A book written by two Finnish business journalists paints a negative picture of Nokia CEO Stephen Elop's impact on the company, but dismisses the suspicion that he had an "inside job."
The book "Operation Elop" by Pekka Nykanen and Merina Salminen was released in Finnish in Helsinki on Tuesday by Finnish publisher Teos.
the haughtiness developed within Nokia management, as well as other aspects of the telecommunications giant's corporate culture as the reasons for the downfall that took place after Canadian-born Stephen Elop became the first non-Finnish CEO of Nokia in September 2010.
According to the book, when Elop was starting at Nokia the sale of smart phones was on the increase.
The sale of Nokia mobile phones to Microsoft in 2013 was initially incomprehensible to the Finnish public. Given Elop had been recruited from Microsoft, he was soon labelled as a "Trojan horse" in Finland and his arrival was seen as a conspiracy.
But the book dismisses the theories about "a Microsoft conspiracy" saying only that Elop made mistakes.
The writers say unequivocally that Microsoft did not "smuggle" Elop to Nokia so that it could later purchase parts of the company cheaply, as it was not Elop who sold the mobile phones unit to Microsoft, but rather the board.
Nykanen and Salminen underline that it was not Elop alone who "killed the Nokia phones" but that obsession with costs, unclear responsibilities and wrong decisions taken by the Nokia board were also to blame.
The book highlights the initial opposition on the Nokia board to replace the Nokia-made Symbian platform with Windows as the only platform.
According to the book, Google had indicated in the negotiations that it wanted to bring Nokia to the Android camp. However, Nokia finally dropped Android as it became clear they would not get the much-needed cash from Google.
The writers remind readers that the market value of Nokia was 295,000 million euros (about 373,000 million U.S. dollars) the day before Stephen Elop started as CEO in 2010. When the handset production was sold to Microsoft the remaining value was 111,000 million, meaning a daily loss of 18 million euros under Elop's direction.
The book was written based on interviews with over 100 people, mostly former Nokia employees.
The publisher could not confirm any plans to make the book available in English or other languages.