Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Passes More of Its Executives to the MSBBC. What About Nokia?

Mobile phone



Summary: The known dangers of entryism are revisited now that Microsoft has another manager put inside the BBC and Nokia's CEO gets thrown out, only to be replaced by a Microsoft president

NOKIA is in trouble. It's not just because it fell behind the competition but it's also because it's falling into Microsoft's hands.



Consider a discussion we had in one IRC channel last night, where FurnaceBoy said: "remember Microsoft is a cult... I am sure they ensure that there is 'personal' lock-in, especially for those who reach higher levels"

“[R]emember Microsoft is a cult... I am sure they ensure that there is 'personal' lock-in, especially for those who reach higher levels”
      --FurnaceBoy
Even a European government delegate acknowledged that Microsoft was working like a cult and he compared it to "Scientology".

Once a Microsoft executive was made the CEO of VMware (after ugly ousting of the company's founders) he appointed several fellow Microsoft executives to occupy top seats in VMware. He surrounded himself by former Microsoft colleagues. It's quite a case study. The BBC is also a famous target of entryism, which is why we call it "MSBBC", always accompanying these claims with evidence [1, 2, 3]. Only some days ago the following was published by The Register:

The cross-pollination of Microsoft and the BBC's iPlayer continued yesterday, with Auntie confirming it had hired Redmond's IPTV platform Mediaroom and Zune wonk.

[...]

“The BBC iPlayer has been a great success, and as video and audio-on-demand comes of age we want to stay ahead of our audiences’ expectations by developing and delivering world-class products," said BBC future media and technology boss Erik Huggers.

Danker's first day at the new job starts on 20 September.

The Beeb's previous FMT boss, Ashley Highfield, took up a post with Microsoft UK as its consumer and online veep in late 2008. Immediately prior to that he had been - for four months only - in charge of the doomed web TV joint venture Project Kangaroo.


Erik Huggers is also from Microsoft. The BBC is occupied by so many former Microsoft employees [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], but a lot of people who trust the BBC just don't pay attention to it. It's hard to keep track of all the names.

This brings us to the main concern that we have. It's about Nokia, which has Qt, Maemo/MeeGo, and several other projects that are Free software. Nokia's new CEO comes from Microsoft (the previous one is said to have been ousted/fired) and Microsoft's reaction seems to suggest that they will use him inside Nokia and shareholders of Nokia will just let it be. Steve Ballmer makes it sounds like Elop will still work for him, only more remotely. No chairs are reported to have been thrown and why would any be thrown? To Microsoft, this is potentially a strategically sound development. Here's why.

“If Microsoft cannot compete, why not take over a company that can?”Nokia is about to release some new phones, but it is not yet entirely committed to Linux. It's still mostly Symbian based.

Now that Vista Phone 7 [sic] appears like a dead end and all Microsoft can do is engage in patent attacks and offensive publicity stunts like mock funerals [1, 2], it simply cannot compete. As The Register put it the other day, "Samsung is focus on Android and Bada for its smartphones after claiming there is no demand for Symbian phones and only "specialised" demand for Windows Phone 7." The word "niche" may be analogous to "specialised" here.

Microsoft is a no-starter in the mobile space whilst "Global Phone Sales Keep Climbing," according to some of the latest reports. If Microsoft cannot compete, why not take over a company that can? Yesterday in the IRC channels we had long debates about it (mainly but not only in #techrights). What would Elop do with/to Nokia's Free software projects? One must remember that this man was competing against Linux for years (Linux is a #1 threat to Microsoft, as a platform, not a company). Nokia could still prioritise differently because, as the N8 helps show, Nokia is not entirely committed to Linux just yet. It was definitely going to (after the N8), but can Microsoft stop that from happening? Nokia is already selling/marketing Windows netbooks and increasingly some other Microsoft products. What would conceivably happen then? Consider the following:

But, the strength of Nokia's brand, combined with its alliance to provide Microsoft Office Mobile on Nokia mobile devices, and its partnership with Intel on the Meego mobile OS platform provide Elop with all of the elements needed to compete more aggressively and be a smartphone contender.


"Hiring Microsoft's Elop Won't Erase Nokia's U.S. Woes" says one headline and another article provides background of Elop's career (he only joined Microsoft in January 2008):

He was Macromedia's president and CEO before it was subsequently bought in 2005 by Adobe Systems where, for a short time, he held the role of global sales head. Elop then jumped ship for a job at Juniper Networks where he quickly became the company's COO before heading to Redmond two and half years ago.


Juniper itself is now headed by a load of former Microsoft executives [1, 2, 3]. Here is an article from May where Elop explained why he joined Microsoft (more here for context):

He joined the company in January 2008 from Juniper Networks, where he was chief operating officer. He spoke with Forbes National Editor Quentin Hardy about a key deciding factor in joining Microsoft.

[...]

Stephen Elop: Just over two years ago I got a call from Steve Ballmer offering me an important job at Microsoft, in Redmond [Washington]. I came to the conclusion that for the sake of my family--I have five children--it was not the right time to move them. They had recently moved before.


Maybe it's not any enthusiasm for Microsoft that brought him there after all. Let us hope that he does a good job at Nokia and hopefully withdraws the company's bad policy regarding software patents and DRM. Maybe he deserves the benefit of the doubt -- for now.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025
Richard Stallman (RMS) Was Right About "Sideloading" in 1996
We now have computers that treat booting GNU/Linux like an act of "Sideloading"
Panama: Windows Down From 97% "Market Share" to Less Than 30%
In 2009, Windows was measured at 97.24% (compared to 62.32% right now or less than 30% if one also counts Android)
The UEFI 9/11 - Part I - Introduction to Impending Catastrophe (Microsoft Preventing People From Booting Non-Windows Systems)
eight-part series
Why Techrights is Slow Today (Bot Floods)
We don't know if those bots are connected to LLMs (we have not checked), but that is a possibility
Slopwatch: DDoS Slop, LinuxBSDos.com Spam, and Slopfarms in Google News, Including webpronews.com
Among the news we also found fakes, albeit not so much today
Links 26/08/2025: "Ballooning Debt" in France and "Transnational Repression in the UK"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/08/2025: Listening to Alcest and Google Doing Evil (Users Installing Software is "Sideloading" and Prohibited)
Links for the day
Links 26/08/2025: DNS Tampering and TikTok Layoffs
Links for the day
Microsoft's Windows "Market Share" Overestimated
Microsoft's income sources are shrinking
We Shall See...
My wife and I are hardly the first victims of Brett Wilson LLP
This New Determination on a Case Echoes the Modus Operandi of Microsoft's Serial Strangler vs Techrights (Its Online Decision/Judgment Says Truth and Public Interest Defend the Publisher)
Noel Anthony Clarke hopefully has enough money left to pay his victims, which include the publishers
Going Offline
There was life before the Net
The Register MS Has Apparently Shut Down Its Office
It is basically a fake address on the face of it
There Are Also Expectations of IBM Layoffs Very Soon With "Narrative Control."
Some of them mention Red Hat and how IBM failed to achieve anything substantial with that acquisition
After at Least Two Rounds of Mass Layoffs in August Microsoft Said to Have "September Layoff Confirmed - Performance Based"
Those "M5 level meetings" sound plausible
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 25, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 25, 2025