Summary: journalist visits a Nokia software development site in Tampere, where everybody used to work on two mobile operating systems that Nokia is phasing out.

Understandably, these people are not particularly willing to admit that the software they spent years on wasn't good enough to keep up with Apple and Google, so the old conspiracy theory plops up: the Nokia CEO must be a "mole" who's intentionally driving the stock price down.

The root cause of this myopic idea is neatly summed up near the end of the article:

Linus Thorvalds, Linux’s Finnish founder, says that “Microsoft-hatred is a disease” among open source programmers, but in Tampere it’s more of an epidemic.

A mole is someone that is there undercover. Nokia's CEO is there in plain sight and has very strong connections to Microsoft, was brought in by the board to guide Nokia away from their homebrew stuff and onto Windows.

How could he possibly be a mole?

It is definitely noteworthy that the N9 and the N8, both examples of excellent hardware running competitive software, have basically been sandbagged by Nokia.

Contrast this with RIM, who just released a slew of stop-gap phones until QNX (BBX) is ready... but they still are promoting the hell out of those phones and are getting decent sales, keeping the company viable. And those aren't even world-beating phones.

Meantime, the N8 with its pentaband radio and Zeiss camera, and the N9 showing off the best of Meego, get no promotion at all... really does make you wonder. Microsoft-hatred might indeed be a disease, but Nokia threw out Symbian and Meego for an OS that is (for all its positive reviews) unproven.

Symbian Belle and Meego are definitely competitive options and offer a lot. Any tech site (engadget etc.) reviewing the N9 basically wound up mourning the premature death of Meego and wondering what might have been. In the case of the N8, the common assessment was it was stellar hardware with an OS that was almost there... well I think Belle pushed it over that line to being something competitive.

This is the same madness that Apotheker brought to HP, trashing established businesses just because they weren't sexy enough and then immediately trying to import the business model of the last company he worked at. I don't think Elop is a mole but he definitely has yet to do anything except destroy value at Nokia.

You can argue that Elop isn't a mole, but putting such neglect on the N9 is a true evidence that they don't want any platform built at Nokia (Symbian, MeeGo) to succeed.

Here's what the editor of GSMArena wrote in a recent post:

http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n9-review-659.php

"Not shown much love by its own maker, the Nokia N9 is embraced by the consumers. You won’t see Stephen Elop getting all too fired up about MeeGo and spending hours explaining how it’s the best thing since Santa, sauna and the N95. But if you care to look, you'll notice thousands of people hitting our site each day to just check out the Nokia N9."

One thing that all these ridiculous conspiracy theories miss is that Elop spent a very short time at MSFT - around 2 years. He seems to switch companies often, except for one long stint in Macromedia.

They are waiting for one year before takeover. There is some kind of rule designed to block takeovers that says the sale price must be determined from the maximum price of past year. I'm not sure Elop would walk alive from it though, Finns are pretty passionate about Nokia.

Shades of the incompetent Rick Belluzzo who destroyed SGI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Belluzzo

The decision that never made sense to me was going all-in on WP7 instead of diversifying across MeeGo, WP7 and Android.

When push comes to shove, getting Nokia to treat WP7 as a first-tier platform would have bought Microsoft just as big a win as Nokia going all-in. I'd argue it might even have been a bigger win because Nokia would look much less like a rudderless ship about to crash. Maybe Elop didn't negotiate hard enough, maybe he didn't have the vision, or maybe he was too influenced by his time at Microsoft. We'll probably never know.

As usual in Globalpost, attributing to malice what can be easily explained by stupidity. CEOs make dumb decisions every day without being anyone's mole.

Wasn't there a myth that Microsoft killed Commodore with a mole on the board?

at a conference i talked with some nokia devs, two funny stories.

1) the N9 (the meego phone) will never be released in an english speaking country as marketing fears the tech blogger will write even more crap about their strategy change - as it is a quiete decent phone

2) even though the code for the N9 they do not get any test devices, the code in a very rudimentary ide only, as there is a no Meego phone for devs anymore policy

on the other hamd, he was quiete drunk and frustrated so i do not know how mich of it is true

Note: the parking lot was probably deserted because there is currently an industry-wide labour union dispute that prohibits working overtime.

The article's picture is very well picked. It's as if they're talking to each other while covering their mouths.

Yes, he is, he's the trojan horse MS sent inside Nokia so they could "control" a large phone manufacturer.

yes

Better yet is this question:

MS value has decreased at least a 3rd since Ballmer got control..is Ballmer a mole ?

Same exact logic problems as the article..except mine has more flair and imagination

They're just fricking phones, why do we care so much about this?