Comment by nakedrobot2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nakedrobot2 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

On the subject of this tablet (too little, too late), there is a nagging question, that maybe someone could explain:

Why has there not been any criminal investigation at all, into the infiltration and acquisiton of Nokia?

1. Microsoft exec becomes CEO of Nokia

2. He bankrupts the company (burning platform memo, etc.)

(Not only does he bankrupt it, but in all the history of corporate business, this is one of the most spectacular flameouts ever...)

3. Microsoft buys Nokia for peanuts

I mean, wouldn't there at least be a bit of an investigation into this? The moment Elop became CEO, I had a suspicion that this was going to happen, and it did! I wouldn't say I'm particularly smart or well-informed - certainly everyone else saw it coming too....

(edit: clarified a couple points)

He got payed by Nokia board to drive it into the ground as part of his bonus.

So the board is to blame, he was just going after his bonus.

"Elop was entitled to immediate share price performance bonus in case of a “change of control” situation…"

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/24/nokia-payo...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/terokuittinen/2013/09/24/nokia-a...

2 and 3 are highly contentious. Nokia's mobile phone division was in huge trouble long before Elop showed up, and there is no indication that anything he did made it worse. And given the state Nokia was in, the deal they got from MS was extremely fair.

Nokia was 4 months away from shipping the "Lumia" running MeeGo when February 10th happened.

People were pretty angry.

Source: I was working there on the project at the time.

As a MeeGo fans since back when it was called Maemo (I even had an N810) I'm as sad as the next person to never get that phone. That being said I am not at all convinced that going with MeeGo over WP wouldn't have left Nokia in worse position than the one it ended up in.

Nokia had Qt+QML and the opportunity to take this cross-platform, plus an innovation advantage with Meego (no Java overhead) and patents. Now Microsoft is attempting to take C# cross-platform and open-source, after blocking Qt on Windows Phone. Years have been lost. Meanwhile Java chews up memory and courtroom time on Android.

There's still nothing on the market to compare with Nokia offline maps -- uses no data when travelling, does not send location history to OTT provider like Google or Apple.

The entire industry lost when Nokia imploded, especially Google and Apple, whose UI has stagnated, unless hard to read "thin fonts" count as innovation. Competition from Nokia Linux nee Meego (not to mention WebOS) would have been good for all parties.

I 100% agree with everything you say. I'm even one of those strange freaks that has a Nokia Lumia as my private phone and love Nokia Here maps. From a personal point of view I really wish Nokia had stuck with MeeGo until the bitter end, but Nokia had to look out for Nokia and I still can't blame Nokia for the choices they made.

Have you looked at sailfishOS? I think that's the modern descendant of maemo.

Yes and it's being produced with my ex-bosses and there is a working phone over at Jolla[0] I've not tried it though. :( I'd like to.

[0]http://jolla.com/

I have a nexus 5 and am replying to you from sailfish. The porters have done a great job.

Are there any problems with it? The port is still an alpha build, isn't it?

I have a Jolla, and it is simply amazing. Sailfish is a true touchscreen OS. I definitely recommend you try one if you can (at least in Finland, DNA stores might have them).

The box it comes in has a fingerprint pattern made out of the source code as decoration. It's a pretty cool design decision.

Looked at as in read about it? Sure. Looked at as in actually seen it on real hardware? Nope.

How certain are you that it would have shipped? Maemo had missed deadlines for years and never been in a mainstream product.

there was an ongoing joke in the company that they had "the most expensive clock application ever made" because they kept reinventing it.

but they would have shipped, the deadline was a _dead_line and the product was very close to completion.

the build-systems were finalised and we had started package version locks for builds of the software we were going to use on the distro.. it was very much final stages and polishing.

Here is a good article written around 2 years ago on how Nokia went from MeeGo to Windows Phone: http://taskumuro.com/artikkelit/the-story-of-nokia-meego

I've been wondering this for a long time myself. Even the fact that the company was steered away from Meego for (at the time) a less functional OS like Windows Phone (damned thing didn't have a twitter app and Meego came with one...) by an ex exec who could potentially benefit from the migration of Nokia's devices to Microsoft OS(if he had options).

Such a shame. Meego was revolutionary and is still imo the most intuitive OS ever made. If only someone reputable picked it up, as it still is revolutionary.

Android took the double tap to turn on and HTC Sense took the app cards but beyond that it still has an edge if it was around today.

Do you recall when Nokia corporate email was migrated to Exchange, and what was the prior system?

In a Hollywood movie script, after failure of internal reorgs, a company could be tanked with deniablity, speculators make $ shorting/bouncing the stock, sell shell to BigCo, retain brand, rebuild new company and new corporate culture. Only in the movies.

I miss Meego too. N9 is the best phone I've owned (even despite poor app selections).

Tried looking into Sailfish but it is a poor replica.

Why do you say it is a poor replica out of curiosity?

To be fair it (Windows Phone) didn't need a Twitter app. It is (and was, from launch) built into the OS.

Why has there not been any criminal investigation at all, into the infiltration and acquisiton of Nokia?

Who would you investigate and what crimes would you accuse them of?

The closest thing I'm coming up with is blaming the directors that hired the CEO for tanking shareholder value, but that's a civil matter. Being incompetent is not a crime unless you can prove fraud.

Tomi Ahonen has made a few lists..

edit for downvoters who don't know now to run a web search:

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/09/elop-25...

I upvoted you. Very detailed back story but I'm not clear where criminal charges against anyone would arise. What am I missing? Has evidence of purposeful fraud by the board members been uncovered since Sept 2013?

If there is evidence, it won't be on HN :) The point of the GP post was that there was no publicly visible investigation that even looked for evidence, not even from ambulance chasing lawyers.

With a large number of affected parties, naive and affected observers start asking questions. When the affected people are still griping years later, it may be wise for someone to at least pretend to investigate. Wouldn't want people to lose confidence in erstwhile institutions.

Alternatively, given how common "shareholder value" civil lawsuits from ambulance-chasing lawyers are, and how large the company and its fall were, if there was something to be uncovered, it would have been uncovered by now. The fact that it hasn't and the only things remaining are some butthurt and Something Should Be Done opinions suggests per Occam's razor that there's nothing there.

Yeah, that's been the official line for a few years - nothing to see here, move along.

The issue is not whether or not there was fraud. The issue is that some affected people still have not regained trust in the words and assurances of the leaders, and still cannot make sense of the outcome.

Into cracks of distrust fall the seeds of unpredictable change.

I had the exact same thing and also, after Microsoft buys Nokia, Elop became Microsoft's Vice President of Microsoft's Devices & Services... It's like it was meant to be :)

He also received quite a bonus after selling Nokia

> He also received quite a bonus after selling Nokia

He achieved what he was hired for. Sadly

Have you read this article on Business Week?

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_24/b42320567...

Talks about Nokia's strategy and it does look like there was buy-in on the decision from management and the board.

Also, they had hired a Strategy House - can't remember which (either BCG or Bain) to bolster their conclusions. Am sure there were agreements and Elop wasn't a one-man army.

Which country would investigate?

Finland or EU (not a country (yet?), I know), of course. Nokia was a Finnish asset and EU should be looking into these deals to begin with.

Yes like when Europe fights against Mittal when they close profitable steel factories or screw them with no investments and R&D, oh wait.

Sadly it no longer is enough to be profitable, you also have to make enough profit (~20% in the banking sector), which is why Thyssen decided to focus on high technology steel products, instead of competing with India/China on price.

And your point is what exactly?

That the EU commission approved the MS / Nokia deal and usually don't do anything to protect these business practices.

Exactly! and whose loss is it?

Small Chinese/Indian companies come out with multiple Android models every year. Was it so hard for Nokia to do the same under Elop, and put eggs in more than one basket?

I thought it was already established that "megacorporations" are above the law of any country.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com