. Finnish are a folk on their own, they don't take well international markets, demands etc. And the tech world is quite demanding. Nokia weren't quick enough to adapt to the rise of Apple, Samsung, HTC and Blackberry. Some of the most talented people from Nokia went to work for another, new, telecom company - Jolla. The first phone was good but overpriced - two/three years after the release they were still selling it at it's full price. They had a tablet coming up and preorders taken, the project was constantly pushed back until it was completely cancelled.
They come with very good ideas but customers never, or very rarely, see the end results. Or if they do the Customer Support is shocking (and they see nothing wrong with it). I remember my former employer buying a Finnish VPN client (the name shall not be mentioned). We bought it, implemented it around May/June time and some issues started to arise in July. You thought Italian holiday period was bad? Try Finnish. Senior technical support went on holiday for over a month.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
