An executive switches from company M to competitor N then abruptly throws much of N's development investment in the trash and signs a deal to license all of it from M instead, it smells funny.
I'm not saying anything actually is wrong, I don't know enough about it to care. But what I do see is Nokia being a big employer and part of national pride for Finland. This will likely become an issue in politics there.
They'd be wise not to lay off a single soul due to this deal at this point. Ironically, if Nokia really did need to trim R&D expenses, they may have more trouble doing it now.
Keep in mind the EU is still active in MS antitrust and users are offered the choice of Firefox when they install Windows. I would not want to be the guy who's name was attached to the sinking of Nokia at the advantage of Microsoft.
I am assuming the board talked about something like this happening - even directly with Elop - before hiring him. It's not like it's totally surprising.
I really wouldn't be surprised if the decision to shut down work on their own software platform had already been taken and he was hired and told to decide between Android or WP7 - with the expectation no doubt being that as he was from Microsoft he'd favor the latter.
The germ of this deal probably dates to the early days of WP7 development - seriously, Microsoft would have been negligent if they were not shopping for partners early on. For those deep inside the phone business, it probably has been a well known rumor for some time, which would explain the course taken by Motorola and HTC more plausibly than the corporate spite the article assumes.
But if the board wanted to consider switching to "someone else's platform", why would they hire someone from Microsoft?
Does this suggest that the board wanted to do a deal with Microsoft all along? If so, why would they need to hire him to do it?
Or that they didn't know what they wanted and this guy seized the initiative?
Edit: answering my own question. I think the board probably brought this guy in to take the heat in case this deal goes really bad from a PR and legal perspective.
It certainly surprised the Nokia staff. Wasn't it communicated inside the company? If so, why? I bet the answers to those questions are very interesting.
It's surprising to a degree, yes. But less surprising than if he was to announce, say, that Nokia is pivoting to become an oil company. He came from Microsoft on a rescue mission to a company where software was widely acknowledged to be the biggest problem.
Doesn't that pretty well describe the reasonably successful approach Apple used in moving to Mac OS X? Sure there are differences: Jobs was at Apple before; Apple bought Next; .... There are also similarities in that the MS/Nokia partnership represents a pivot from the current course that has no migration path other than total change.
nokia is a private company and is answerable to only its shareholders...there might be a backlash in Finland but any company that has to take or does take business decisions based on political/nationalistic considerations will find it hard to be competitive in the global economy
No, they're a publicly traded company answerable to their shareholders and the legal systems of Finland, the EU, and the US NYSE and SEC.
Any company that comprises a measurable percentage of a country's GDP and a big share of its exports had better take into account some political considerations.
I'm not saying anything actually is wrong, I don't know enough about it to care. But what I do see is Nokia being a big employer and part of national pride for Finland. This will likely become an issue in politics there.
They'd be wise not to lay off a single soul due to this deal at this point. Ironically, if Nokia really did need to trim R&D expenses, they may have more trouble doing it now.
Keep in mind the EU is still active in MS antitrust and users are offered the choice of Firefox when they install Windows. I would not want to be the guy who's name was attached to the sinking of Nokia at the advantage of Microsoft.