source: http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/ar...out/1297448140

Microsoft is the plague: Nokia stock drops 14% as 1,000 employees walk out

First Tunisia. Then Egypt. Now Nokia. The twittersphere is again afire with buzz about massive protests. They're not political this time, but the outcome could be just the same. Can Nokia CEO Stephen Elop survive the revolution?

Nokia employees aren't responding well to today's sweeping deal with Microsoft. They're mad, as they should be. A few hours ago I called the agreement, which swaps Symbian for Windows Phone as Nokia's primary mobile platform, a "silent takeover...If I were a Nokia employee or investor, I'd stage a revolt." Apparently employees and shareholders are doing just that.

Investors punished Nokia shares with a 14-percent decline. Meanwhile, about 1,000 employees walked off the job, using flexible work-hour plans to do so, apparently protesting Nokia's deal with Microsoft. There is plenty of Twitter buzz, unfortunately too much of it in Finnish (Hey, my second language was Latin, and I'm rusty at that). But the reaction I can read is absolutely chilling.

Nebil: "#Nokia RIP. #Microsoft will leach you out of your existence. Nokia bends to pick up the soap."

Turcu Ciprian: "I think #nokia did a big mistake. No offense #microsoft but Android would of been a better way to go if they wanted a slice of the cheese."

Rajinder Yadav: "#Nokia just added fuel to their man on a burning raft. They just killed the QT developer ecosystem today for MS and .NET"

Justine Devine: "I should start writing a case study now about how #Nokia put themselves out of business."

Tom Reestman: "I wonder if Elop thinks his 'relationship' w/ #Microsoft will keep him from getting screwed by them down the road?"

Dale Wilson: "Did #Microsoft send #Elop to #Nokia to stage a coup? Hmmm ... What do you think?"

Nick Robinson: "Has any other company ever scrapped the OS with the largest market share in favour of one with the smallest?"

Steven Frank: "A 20 year regime comes to an end after populist revolt."

Helge Reikeras: "#Nokia you are officially dead to me now."

Purnateja: "Why Did Stephen Elop decide to Elope with Microsoft?"

Stephen Elop and Steve Ballmer

The questions now to ask:

Has Elop gone too far to survive the wrath of Nokia employees, investors, customers, developers and partners?
Does he still own Microsoft stock (I haven't had time to yet check), which could raise reasonable questions about conflict of interest?
Was this all along a plan between Elop and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to gut Nokia's platform in exchange for Windows Phone?

Remember, Elop only went to Nokia in September, surprisingly giving up his cozy position as president of Microsoft's Business division. He's not only new chief executive but a foreigner -- a Canadian, giving an American company huge influence of one of Europe's oldest industrialists. These are all marks against Elop when tallying up the benefits (none that I see) from today's Microsoft deal.

Elop may have thought he was starting a revolution, by making so much dramatic change to Nokia. In the end, he may be the victim of a counter-revolution staged by Nokia employees, investors and loyalists. At the least there should be some official investigation into the ties that bind Nokia and Microsoft: A major Microsoft executive becoming Nokia CEO and then cutting a deal six months later that is hugely beneficial to his old company. Something stinks in Finland and also Washington state.

Let's all buy Nokia stock

Nokia is an european company, an american CEO can't predict that europeans don't only care about money and that they are going to fight for their own personal and country's interests.

MS has always been a shady company, maybe we can expect fines for this from the European Comission

http://www.cinchcast.com/scobleizer/170737
good listening

The problem with the windows idea, is that windows is very resource intensive in comparison to linux based OS, which can run in very light hardware, investors and CEO's don't seem to understand that physically this is where windows has always failed, in reality the MS windows phones are not much different then phones with other OS, except windows is no good for these hardware devices.

I'm quite sure if the windows mobile OS had potential, that we all would be trying it out.

The only positive thing i can think of such merger would be to kick windows oriented companies like vmware to start to release so much needed apps like VMware for mobiles, amongst others, all share holders oriented.

i don't know, the EU is no longer consumer oriented, the days when they did things for consumers are gone IMO, let me give you an example, exploration of public spaces. e.g. beaches, years ago for EU beaches to gain a blue flag, they had to meet certain EU conditions, e.g. water & beaches had to meet certain cleanness conditions, certain facilities need to be available, such as free drinking water, toilets, showers, etc... well since the EU became what is today, if you are sunbathing in the beach and need to go to a toilet, most likely you will need money in order to use what use be a public service...

Crooks are everywhere.

i think the fact that elop said 2011 and 2012 are going to be transition years for nokia has more to do with the stock price dropping than M$'s involvement.

face it, meego is not ready for primetime. nokia needs to protect its short term profits while developing meego. as much as i would love to hear them say "meego is the present and the future; we will put all of our resources behind meego" i am also not a nokia shareholder. they need tangible products in the market that can generate significant sales NOW regardless of what the future holds.

This must be the most ironic tweet on this Nokia-Microsoft debacle:

Spotted on @nokia channel:

@nokia Nokia by c_boyle
We completely agree #NokMsft RT @timbruni @nokia this deal combines Microsofts openess with Nokias innovation.

There you have it, we will get "Microsoft openess"

cfh11:
It's true that MeeGo isn't ready for prime time, but it will be at least as long to get WP7 ready for prime time _and_ adapted for Nokia phones (which, IIRC, still need to be built with the AFAIK required Intel CPU).

I think that it would have been less of a drop in stocks if they would have axed Symbian for rapid MeeGo evolution instead of selling their company out to a company that isn't known to do partnership that end up beneficial to both sides.

I still think that if it were short-term tangible products to sell that they were after they would just go with android. WP7 is not actually a selling point at the moment. If you wanted to enter an already developed ecosystem/OS. WP7 is not it. They've just replaced one developing ecosystem/OS for another developing ecosystem/OS. Nokia seems to be playing OS hopscotch.