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Stephen Elop Would Pull a Nokia On Microsoft
Nerval's Lobster writes "A new Bloomberg report suggests that Stephen Elop, who's apparently on the short list of candidates to replace Steve Ballmer as Microsoft's CEO, would eliminate company projects such as Xbox and Bing while focusing resources on Office. Before he left Microsoft to join Nokia, Elop headed Microsoft's Business Division, so it's no surprise he'd want to focus on Office and the company's other, highly profitable enterprise software. But as head of Nokia, Elop made similarly bold strategic realignments that, while they probably looked good on paper, didn't quite work out. Specifically, Elop decided to abandon Nokia's popular homegrown operating systems, including Symbian, in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone. That caused Nokia's share of the overall mobile-device market to dive into the single digits. At the time, Elop insisted he made the decision because Symbian and its ilk were incapable of competing in the broader market against Android and iOS; revelations by the Finnish media over the past few months, however, suggest that he'd been offered a generous cash incentive for selling off the company, which gives his 'strategic realignment' (which everyone knew would initially collapse Nokia's market-share, as its product pipeline emptied out) a whiff of self-interest. So while it's likely that a Microsoft run by Elop would make some decisive moves, his previous attempt at game-changing quickly transformed Nokia from a communications powerhouse into a second-tier competitor and (eventually) a Microsoft subsidiary. And by eliminating Bing and Xbox, Microsoft would be giving up completely on the search and gaming markets in favor of becoming more of an enterprise-centric company—something that could please analysts mostly interested in the company's bottom line, but basically an admission of defeat in the consumer realm."
Yes! Let's watch him do to Microsoft what he did to Nokia!
But, that said, maybe a breakup and spin-off of non-core divisions is exactly what Microsoft needs. This whole 'chasing Apple/Sony/{$newTechMarket}' thing is slowly killing them.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
So the plan is he'll gain stewardship of Microsoft and hand it over to... Microsoft?
Seems a bit redundant
Oh right we're going to pretend Elop wasn't an infiltrator sent to hasten the ripening of a patent laden company down on it's luck
That moron completely destroyed Nokia, he will do the same to Microsoft.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Blackberry stuck with their own stuff, which was even relatively entrenched in the enterprise... a lot of good it did them.
He is a double agent! He tricked Microsoft into believing that he was their agent working for them to run down Nokia, all the while he was really working for Google! This could be the plot of a new Mission Impossible movie, Tom Cruise playing Elop?
Anyone who thinks Symbian was a decent alternative OS and that abandoning it for virtually ANYTHING else was a mistake needs to have their head examined. In fact I'd credit sticking to Symbian for too long with as much of Nokias problems as anything else.
Nokia's OS work was absolutely terrible, in fact it was so bad that it made what Microsoft had look good. The one thing Elop couldn't do was stick with the old Nokia way of doing things, it simply wasn't relevant in this time and age. The mistake Elop made was not in getting rid of Nokia's homegrown OS developments, it was in choosing Microsoft's developments to replace them.
Elop should have chosen to go with Android for the killer platform of the their OS with Nokia's hardware. Unfortunately for Nokia he went for the lethal platform of the Microsoft OS with Nokia's hardware. The result was the choosing of industry contacts that Elop had at Microsoft instead of going with Android and systematic destruction of billions of dollars in equity.
Elop can be counted on to make hard choices and get rid of losing platforms. Unfortunately he can also be counted on to make foolish choices to fill the void. Inevitably he will therefore be the next Microsoft CEO...
Elop said he will abandon Microsoft's failed attempt to create a modern operating system and simply bet the whole company on getting in bed with Nokia and use their Symbian operating system. Either that or Meego.
The long term strategy is that after the company craters, Nokia can purchase it for a song, and he can then be tapped to be CEO of Nokia.
He noted that this strategy has worked in the past. "Nokia's cratered stock price doubled after they sold me off of Microsoft, And I can confidently predict that after I crater microsoft, it's price will double when they sell me back to Nokia."
He also pointed out that essentially the same strategy was used by Gil Amelio when Apple abandoned it's OS developement and bought Steve's Jobs and his Next OS, shedding Gil in the process.
"it's proven. Buy another company's OS and bet on it. That's what I know how to do better than anyone."
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The XBox unit is profitable. The entire first generation of the XBox was financial lose, but in the last few years, the business finally started to make money.
Bing, not so much. Bing seems to be a dumping ground for Microsoft managers. Every year or so, there's a new management team at Bing. Their business strategy is "copy Google". To some extent, they have to - for a while, their ad system was completely different from Google's, and advertisers wouldn't bother to use it. Something like 80% of Bing users use Internet Explorer. Those are the people who don't know how to change the default search engine.
Google as the only major search engine, though, is scary. The remaining competition in web search is tiny in the US - IAC, InfoSeek, Yandex, and Baidu. (DuckDuckGo and Bleeko are resellers of Bing and Yandex, respectively.) With no competition, Google could charge much more for ads and become even more intrusive.
Evaluating Elop with respect to good/bad done to Nokia:
-Good: ditching Symbian
-Bad: Picking MS, the last place platform
-Bad: Focusing on higher end, North American market and neglecting Nokia's thriving global market.
Basically, the only measure by which Elop was 'good' would be microsoft's measurement of loyalty, willingness to sink his company for the sake of giving microsoft more of a chance.
Just imagine if Nokia had been the provider of things like Lumia 520 but with Android on it....
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Putting all your eggs in the Office camp seems very dangerous. Our office recently
migrated to openoffice and never looked back. I use google docs at home. Both
are currently weak and can only get better. Google has recently added office tools
to android. I see standalone high dollar office suites as a dying breed. I personally
would not double down on them. Same with high-end computer OSes, another one
of Microsoft's cash cows. If microsoft wants to exist in 20 years they need to be in
the tablet, smartphone, tv console, and other growing markets that continue to reduce
the need for a full blown desktop at home. I know a lot of people who no longer have
a desktop computer or see no need for one. This number will probably continue to
grow as tablets/smartphones and roku/xbox type devices continue to add features.
I wouldn't trust Elop to keep a popsicle frozen. He'd sell off the freezer to save on energy and make his only product, a popsicle, more profitable.
" whom would he work for now? Is google planning to buy microsoft? apple? the NSA?"
Yaaawwwn! I barf in your general direction for you lack of business acumen.
SCO, dammit! it has been SCO from the beginning!
let's make "Elop" a verb meaning to abandon a company's popular proven products in favor of an over-designed unusable system, which causes the company to lose sales
Look up the term 'Elop Effect', defined as what happens when you combine the Osborne Effect (making your current product appear obsolete by prematurely pre-announcing its successor) and the Ratner Effect (damaging sales by disparaging your own products).
Microsoft has a different problem: their older products are their own stiffest competition. Why will anyone buy Office 2016 when Office 2013 already does everything the typical consumer needs?
It used to be easy to sell new versions, because the old versions were buggy, bloated, hard to use, and missing a lot of useful features. But Microsoft has dramatically improved their quality. They've added piles of features. They've improved usability for the average John and Jane Does of the world. They've built a system that does everything the typical user needs. So their old free-ride path of "upgrade our old crap because you need to" is over, because it's no longer needed.
What they've since recognized is that their customers suck at owning computers. Most people don't make backups, they get viruses, they don't know how to manage a home system. So they are offering Office365 in the cloud to appeal to people to not have to care any more (for only $9.95/month). All John Doe has to do is remember his password, and everything else is taken care of for him. They can continue to offer token features and upgrades thrown into the price, but the real money of tomorrow will be made hosting people's data for them, not in the software. It's not the back-to-the-basics approach you advocate, but it's what they're betting will be their future.
John