Talk:Stephen Elop

Sentence needs rewrite

"Given the situation, and in the context of Motorola Mobility's purchase by Google on August 2011, Elop faced increasing scrutiny initially led by industry analyst and former Nokia executive Tomi Ahonen,[23][24] but achieving increasing acceptance by other commentators and analysts that Elop was not able to run Nokia."

I would rewrite it myself, but I can't even figure out what the sentence is trying to say. 67.128.198.190 (talk) 22:36, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Review needed

Hi there, it's Katherine from Nokia. There have been some edits made to the page today which it would be great if you could review. These edits lack a neutral point of view, do not contain original research, and are missing citations.

1) Please review the following, which has been added to the Career section, and which I recommend you consider for reversion:

"Elop's tenure at Nokia is seen as a comprehensive failure by every measure. His attempts to sell loss-making NokiaSiemens Networking unit failed. His new strategy for the highly profitable handsets unit failed and pushed that unit to report massive losses. Nokia lost its market leading positions in smartphones and in overall handsets, both to Samsung. He was unable to turn the last remaining unit, mapping to meaningful profits. During Elop's tenure Nokia Corporation went from steady profits to consecutive losses, Nokia revenues were cut to half, Nokia's 12 Billion Euro cash reserves were depleted, Nokia credit rating collapsed from AA+ to junk, Nokia fell out of the top 10 strongest brands, and Nokia share price fell 70% in value. Elop was removed from his post as CEO on 3 September 2013, when Nokia announced it is forced to sell the handset unit to Microsoft for €3.79 billion ($4.99 billion at the time of the transaction)."

Could you consider reverting this for the following reasons: There are clearly opinions presented here which are stated as fact and no sources provided for the statements made. The language, too, cannot be considered neutral, for example, suggesting Elop was "removed from his post" and that Nokia announced it was "forced to sell the handset unit" is not only impartial but also inaccurate.

2) The following added to the "Burning Platform" and Windows Phone strategy section also presents opinion as if it were fact and fails to cite a reliable source. I’d therefore suggest we consider removing this addition to keep the article objective:

"The early Lumia series had the worst reception of new Nokia phones and were plagued by bugs and software problems, which were eventually collected into a listing of 101 faults.[ http://my-symbian.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=44034 101 Faults in Lumia (since updated to 125)] The Lumia series experienced immediate collapse of customer demand and Nokia resorted to a series of price cuts to try to bolster sagging sales, that further damaged Nokia smartphone profitability."

3) Finally, the language in the final sentence added to the "Burning Platform" and Windows Phone strategy section, "Elop thus had a contract that would reward him more for behaving like a Trojan Horse on behalf of Microsoft, than his bonuses for acting responsibly as a Nokia CEO," also lacks a neutral point of view, relies on opinion, and draws conclusions beyond the cited source of the previous sentence. Again, this is threatening the neutrality of the article and therefore should be considered for removal.

Thanks for taking the time to consider these points. Katherineatnokia (talk) 17:55, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Thank you again for raising these. I have made some revisions to the article, which should address these three points, among others. Tempers are running high regarding the situation around the acquisition, and editors must bear in mind the five pillars of Wikipedia. Especially, editors should pay attention to the biographies of living persons policy, which applies here and requires exceptionally good sourcing, zero tolerance of original research etc.

Also, I know that some of the text that User:Tomi T Ahonen added, and which was subsequently reverted for lack of sources, is true, and could be easily sourced. But please try to ask, what of this information is relevant to an article about Stephen Elop, and how could you present it neutrally? In a blog, one can write one's own opinions freely, but an opinionated style is not suitable in an encyclopedia, where we strive to build good, neutral articles. Thanks, hydrox (talk) 19:46, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

eFlop/Eflop

A very often used nickname for Elop (especially under (ex)Nokia employees and Finns) is eflop. The use seems to be widespread enough to have google suggest you are actually looking for Elop. No idea if this is actually worth adding.

https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=eFlop

Highlighting some of the first entries to show how widespread this is:

• "Onko Stephen Elop pelle nimeltä eFlop - Pyllykirja" (Is Stephen Elop a clown named eFlop?)
• eflop in Lapland - Forum di Finanzaonline.com : Financial discussions in Italian about Elop — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.157.27.2 (talk) 15:01, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Market share

Hi there, it's Katherine from Nokia. I wanted to make a recommendation with regards to the last sentence in Elop's biography where Nokia's market share is characterized. The sentence reads: "As of June 2013, Nokia's mobile phone market share had fallen from 23.4% to 14.8%, their smartphone market share gone from 11.7% to 8.8%,and their stock value dropped by 85% since Elop's takeover."

It's fair to say the entire industry has undergone a period of disruption since the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. Nokia was affected by these industry trends, but it's important to realize the broader picture. Sales of Nokia Lumia smartphones are growing, and analysts have reported that the Windows Phone OS (buoyed by Lumia sales) is now in the third-place spot. Therefore, without changing the current sentence, I would suggest adding to it:

"Yet, sales of Nokia's Lumia line of smartphones increased by 32% quarter-on-quarter to 7.4 million during the second quarter of 2013, overtaking sales of Blackberry devices for the first time." SOURCES: http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/18/4534266/nokia-lumia-vs-blackberry-sales-q2-2013 / http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/nokia-lumia-sales-windows-phone-122254 / http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-07/business/41155227_1_smartphone-market-ramon-llamas-new-iphone Katherineatnokia (talk) 17:53, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

→→→→→→→This is very nice marketing talk, since actually the overtaking was rather due to Blackberry sales collapsing than Lumia sales increasing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.157.27.2 (talk) 14:48, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Hey Katherine or whatever your real name is, Wikipedia is supposed to be a source of information not propagandha. For instance, an information would be to say that Elop and Microsoft have been preparing this for long time, proposing large share of Microsoft stocks to the Nokia heads so that they would let him in easily 3 years ago. Also, that ever since he has come to Nokia, his strategy was to lower the value of Nokia so that Microsoft could buy the price of a Peckham Kebab shop while in the meanwhile his own share in Nokia went from 1.2 to 1.7 billions euro in one night after the announcement of the sale. For instance, who knows about the MeeGo OS? But this info can only be found in all Finnish newspapers so is it reliable compared to what you say, Katherine from Nokia PR dpt. You may feel in my words that I am not really objective on this issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.115.118.47 (talk) 05:00, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

"Rumors arose"

Hi there, this is Katherine Hallen, a member of Nokia’s global communications team. I’m new to the Wikipedia community and look forward to learning from other volunteers. I’m here to contribute information that will help improve the quality of Nokia-related pages. You’ll see me from time to time on the Talk pages, but I won’t be directly editing any Nokia-related pages because of the obvious conflict of interest. To be clear, I also know the Wikipedia policies and guidelines – they’re in place for a reason, and I respect them.

Like you, I’m interested in material that’s objective, accurate and neutral. So I wanted to bring to your attention a sentence in Stephen Elop’s biography that needs your review.

Please take a look at this sentence: “Given the situation, and in the context of Motorola Mobility's purchase by Google on August 2011, rumors arose that Elop could be a trojan horse by Microsoft who sought to lower Nokia's stock to make way for a cheap purchase by the software giant. When confronted with it, Elop denied the speculations.”

This information is attributed to a February 13, 2011, post from Business Insider ( http://www.businessinsider.com/nokia-ceo-elop-denies-being-trojan-horse-for-microsoft-2011-2 ). I recommend this sentence be removed for the following reasons:

1 – As Business Insider reports, after a Nokia press conference at Mobile World Congress in February 2011, “somebody in the audience yelled” to Elop if he was a Trojan horse ( http://www.businessinsider.com/nokia-ceo-elop-denies-being-trojan-horse-for-microsoft-2011-2 ) Engadget, who originally reported the question on its live blog from the event, refers to the questioner as “some dude.” ( http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/13/live-from-an-evening-with-nokia-at-mwc-2011/ ) It’s not clear if this anonymous person was even a journalist. Regardless, it is misleading to say that “rumors arose” after a single isolated incident.

2 – The sentence goes on to say that these rumors were attributed to specific actions by another company (Microsoft) to acquire Nokia, but the Business Insider article does not say anything about this either. Indeed, subsequent coverage by the Business Insider reported Nokia denied the rumors as “baseless” and acknowledged, “the source of the rumors is pretty sketchy.” ( http://www.businessinsider.com/nokia-denies-microsoft-deal-2011-6 )

3 – Google announced an agreement ( http://investor.google.com/releases/2011/0815.html ) to acquire Motorola Mobility on August 15, 2011, 7 months after the Business Insider piece ran, thus the rationale offered by this sentence is also misleading.

Thanks for allowing me to raise this issue. If you would like to contact me directly, please feel free to leave a message on my talk page. Katherineatnokia (talk) 15:53, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Removed altogether, thanks for pointing this out. Although I do not think that the "Elop as a trojan horse" conspiracy theory is attributable to a single heckler at MWC 2011, those theories do not seem to have been ever seriously covered by any reputable sources in-depth based on a quick Google search. Also, for the most part what was attested in that sentence was not even based on the Business Insider article to start with. --hydrox (talk) 17:43, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Hydrox, thanks so much for the review and additional research. Best, KH Katherineatnokia (talk) 05:49, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

There being rumors about Elop being a trojan are as true as it can get. Restored that, hopefully with enough sources, which include Tomi Ahonen, regarded by Forbes to be within the top 10 most influencing people in tech press. Also detailed the anonymous nature of the person who confronted Elop in MWC. Hope you people feel this is fair enough. --uKER (talk) 22:05, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi there, it’s Katherine from Nokia. I’ve studied Wikipedia’s policy on biographies of living persons, and it’s my interpretation that we need to be very careful including rumors in these profiles especially if the rumors are mainly fueled by a single analyst. So, it's still my recommendation to remove the paragraph in question. That said, allow me to suggest some additional information that will help neutralize the paragraph by sharing Elop's response to the question asked by the anonymous person at MWC 2011 (as reported by tech journalist Tom Warren). Suggest we edit the paragraph to read:

“When confronted with it by an anonymous attendee at the 2011 Mobile World Congress, Elop directly denied the speculation stating, ‘The obvious answer is, no. But however, I am very sensitive to the perception and awkwardness of that situation. We made sure that the entire management team was involved in the process…everyone on the management team believed this was the right decision,’ referring to Nokia’s adopting Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system. SOURCE: http://www.winrumors.com/nokia-employees-still-worried-that-elop-is-a-microsoft-mole/ Katherineatnokia (talk) 15:06, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough. I'm adding it. --uKER (talk) 16:00, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

So does this section still read the same after the recent announcements re Elop's stepping down as Nokia CEO to move back to Microsoft to head up their devices program, followed by several senior Nokia staffers and Microsoft's pending acquisition of large chunks of Nokia? 24.52.221.253 (talk) 05:24, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

(Unsectioned commentary)

A big risk for Mr. Elop. It will be a real breakthrough if he achieves results at Nokia.

I'm afraid in a few years the article will have to be amended with "was responsible for Nokia's demise as a mobile phone vendor" -- I've watched/spoke to/knew quite a few Microsoft brainwashed people, and being able to tell the truth wan't amongst their acquired (or preserved) skills. --Gvy (talk) 22:50, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

(2 User:Hydrox) Well, the NOK stock already dove, and customers started saying goodbye our nokia. Someone will buy from yet another handset vendor but the Nokia we knew (and paid extra for) is apparently no more. --Gvy (talk) 11:01, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, its so sad that Microsoft destroyed Nokia. With Android they would sell phones like hell...but now they're going down the Elop. 178.197.225.174 (talk) 10:34, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Elop pronunciation?

Wikipedia:IPA for "Elop" would be a useful addition to the article. Mike Linksvayer (talk) 20:42, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

It's pronounced "ee-lop" like the letter e, then "lop" like "lop off a couple of inches". How do I know? He is my neighbor. 209.20.131.214 (talk) 03:13, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone know where the name comes from? Words ending with p are for some reason very uncommon in every language I know about.--128.214.182.110 (talk) 12:34, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

For an Ukrainian- and Polish-speaker it is rather obvious that it might be modified Polish "jełop", which was borrowed from Ukrainian "йолоп", which, in its turn, was borrowed from Tartarian. It means "gawk", "dope", "mutt". And it is well-known fact that Canada has significant immigration from Poland. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.198.116.5 (talk) 13:38, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Investments

I wanted to note the following

As of 2011 Elop is the 8th largest individual shareholder in Microsoft.

It doesn't really fit well under careers, perhaps an investment section would be appropriate? That he owns 130,026 shares in Microsoft worth an estimated 3.18 Million seems worth mentioning. -- Horkana (talk) 15:53, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Jew?

Is he jewish? 87.101.224.234 (talk) 10:39, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Elop Effect

It might be a bit early, but assuming the term Elop Effect becomes common it might be reasonable to add to article. See Coining Term: "Elop Effect" when you combine Osborne Effect and Ratner Effect and Too Soon To Christen Elop’s Legacy — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.90.76.130 (talk) 13:55, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Still, not enough to justify coverage by reliable sources, and thus not encyclopediaworthy. --hydrox (talk) 23:29, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree. It's still too early to start writing about Elop Effect. But I acknowledge that it has the potential to become well known thing. Situation within and outside Nokia is still on going and we don't know what happens if Nokia is able to meet its promises and pushes the WP7 devices out to the world. Elop has done serious mistakes but also has done good things too. Its probably only after his time as Nokia leader has ended, we can write properly about these issues (both the good and the bad). --Mikitei (talk) 10:19, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Nokia is meanwhile down to ~8% world-wide marketshare, Symbian is crashing (after the EOL announcement) and Lumia selling rather bad. Maybe still to early but we could try to come up with a section about the Osborn-effect that hits Symbian and lead to billion quarter-loses and dramatic lose of marketshare? I think it has relevance cause Symbian was till that announcement the market-leading mobile OS and lost huge ground till then. Even Bada is performing better today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.37.215.44 (talk) 07:34, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Meanwhile Nokia has only enough cash left for one year till bankrupt. Symbian sells crashed future (but still outperform Windows Phone Lumia sells). Nokia fall down to number 10 smartphone maker with tendency to fall future. Within the 2 years Mr. Elop is in charge Nokia lost huge. The consequences of management strategy, executiin and communication errors are rather visible. Currently the article only deals with the "burning platform memo". We should try to proper extend it I think. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.248.169.13 (talk) 06:08, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Chronological Career Request

I expect a career section to read chronologically. The current reverse-chronological style belongs in a CV not an article. Can someone who has time please sort it out so we can actually read about the progression of his career? Would appreciate it. 49.198.6.249 (talk) 03:17, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

 Done, but not very well. If someone could clean it up a little bit more, that would be great. Cheers! pluma Ø 03:27, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Appreciated. 58.175.247.6 (talk) 01:24, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad it works. You should get a Wikipedia account. pluma Ø 03:09, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Smart decision?

I'm reading the article and can't see the answer to one important question. WHY moving from Symbian to Windows Phone is such a smart move. As far as I know Symbian held roughly 48% of the smartphone sales. WP held about 9%. So WHY is it so smart to move from the former to the latter? Im my humble opinion it's as difficult to imagine as Microsoft somewhere in 1999 suddenly moving over to an Apple OS. Or Intel of the same period suddenly stopping their successful processors and moving to AMD. Could someone explain? Nomad (talk) 02:59, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Symbian is generally considered antiquated technology. By Q4 2010 it was clear that Android would soon surpass Symbian sales, and customers following the smartphone market had known for several years that iOS and Android had superior user experience to Symbian. Several Nokia exec's from that time have said that Nokia was in serious negotiations with Google to choose Android as Nokia's new smartphone platform, but in the end WP7 pulled the longest straw.

So Symbian was ditched because it was a sinking ship, or in the words of Elop himself, "a burning platform."--hydrox (talk) 20:45, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, I can understand that. But, again the analogy, if Microsoft stayed with Windows 3.11, they'd now be suprassed by someone else. Why not develop a new OS? Nokia isn't a tiny garage repair shop, they are a huge and quite rich company. But this is most likely a rhetorical question. :-) It all just seems terribly suspicious. This Elop guy has always worked for the companies that got sold to someone else as soon as he arrived. Thank you for the explanation Hydrox.Nomad (talk) 10:33, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Nokia has never developed much of a software. It is a manufacturing industry oriented corporation, that traces its roots to early industrial tsarist Finland. Nokia has excelled in industrial design, logistics and outsourcing, but never in making software (unless you consider Snake a masterpiece of SW engineering ;). Symbian too was originally developed by Nokia's competitor in the 1990s, and Nokia's only technically successful "homebrewed" smartphone platform (Maemo) was an open source project. Considering that Nokia has neither the infrastructure, expertise nor suitable corporate culture to develop a competitive operating system in-house, deepening their long-running partnership with Microsoft was a well-thought move. --hydrox (talk) 19:21, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

But Android is based on open source too! (Mac OS X and IOS have their roots in BSD) And Maemo (MeeGo) is a nice and fully developed smartphone OS as the N9 proofs! (and Qt is also an extremely good development platform). No, it totally does not make any sense. Martin.uecker (talk) 08:18, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not 9% WP7 has but ~1% according to Gartner (http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/gartner-windows-phone-market-share-crashes/16279). Replacing your own market-leading Software with something that has a ~1% market-share and is fully controlled by someone else just does not make any sense to me either. According to different sources Nokia sold 500.000 - 1.000.000 WP7 in Q4 2011 (Bernstein Research http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/nokia-windows-phone-sales-set-to-disappoint-1042773) (WP7 vs Lumina sales http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/01/how-many-lumia-sales-as-nokia-and-microsoft-ashamed-to-reveal-number-lets-count-and-compare-to-n9-me.html) (Lumina Sales http://www.thesybergroup.com/tag/nokia-lumina-sales). That means 3-5% of all the phones they sold in Q4 2011 where WP7-powered phones while 95%, so the clear majority, is still based upon Symbian. No, it just does not make any sense to me either.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.37.215.203 (talk) 10:44, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

You wrote that Nokia was not doing software and yet they made Symbian, lots of applications, Nokia maps, Ovi store and Meego. How does that work together? As reminder: Symbian was the market-leading OS for a whole decade and had a huge eco-system. That this is no more was a strategical decision made by management and not a failure to produce selling software for there devices. That Nokia is still able to do software is proven lately with the award-winning Nokia Pureview. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 36.37.215.44 (talk) 08:26, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Vandalism

I've corrected some, but this page has been heavily vandalised. There are a lot of facts stated here that need check, for example apparently Elop was president of Adobe. Someone has replaced names with other people in the mobile industry to make it more believable.81.108.208.139 (talk) 18:26, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

The page had been vandalized, but it's now been undone. For future reference, it's easy to remove vandalism by reviewing the page's revision history, and identifying the edits by the usually single user who has made unhelpful contributions. Also, Elop has been with Adobe before Microsoft (ref) --hydrox (talk) 18:41, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Law say Profit

According to Finnish law company has to make profit to its owners i.e. the deal and the director bonuses have to be profitable to owners to be legal. [1]

REF: Finnish law: [2] Osakeyhtiölaki 5 §: Toiminnan tarkoitus, Yhtiön toiminnan tarkoituksena on tuottaa voittoa osakkeenomistajille, jollei yhtiöjärjestyksessä määrätä toisin Watti Renew (talk) 16:59, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

You are apparently referring to how I reverted your addition "According to Finnish law company has to make profit to its owners i.e. the deal and the director bonuses have to be profitable to owners to be legal."

I am not questioning what is written in the law. My problem is that I think you are reaching an original synthesis. Because Wikipedia is not just an assortment of random facts, what you wrote in this context seems to imply that you are questioning if the compensation was legal or not. It is a Wikipedia's core policy that editors are not allowed to add their personal opinions to the articles. Specifically, your addition seems to be an original synthesis of two sources: the law, and the source which said that Elop received a sizeable, controversial bonus.

Combining these facts in the article in this manner hints that the deal might have been illegal. However, this concern (legality of the deal) has not been raised by any source, and therefore can not be accepted to Wikipedia, because all facts in Wikipedia, especially those likely to be challenged, must be sourced to reliable third party sources. We can and should not accept conclusions by our own editors as such to the articles.

That is to say, I would be thrilled to see an expert source making a legal analysis of the bonus paid. What we have now seems to be just a layman combining random facts to reach his own conclusions. --hydrox (talk) 18:04, 26 September 2013 (UTC)