Slashdot Mirror
Nokia Plan B Was Just a Hoax
suraj.sun writes "There's been a lot of chatter about a 'Nokia Plan B' over the past 48 hours — the site was put up by nine young investors who outlined an audacious plan to rally shareholders, get themselves elected onto Nokia's board, and radically change the company's direction by firing Stephen Elop and committing massive resources to MeeGo. There's just one problem, though: the nine young investors don't really exist — according to the last tweet on the @NokiaPlanB Twitter account, it was all a hoax perpetuated by 'one very bored engineer who really likes his iPhone.' Ouch. That explains why the now-defunct site abruptly gave up the cause this morning after just 36 hours of existence."
It was well-informed and humorless. Very Nokia.
Engadget has been the ministry of truth for Microsoft during this episode. I don't think they should be taken seriously.
...there was a Plan A (other than corporate suicide)?
Elop described this partnership as making the smartphone market a three horse race. It is starting to be more like a three legged horse race.
With the first Nokia/WP phones slated for 2012, there is ample time for one (if not two) updates for iOS phones and a boat load of Android (especially low cost) devices to hit the market. With no meaningful transition (for both customers and developers) from Symbian to WP, why would anybody buy a high end Symbian device today ?
There has been a lot of chatter about a cheaper iPhone being able to penetrate emerging markets. I suspect unless that device can work without requiring a computer, this will be a non-starter. Android devices have the edge in this regard.
It got around the tech sites cause it was so obviously a much better idea than Nokia Plan A...
Doesn't matter if it was a hoax or not, they would do well to heed it.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Fake or not, this plan wouldn't even have been feasible in the US were the SEC has completely dismantled shareholder rights. According to the SEC, shareholders have 0 say in what the CEO and board gets paid or even who is on it.
When Obama actually tried to introduce an SEC that would allow shareholders to have a NON-BINDING vote on CEO pay the Republicans screamed bloody murder. Apparently according to Republican philosophy you only have to work hard and actually earn your keep if you aren't already rich. The people who have gotten to the top(often times not even on their own merit) are allowed to plunder the company as they see fit. CEO pay is increasing 2x as fast as the S&P 500 and there isn't a damn thing we can do about it. At least it seems in Finland shareholders have SOME power.
Monstar L
I really don't think it was a better plan. Rather more to the point, it might have been a better plan with a lot more flesh on its bones, and had Nokia not already inked the deals that would drive "Plan A" forward. As it was it was a lot of vague hand waving and spending a fortune "re-reinventing" the wheel. I don't want to know how much money Nokia has spent re-aligning itself for the MS deal, but tossing that out that window and going with an entirely new plan would probably cost that much again (or even more).
I understand that people who like Symbian would consider the "Plan B" superior from their own personal "I finally get a MeeGo phone" point of view, but it was fairly unrealistic given the current state of Nokia. The likely result would have been a Nokia bankrupt or dramatically weakened and unable to produce the kind of phones you want anyway. For good or ill, Nokia's path forward was determined when the ink on the MS deal was dry.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
'one very bored engineer who really likes his iPhone.'
An engineer who is
1. bored
2. likes iPhones?
Does not sound like much of an engineer.
Why did they have to spend much at all?
Microsoft: "Put Windows Phone on your handsets."
Nokia: "We'd rather not..."
Microsoft: "Sudo put Windows on your handsets."
Nokia: "Okay."
Costs:
License rights to XKCD
Buying Randall Munroe lunch and a free phone
Replacing Ballmer's Chair
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Feasibility in Finland would be more interesting, I think.
Max.
If it was a hoax, the perpetrators could be charged under SEC rules with trying to manipulate the market. That would not bode well for them. Another alternative is that it wasn't a hoax, but Nokia made them an offer for their shares they couldn't refuse or if they were employees a severance package they couldn't refuse.
What's more likely, a group perpetrated a hoax and publicly admitted it knowing they could now be charged in the legal system or it wasn't a hoax and they were bought off?
It wasn't a hoax, and they were bought off / silenced.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
What do you mean? Shareholders already have a say in what the CEO is paid. They can buy and sell the stock.
CEO pay is part of the value of a company. If you think he's being overpaid, don't buy it.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Is the some way to get the comments of nokiaplanb.com back on line? The site was hosted by GoDaddy and I would presume it would have to been bought for 1 month. So why did it vanish?
That kinda thing is always expensive. They're laying a lot of people off, that saves money in the long run but has huge upfront costs. Especially in a labor friendly jurisdiction like Finland. Figure every person they layoff gets a month of two of severance pay. Probably more in a place like Finland, but at least that. Gotta pay out everyone's accrued vacation (in a country where 6 weeks vacation a year is the norm). With large scale layoffs like this they probably provide a lot of job search assistance and such. In the US, layoffs for a reasonably experienced worker often cost around 3 to 4 months worth of that person's typical monthly cost. I wouldn't be surprised if in Finland it's more like 6 months.
They're probably breaking a lot of contracts with dev shops that were working on MeeGo for them, that costs penalties. They're going to have to replace infrastructure. Ripping out your Linux dev environment and replacing it with a Windows dev environment isn't cheap, even if MS eats most of the software costs. The people they aren't laying off they're going to have retrain. They may have to scrap some hardware designs and start over depending on how similar MeeGo and WP7 are in UI, and hardware support.
Turning it around now, they'd have to undo all the changes they made (incurring all the same costs again), break a contract with Microsoft (sure to be expensive), plus pay a whole new set of realignment costs, becasue "Plan B" didn't call for just backing out of the MS deal but a completely different set of changes.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
That's what he did them for.
I think it would be great if we knew for sure it was a Nokia engineer on his iPhone
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
What if you think he is overpaid, but still think that even with that extra unneccesary cost the stock is still the best investment choice for some portion of your money?
I'm pretty sure every stock I own is for an entity that does at least one thing I disagree with.
...is that despite all its resources, the company seems unable to release anything truly interesting.
It's as though they are pathologically attracted to mediocrity.
source
Bankrupt? Nokia was still making billions of profit per year. It would take several years, probably five or more of straight out losses for bankrupcy.
Their problem was not getting enough growth in profits to please shareholders and losing marketshare to competitions. Which both were natural result of having new players in the market (Apple and Google) and inflexibility of Nokia in directing their enourmous resouces where it mattered (to one low end and one modern smartphone OS, or even better, to something that could be scaled for both).
Because Nokia needed an infusion of cash to survive and because this isn't "Put Windows Phone on your handsets" it's "Build us some handsets for Windows phone" which is much more expensive.
Actually, it's not at all clear that Nokia has the talent required to do what you suggest. Perhaps it is simply a management failure, but for years they've dedicated substantial resources to development of mobile phone OS, and managed to produce only slight tweaks to a mediocre platform (Symbian), and failed to deliver its successor (MeeGo).
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
then their not overpaid. If they can retain employees, have decent growth, and still pay exorbitant salaries for CEOs then it's okay, QED. Whether my personal opinions follow this concept, or investors are allowed to become aware of breaches of common sense due fraud is a something else, but the logic is clear.
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
I didn't say, "Nokia is going bankrupt". I said: "Had they followed the plan laid out in "Plan B", given the currently reality of contracts signed and changes already in the works, they probably would have wound up bankrupt (or seriously weakened)". Making a ship the size of Nokia do a 180 is expensive. Making it do a 180, then immediately saying "Oops", and making it do another 180 is *really* expensive. The ideas expressed in "Plan B" might have been a good move, if they weren't already executing "Plan A". At this point changing direction drastically *again* would bankrupt almost any company.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
I believe you mean Microsoft: runas /user:administrator "put Windows on your handsets."
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
I saw this report about a japanese CEO that rides a bus to work, eats the same food as the other staff and even decided a paycut for himself.
This kind of legislation has to have some effect at some point. Bad exensive decisions will pay out in the long run... for the competition ;)
oh forgot to add: then all the whining will beginn and the US will plunge right into another useless war.
Who the hell uses facebook to stage an investor's revolution. I would've been more scared if it was legitimate.
Bye!
So because a business is doing well overall that means that there is no single part of it that could be improved? Doyou ride unicorns to the fields to frollick with the fairies in your world by any chance?
The final text of the copyright of msqt.org's main page contained this text at the very beginning (and still has it):
This is a satire, for the real Qt website go to qt.nokia.com.
The domain itself is registered by a random Finnish individual as registered through joker.com, a consumer-grade DNS reseller.
I find it hard to believe that anybody took it seriously and that anybody in the industry couldn't do the miniscule amount of homework to confirm what should have been everybody's initial suspicion: it's a freaking joke. It was never intended to mislead.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
The share is not a product, it is actually a part of the company itself. As a (standard) shareholder, you actually own a part of the company. That is normal, and actually is your responsibility to look after how it is managed. eg: they could be more profitable by not paying the CEO that amount of money.
Even if you do not care about managing the company you just bought a share, there is a very important difference with being a client (like when you put money in a bank account) or a debtor of the company: as an owner, you are the last one to get your money back when the company goes bust !
That is a very big drawback and the reason behind the existence of "preferred shares" that does not entitle you to a vote, but give you a chance of getting your money back if the worst happen.
On a larger more obvious scale, this is the difference between buying your flat, or renting it. When renting you do not really care what fire insurance policy the building manager has contracted as long as the price is right. As a buyer, you do care, and as a shared owner of the building you want to have your opinion heard.
I was ready to move to a Nokia Meego phone (from an iPhone 3G), but I have no interest in WP7 phones whatsoever, it doesn't matter if they have the best call quality, camera, GPS, screen, keyboard, whatever. Nokia is dead to me now. So from my point of view, Nokia looks incredibly stupid. But I know I'm not a typical customer and perhaps they can pull it off as I see plenty of people praising WP7 (and plenty lambasting it). But their stock value seems to show a lot of investors don't have the confidence that they can. Too bad - I hope Zeiss finds some other manufacturers to use their excellent cameras if Nokia goes under (or even if they don't - damn, I wanted that N8 camera on a good phone).
If I were running the company, I would have changed the top-end phones (I have no comments on lower end phones - let them keep running Symbian I suppose) so that the platform was completely open and put a small team on getting the platform to run stock Android AND Meego and don't develop a Meego UX in secret that is only for Nokia. Stick to making the best hardware and run a completely open stack (that anybody else can run too). Now a few apps that are Nokia phone only like Ovi Maps would have been OK. I saw a great video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2KSCPOhQ7w) on a platform that was software agnostic and was targeting both Android and Meego, I see no reason Nokia couldn't have done this with an actual phone.
The bummer is that with Nokia's move, I'm left now with only Android in terms of an open ecosystem when the stupid manufacturers (like Motorola) or the stupid carriers (like most of the US ones) don't cripple it. I'm not crazy about the Nexus S or I would have gotten one last year. Google needs to get a lot more Nexus partners so that at any one time all the companies have a flagship Nexus device. That would get me a lot more excited about Android. Too bad WebOS is of no interest (lousy looking hardware, another proprietary OS), Samsung's supposed effort to do something open according to Rasterman is nowhere, and after that I only know of the main proprietary options of iOS, Blackberry, and Microsoft (all of which I've ruled out). Hello Android, but I'm not excited about it.
The plan was juvenile. It called for recruiting top talent at universities from around the world and bringing them to a single technology center in a country most people wouldn't want to live in because of weather and sunlight extremes. Then these inexperienced apprentice engineers were going to do what to give Nokia an immediate shift in their circumstances?
no, you are using the extreme example. What i'm saying is, if the company makes (long-term!) investors happy then what other measure can there be? not that i personally approve of this sort of lack of morality, but if you think an investment is "a good investment for me, although the CEO is paid too much", those are two separate statements! If the CEO pay affected the soundness of the investment, then you would not invest. Q.E.D.
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
Correct!
It's the "Golden Rule", and not the one in the bible - "Whoever has the gold, makes the rules"
It's one of the many nasty byproducts of capitalism but given the inherit nature of humanity, capitalism is probably our best bet. Our choices are that or whoever controls the military makes the rules, or some other such nonsense. It still allows for cronyism, but so do all the other systems and there are at least more avenues by which any one individual can attain gold so that individual can make their own rules.
The way to address this issue is not through legislation to expressly prohibit gross CEO pay, as those in power will use their ample wealth to maintain the status-quo. Instead, the incestuous relationships between CEO's and board members of various large corporations needs to be thoroughly exposed and explored for public dissemination. From there a public sentiment could be used to slowly influence law markers, but this process will not happen over night.
That being said, the environment is ripe for this sort of muckracking, given the gross abuses of power that Wallstreet exhibited during the oughts, people are more apt to listen to this sort of stuff.
My year + old Nokia running Maemo 5 (N900) is pretty nice and holds its own against my wife's 4G iPhone. The non-OSS app selection isn't very good, but neither is WP7. So Maemo 5 was decent over 1 year ago and it's going to take Nokia at least a year to switch to WP7. That's 2 years to work on Maemo. And when they're done, it's theirs.
There's so many things wrong with the WP7 decision, but the biggest is this: Nokia will be relegated to just another WP7 handset maker. They can't differentiate themselves. And IF MS GOOFS ON WP7, be it security decisions or bad design decisions, Nokia goes down with them. Going with WP7 takes the control out of their hands and puts it in Microsoft's.
Which was my exactly my point. Did you read the thread?
If the way for me "have a say" in the the CEO's salary is by not owning the shares then I can't do that because there are other reasons to own them that outweigh the pay of the CEO. Hence claiming that gives me a say is just plain false.
I'm sorry to interrupt your outrage baiting that you've gotten a +5 Insightful on, but do you have a cite for when you say "shareholders have 0 say in what the CEO and board gets paid or even who is on it."
Shareholders' main right is to set who is on the board of directors.
Furthermore, one of the board of director's main rights it to determine what the CEO and board gets paid.
Traditionally, a corporation is like a representative republic. It's true, shareholders don't get a direct say in how much the CEO gets paid, but they do get to pick representatives to be on the board who in turn get to decide how much the CEO gets paid.
Ah im with you then, except that I'm saying, in your example, the CEO is NOT overpaid! If he was, it would not be a good investment. You are saying it's a good investment AND he's overpaid, which I am logically rejecting.
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
I am not a hater. I have nothing against Apple or its products (which I don't mind admitting are the best thing out there for ordinary consumers). However, this Apple fanboi is a "hater", because he told malicious lies in an attempt to damage the business interests of Microsoft and Nokia. I happen to have a business interest in the success of the WP7 platform, and it makes me angry that he told a malicious lie to spread FUD.
And I'm saying it's possible for him to be overpaid AND for it to be a good investment. I can't see how those two things could possibly be mutually exclusive, the CEO salary is likely a tiny portion of the expenses of the company it being a bit larger than I think it optimal is unlikely to shift the company as a whole from being a good investment to a bad investment.
What is your logical proof that an overpaid CEO implies a bad investment?
i'm not dude - we're on the same page. it DOES NOT imply that a CEO being overpaid is a bad investment. Listen closely: what i'm saying is if overpaying a CEO affects the value of the company then THAT IS BEING OVERPAID. i'm not saying they are mutually exclusive, i'm saying that you can't have a company that is a good investment with an overpaid CEO, since if he WAS overpaid, then that would affect the capital of the company and ability to execute business. if it's a good investment, he's not overpaid. if you think he is overpaid (and thus taking away money from other areas of great importance) then it would be a bad investment!
CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!
No we don't agree.
I think that a company can still be a good investment even though it is not perfectly optimal in its resource allocation.
I'm also not placing some arbitrary restriction on the definition of "overpaid". It merely means "paying more than the thing is worth". I overpaid for coffee yesterday, that doesn't mean I've doomed my finances to destruction it just means I paid 50c more than I needed to. Overpaying the CEO doesn't mean paying him so much is "affects the value of the company", it means paying $10 more than what I think his services are worth.