Stephen Elop's flop, his ego, and Nokia's eventual death.

While researching Android handset sales growth compared to its Google Trends search interest growth, I stumbled upon this article from Brightsideofnews over how Stephen Elop's handling of Nokia's transition and the decision to go with WP7 has meant the rapid demise of Nokia.

It was Stephen Elop's February 11 announcement of the end of Symbian that effectively killed the sales of Symbian in the sales channel. What Nokia has since seen, is a sales channel revolt, in effect a boycott of all Nokia phones, not just smartphones.

Microsoft's WP7 is so weak, that even though Microsoft has tried to kill off the older sibling, Windows Mobile for almost a year, WinMo still outsells WP7.

All existing Nokia senior managers know, that to offer Skype for carriers is tantamount to offering them a drink labeled as poison. And what is our clever little darling Stephen Elop now promising the world? That Microsoft’s new WP7 smartphones will include Skype.

Ouch.  It reads more like an opinion piece, but this brightsideofnews author (who also writes for the Motley Fool) does highlight the problems facing WP7 and Nokia, but specifically Nokia and Stephen Elop's flop of a transition.

In a different piece (on Nokia's ecosystem destruction) by the same author:

According to dozens of executives we spoke with, Nokia developers have abandoned Nokia's platforms and even more alarmingly, are not embracing Microsoft's WP7 ecosystem instead.

Bloomberg Business Week's podcast, "Nokia's Epic Fail" speaks with BBW's Peter Burrows, author of "Stephen Elop's Nokia Adventure".  In it, Burrows notes that, when trying to negotiate terms in meetings with Microsoft and then Google, Elop was unable to gain concessions from Google:

Elop later told the Salo employees that Google "acted like they'd already won. Apple and Android deserve some real competition."

Why this is important, is because it highlights the bruised ego.  Elop's decision may be on the surface, about how Microsoft was willing to give Nokia extremely favorable terms, but below it, if you read quotes from Elop, he's constantly disparaging Android, and it points to a basic enemy of our own making: our ego. 

Even value investors are abandoning Nokia, as both the brand loses steam and Nokia gets clobbered at the top and bottom mobile market sectors.  Android is rapidly securing the low-end phone market in Asia away from Nokia.

So what you have essentially, is app development abandonment, dumb and smart phone handset abandonment, and stock abandonment, signaling Nokia's eventual death.