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Microsoft Narrows Down CEO Shortlist: Elop, Mulally, Bates, Nadella In Mix
rjmarvin writes "Sources have confirmed that Microsoft has narrowed down its search for its next CEO to five external candidates and at least two internal candidates. Rumored frontrunner Stephen Elop, former Nokia CEO, and Ford Motor CEO Alan Mulally are reportedly in contention, along with Microsoft's Skype head Tony Bates and their cloud and enterprise chief Satya Nadella. The other external candidates who've emerged from the approximately 40 rumored names swirling around since August have not yet been revealed."
First they must be able to pull the chair from the sacred stone, if they can toss it in Google's direction they become CEO
There's no way this goes to anyone but Elop.
Mulally would be the best pick, which is why it's not going to be him.
Given what Alan Mulally had done for Ford as CEO and Boeing as a senior VP, I'm shocked he's not the front runner. He helped lead Boeing's resurgence against increased competition from Airbus, and then made Ford the strongest of the big three automakers and the only one able to weather the storm of the Great Recession. It would seem only fitting that he would be picked to lead Microsoft as it attempts to reinvent itself against growing competition.
Elop? Nokia was already in a nosedive when he started. If anything, he just guided them to a softer crash into a fluffy Microsoft pillow.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words so here. They had ten stable quarters with >6 billion in revenue and >500 million euro profit, the Windows Phone deal is announced and boom they go from a 750 million euro profit to a 200 million euro loss and their sales have been in free fall ever since. Yes they needed a revitalization in the smart phone market where Apple and Google were kicking their ass, but they had sales and profits to fix that. Until Elop issued his "burning platform" memo and announced an all-out switch to Microsoft, that is. If Microsoft hires him it's nothing but kickback for burning Nokia to the ground to promote Windows Phone.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I think dead Steve Jobs would do a better job than any of those.
Please don't spread that myth. This is clearly not true and the numbers are public. The smartphone devision was highly profitable exactly up when the switch to Winodws Phone was declared and Symbian was deprecated. Symbian sales instantly collapsed and Windows Phone never (up to now) got sales even remotely close to that Symbian smatphones had at this point (30 million per quater - Lumia now: 8 million). Nokia was overall a healthy company with losts of cash before Elop and it is close to bankruptcy now.