Slashdot Mirror
Nokia Names Microsoft's Elop As New CEO
itwbennett writes "Nokia has tapped Stephen Elop, former president of Microsoft's business software group, to become its new CEO effective Sept. 21. Elop will replace Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, who loses his board seat immediately and will step down from the CEO position on Sept. 20. Microsoft said Elop will leave immediately, but the company doesn't seem to be rushing to fill the vacancy at the top of one of its largest divisions. 'I am writing to let you know that Stephen Elop has been offered and has accepted the job as CEO of Nokia and will be leaving Microsoft, effective immediately,' Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wrote in a letter to employees late Thursday."
The only reason I just bought an Android phone instead of an N900 was for Google Maps Mobile :-/ Things could have been so different...
Hiring an american is, for this finnish company, a pretty large error. Making him a micros~1ee, read: largest innovation destructor in computing to date, is not going to bring back "innovation" to this ailing company. They basically have everything except management clue (but a clear excess of management), and you're not going to fix that by getting another manager from brass-heavy micros~1. So, last rites to nokia. G'bye.
One of the key components of Nokia's current attempt to regain relevance is the (open source) Qt toolkit, powering KDE on Linux. It will be very interesting to see how Nokia under Elop will manage that asset and how Nokia's relation to the Open Source community will evolve.
I for one wish him, Nokia and all ex-Trolls well.
No chairs were thrown during the exit interview.
I am officially gone from
of their remarkable success with mobile devices, especially phones? I don't understand this one. How did Elop manage to distance himself from his former employers failures or did Nokia even notice? This does not bode well for Nokia.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
Ok, I have no clue who the guy is but, if I were on the Nokia board and looking for a new CEO to help raise Nokia back to relevance in the face of the iPhone's success, I would look to a Google exec before one from Microsoft. Not to be a smartass, but why would you hire an exec from a company that hasn't yet figured out how to combat Apple's success in the smartphone market when you need an exec who knows how to combat Apple's success in the smartphone market? Google, at least, is giving Apple a run for its money and is making the smartphone market interesting. Microsoft has ... well, nothing in the smartphone market.
A very, very weird choice...
Just so that he fits in will he be taking the name Stephphen Ellop? I'd hate to see Nokia loose all those double-consonants.
I guess this doesn't sound like good news for MeeGo. But maybe I'm too harsh. If Nokia really wants to be a big player in the smartphone market they will have to continue with MeeGo.
-- Cheers!
Uh, why Microsoft? I think they've proven they suck with anything "cool", especially in the mobile realm. Android is now starting to steamroll BB in stats, and has a cool tablet coming out. Why would a mobile company trying to 'come back' (of sorts) hire a MS person? I don't get it.
Stuff that matters to stuffed suits in accounts receivable.
Awesome. He should dead the lame S40 + Symbian + MeeGo plans and make plain a Windows 7 compatible (Linux plus Mono) play to beat Android. Nokia needs big new attack to stay relevant, and symbian and Qt no good at all ever.
Why I'm not sure that hiring a person that worked for the producers of Kin (AND Zune) is the best way to save Nokia from decline?
"Google, at least, is giving Apple a run for its money"
Just how delusional can you possibly be?
Google's Android dumped Apple into 3rd place in the cellphone market two quarters ago. And Google dumped RIM into 2nd place this last quarter.
Android was selling at a rate of 200,000 new phones a day/73 million a year a few months ago. And that rate has been increasing at a tremendous rate quarter after quarter for the past two years.
Perhaps you spend your day sitting around in Starbucks, but out in the real world Google is the leader of the cellphone market.
Nokia phones now come in Home, small business, big business, magcorp, media and facebook editions.
A lot of people are asking why a guy from Microsoft?
Basically, Nokia didn't hire a "Microsoft exec", but Stephen Elop of lately Microsoft, but previously of Juniper Networks, Adobe and Macromedia, a software guy with a reputation of excellent communication skills. That might be a very good move, Nokia can make mobile hardware as well as anyone, it's their software and services that have been the problem and not just lately, but at least since 2000.
One of article gives a good overview.
http://www.itworld.com/business/120236/nokia-names-microsofts-elop-new-ceo
The Guardian has very nice article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/sep/10/nokia-stephen-elop-smartphone
Only thing I can think to add, that I read in Finnish media, was that Elop handled Microsoft's relations with Nokia and is relatively well known inside Nokia's boardroom already.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers - Pablo Picasso
In what Microsoft spokesmen called an "unfortunate accident" Elop got hit by a flying chair while trying to leave the Redmond campus.
I wonder if Steve Ball is throwing office chairs around this time.
Good liddle iFanboy!
You spouted the standard iDamage control meme for Google's Android phones beating the shit out of Apple's overhyped and defective iPhone so well!
Did Nokia and Stephen Elop?
And why am I the first one to think of it?
that search reveals nothing. The possible explanations are that you're crazy, you've misspelled something, or it's a big cover up conspiracy.
Well if the guy's name is Elop it more or less follows that he will elope... (*)
Now, seriously, Nokia bought Trolltech, which makes Qt -- the foundation of KDE.
Are we sure he did really leave M$? 8-o
They could simply continue making featurephones and dominate that segment, and make tons of money doing so.
That's like saying Dell or HP can continue to make commodity PCs and dominate that segment. While it may be true, the statement misses the fact that as the mobile market matures, feature phones will become a smaller and smaller slice of the overall pie. Moore's Law is relentless; the feature phone is dying as smartphones become the standard. There is no way Nokia execs are sitting around a big table discussing how they can use feature phones to ensure market dominance. If Nokia doesn't find a way to take the battle to Apple and Android, they're in deep trouble.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Don't worry, CEO's just be do the low level programming to someone else's spec.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This won't last long. Long assignments don't fit by the business profile of the character.
Worst: North American can never ever fit into the the Nordic work tradition and culture. He will feel pretty limited and lonely there.
Conclusion: this might lead to astonishing wins on short term (call it "reorganization") but after that he will leave to yet another challenge.
The battle will keep on between Google and Apple, with M$ as side player collecting reasonably good wins with relatively little innovation.
Whether Nokia communication devices will make it to the 1966 Corvette driven into a canyon by 13 year old James T. Kirk in 2246 remains unclear, as yet.
The guy is nothing but a bunch of hot air. He did almost nothing for Office, he came in after Raikes left in 2008, and it was Raikes who ran Office division so successfully. A monkey with half a brain could continue running this monopoly. They needed someone who knows what to do with the company. Elop certainly does not.
My eyes read that heading wrong. I saw:
Nokia Names Microsoft's Flop As New CEO
Now, I know that Nokia would have plenty of these to emulate, but, really, to make Windows Vista your CEO, wow.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
except for the usa . Their only real competition are apple and google... From the usa ... They have been making smartphones for a decade and are looking to get into the usa market with stuff like the n900 and n8. They haven't been able to break the us market so far and i'll bet this is elop's first task .
Deleted
But on the other hand, lots of people love the N900 software, given it's nix.
Damn right! Maemo supremacy! \m/
(It's SO much better than the competition, I can't help but be a fanboy! :P)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It's called "seagull management."
Swoop in, shit all over the place, and leave just as fast.
We'll have to see if he is this type.
Nokia is sort of the Microsoft of phones. A gigantic bureaucracy-heavy megacorporation with the momentum - and agility - of an aircraft carrier. Even if this guy screws up badly the effects might only be noticed after he leaves, and the effects will be minimal. Nokia will still be cranking out metric fucktons of cheap phones like they always have.
Although MS handles RRODs better than Nokia handles N900 USB port breakage, which is to deny the problem exists and blame the user for being reckless.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
is that they make decent affordable phones. They really need to re-model things as I see it, as their current line-up just doesn't compete with the style and functionality the affordable Samsungs or the un-affordable iphones
These issues have everything to do with the topic. Every possible corner of the topic is covered in these issues. We have Mobile competetive field, Microsoft executive moving to competitor, deals with the devil, partnership potentials, future potentials, breach of faith and so on. We don't have the death of the moved-to company yet because Nokia is not yet in that phase of the engagement.
And yet I'm going to relent. After further consideration Nokia is too smart to be bought off by Microsoft, too big to believe in a benefit, too clever to leave their CEO ungoverned. At 30 months this guy's too new to Redmond to be an external asset unless their mindscaping has risen to Treadstone levels, and I don't believe it has. There's no evidence of a significant Scientology incursion into the Microsoft culture, which is what it would take to turn him so quick. Nokia's Board is learned enough and responsible enough to consider these issues, monitor their new CEO carefully and judge the risks. They're not dumb, and they've not reached their dotage. If he's a plant he's not going to sprout at Nokia.
I recant my objections. He may compete well and that would be a Good Thing.
If Nokia should enter into a "partnership" with Microsoft in the near future though, Nokia is an easy short. Microsoft is a competitor with trivial market share and limited resources in the space. Microsoft wants to compete in this space with Windows Phone 7. Nokia remains, and is projected to remain, the dominant player in the space. Such a partnership would gain Nokia nothing and benefit Microsoft well so it would be an abrogation of corporate responsibility for Nokia to enter into such a deal. If you see it, Nokia is PWNed. Short Nokia hard in that case and you can retire on the movement.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
the article didn't state how long he was at Microsoft but I found that it was less than 3 years so he might not be _that_ infected. His _success_ at Microsoft is still of dubious value IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
From Colin's comments it seems that there's a person out there who hasn't realised that Nokia Symbian phones are shit. I really worry that some of these people work for Nokia and might think that it's worth trying to continue Symbian instead of killing it dead with a death target time of about two years and a move to the bottom end in one.
I've had in my life, for reasons of company policy, three Symbian phones.
The number of bugs which recur from phone to phone is astounding; Every phone completely messes up out of memory conditions with applications breaking. On both the 6330 and N70 the different locking modes would overlap making it almost impossible to unlock the phone sometimes. The web browsers always failed and locked up (just yesterday I tested this against a friends E72 loading a standard AJAX site - he wanted to prove it was just as good as the N900 - his phone crashed).
Beyond that; the mail clients regularly overload; the excel replacement doesn't deal with pretty basic XLS files let alone advanced ones; the excel replacement locks out and demands a license; the PC software screws up your Windows desktop; the systems aren't compatible with Linux ; etc. etc. etc.
Oh... not enough extras. Okay; the file system access is inconsistent, I had to use FExplorer to even survive on it (and without FExplorer's process killing I would have given up completely on Symbian long ago). Enough?
If you release with bugs that is bad, but may be down to a lazy tester and a CEO who doesn't now how to put testing people onto software. If you can't fix major bugs in your software in five years, then that is a strong hint that your software is designed wrong.
KILL SYMBIAN NOW. Nokia, for your own sake. We are begging. Symbian programmers who can deal with Linux should go to Meego. Those that can't should go to putting a Symbian compatibility layer in Meego. Those that can't cope with that need to go. Take this as a chance to prove to your customers that you will never repeat the story of the N700 to N800 where you abandoned them or the N800 to N900 where you did the same or the S2 to S3, etc. etc.
Every phone designer at Nokia should be forced to have an iphone and use it for at least a week. Until they and their managers realise that a) they have to finish phones before releasing and b) phones nowadays need a real proper operating system and Symbian is not it.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
..odds that the next Nokia has a ribbon across the top of the screen that makes it impossible to find commonly used functions?