Even if Stephen Elop, the chief executive officer of Nokia is not realising that his ‘Windows-friendly’ strategies are not working for the company, the shareholders have recognised the issue. The angry shareholders of the company have gone on record to say that Elop’s policies of keeping Nokia as a Windows-only operation are running the company into the ground.
According to a Reuters report, Nokia’s shareholder Hannu Virtanen told Elop, “You’re a nice guy … and the leadership team is doing its best, but clearly, it’s not enough. Are you aware that results are what matter? The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Please switch to another road.”
It is worth mentioning here that the shares of the company have come down from a mark of $60 to $3, ever since Elop has started banking on Windows platform. The troublesome times began when Elop revealed ‘Burning Platform’ memo to Nokia staff that warned of the vendor’s fundamental problems as he saw them. Two days later, Elop signed up Microsoft (his former employers) to provide an operating system for the Finnish handset maker.
Elop went ahead with the choice he made by saying, “We make adjustments as we go. But it’s very clear to us that in today’s war of ecosystems, we’ve made a very clear decision to focus on Windows Phone with our Lumia product line. And it is with that that we will compete with competitors like Samsung and Android.”
All this resulted in a steep downfall of the company and the last financial results of the company speak volumes about this fact. According to the balance sheets of the Finnish handset maker, the handset sales went down to nearly a third on the year. Magnus Rehle, senior partner in Greenwich Consulting, which advises telecom companies, said, “He’s managed to decrease costs but not to increase market share. Maybe they could go back to Google and say we also want to go with Android. Even if it hurts. Microsoft, they’ve had their chances, and are not managing to take off.”
Adding to it, Juha Varis, senior portfolio manager at Danske Capital, told Reuters, “He has closed doors. They don’t have new ideas now. Their fate is all in Windows Phones.”
