02.14.11
Gemini version available ♊︎Calls for Lawsuits Against Microsoft’s Elop for Conflict of Interest; Billions in ‘Bribe’ Involved
“Where are we on this Jihad [against Linux at Intel]?”
Summary: Microsoft is said to have sold just over 366,099 Vista Phony 7 devices and the Vista Phony 7 deal with Nokia may be reversible (following legal action)
DUE to the heavy load of existing coverage about Nokia, we have only published a couple of posts on the subject [1, 2] and gathered the rest in our daily links. There are a few issues worth bringing up separately.
First of all, watch this new video where Stephen Elop chants “developers, developers, developers”, just like his boss Stephen Ballmer. Amazing, eh? Now, watch this video which a reader sent to us by E-mail a few hours ago:
The deal with Microsoft seems like black humour, but Elop is serious about it. “Nokia isn’t Elop’s first victim,” gnufreex explains as he links to this complaint. The “Fin[nish] media is calling for legal action against Elop,” he adds. The article is in Finnish, just like this article which states that Elop does not own any Nokia shares. Fair enough, right? But wait. Elop does have some shares, but not in the company which he actually works for. As gnufreex put it: “Look at “Top 10 Other Holders: MSFT” http://ur1.ca/38ae1 Elop (Stephen A) 130,026 3.18 M”
“Elop does have some shares, but not in the company which he actually works for.”So whose wallet is Elop in? Rupert from ZDNet UK writes: “Interesting finance fact: Stephen A Elop is Microsoft’s 7th-largest individual shareholder” (to which Glyn Moody responds with “well, well”).
In addition, gnufreex wrote: “Probably double shareholders think that MSFT gain would be bigger than Nokia’s loss.” While we cannot verify these claims, this type of question was asked publicly and Nokia returned the usual excuses. “It seems that few largest Nokia shareholders are US based and are also MSFT shareholders. A clever scheme by MSFT,” added gnufreex. Again, these claims need verification, but we do know that Novell’s board, for example, had been poisoned by Microsoft cronies before it sold out to Microsoft. We have this documented. The same thing happened with Yahoo!
Since Microsoft is dead in mobile it seems to have decided to operate like some kind of a cult which relies on entryism now. Based on Microsoft Watch, “Microsoft’s Windows Phone Consumer Sales May Be 366,099+” (article is from 2.5 weeks ago):
Meanwhile, a Facebook page for the Windows Phone application has 366,099 monthly active users. I asked Microsoft if this was the official page for the smartphone platform’s Facebook application, and they declined to offer an answer. But given how at least one of the people listed on the page’s “About the Developers” section works for Microsoft, I heavily suspect that’s the case.
MeegoPortal writes: “Msft has proven again they can’t meet schedules with WP7′s update (pushed back 2 month) how does it improve #Nokia devices time to market?” It’s not supposed to make sense, it’s just supposed to make Ballmer’s place at Microsoft more secure.
It is now being reported — based on a question and answer — that Microsoft is wasting even more money on Vista Phony 7. Nokia was foolish enough to fall into Microsoft’s arms (probably an HR mistake), but it’s said to have received billions of dollars to make this suicidal move (also glued here by IDG):
He referred to a slide that Nokia displayed last week that showed marketing and other investments flowing from Microsoft to Nokia as part of the deal. While speculation has had that number in the millions or tens of millions, it’s more than that, he said. “In fact the value transferred to Nokia is measured in B’s not M’s,” he said.
There is more here:
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop implied Sunday that his company would receive billions of dollars in incentives from Microsoft for agreeing to make Windows Phone 7 the primary operating system for its smartphones.
Speaking at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Elop said the deal’s value to Nokia is “in Bs not in Ms.” The comment sparked speculation that Microsoft is, in effect, paying Nokia—the world’s biggest cell phone manufacturer in terms of market share—to carry Windows Phone 7 on its smartphones.
One reader mailed us this article and asked: “Is this move legal and can it be investigated by DOJ?”
This is similar to what Microsoft did to ‘steal’ Yahoo!’s userbase in search (first in north America, later on the rest). All they needed to do was to ‘plant’ some close partner in the CxO position/s, with help from Carl Icahn. Essentially it’s like a cheap buyout, according to these report and analyses we’ve been accumulating. Is Elop hiding the details of the deal because it’s part of the deal to keep it secret? Or maybe he is trying to avoid lawsuits after the self-serving act… who knows? “Nokia’s Elop to sell remaining Microsoft shares,” says this headline. Too late, sir.
Nokia chief Stephen Elop is trying to rid himself of his numerous shares in Microsoft, he said at a press conference ahead of the start of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
In better news, a sub-notebook running MeeGo is coming out. Intel says it will continue to back MeeGo and the Linux Foundation too is serious about it. Wayne Borean’s roundup of this whole mess can be summarised as: “A Microsoft Partner Is Just Someone They Haven’t Gotten Around To Killing Yet”
What it’s going to look like to most Microsoft employees is that Management panicked. I’ll bet that there’s a lot of resumes getting dusted off this weekend, and not just in the division that handles WP7. When Management makes short term decisions like this, it’s a good time to get ready to bail out.
I understand what Microsoft Management was trying to do. But they so totally blew it. Short term thinking can kill your company. Totally kill it.
But it might be good in the long run. This might be just what board needs to give them the ammunition to dump Ballmer. So far he’s been protected, because he’s Bill’s school buddy. This foul up however may make Bill take another look. Maybe.
Bill and his buddies never knew how to compete fairly because they never wanted to. The latest casualty is the pride of Finland. █
“I’d be glad to help tilt lotus into into the death spiral. I could do it Friday afternoon but not Saturday. I could do it pretty much any time the following week.”
–Brad Silverberg, Microsoft
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twitter said,
February 16, 2011 at 1:35 am
Even better news is that shareholders have revolted. Shareholders who care should transfer their voting rights to PlanB, which seeks to fire Elop and hire someone with mobile phone experience, make MeGo the primary platform, continue to exploiting Symbian, use QT between both MeGo and Symbian to ease porting, consolidate R&D and end outsourcing. As like Verizon reject Windows Phoney 7, Elop’s plan looks more like the corporate suicide that it is.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
February 16th, 2011 at 1:39 am
That’s good news. Let’s see how it goes. But is it not too late to elevate the stock?
twitter Reply:
February 16th, 2011 at 7:56 am
The stock will gain value as the market perceives Nokia has fixed itself and can compete. Plan B might do that but it is just a wish right now as Elop drives the company over a cliff.
Some of the damage will never be undone. There will be contractual obligations and community disruption. Every day that Elop is allowed to fire gnu/linux programmers is a day those people are out finding something else to do for a living and more experience is lost to Nokia. Microsoft people know that a community of developers is what makes the software world go round and that perception in communities is very important. Elop’s mouthing off is damaging and he knows it. The windows press magnifies this damage and won’t undo it if things change. Clueful people won’t bother to look at Nokia want adds while Elop is in control, the place will be flooded with Microsoft monkeys. That flood will persist even if Plan B is implemented because the Microsoft press won’t trumpet the return to sanity.
This is the kind of disruption Microsoft TEs like to inflict on competitors. They hate and seek to destroy each and every person who knows how to get things done without Microsoft. They gauge the result in lines of code written to their standard or someone else’s.
Recent events are showing that Microsoft’s arrogance and insane, hypercompetitive pettiness and malice is a reflection of the rich and powerful that is not confined to Microsoft. One of the BoA and US chamber of commerce smear targets tells us,
It is a good thing that the corporate flunkies consistently chose Microsoft, so that it was easy for Anonymous to penetrate their networks and publish their email.
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
February 16th, 2011 at 8:07 am
The Myriad’s Dalvik (Android on Maemo) video is up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yp-1MdxfT8&feature=youtu.be
Alien Dalvik (Android apps/games on Maemo) was getting too promising. Stephen Ballmer and Stephen Elop had to kill it. Likewise:
- Corel did wonderful work on Linux with Wine, enabling almost all Windows application to run on Linux. Microsoft had to ‘steal’ Corel and burn it down.
- Novell did good work on Compiz with SLED 10, enabling all business tasks to run on Linux. Microsoft had to ‘steal’ Novell and take its software patents.
-Yahoo provided a lot of backing to GNU, Linux, BSD, PHP, Hadoop etc. Microsoft had to shut down Yang’s Yahoo!, making it a Microsoft shop. Traffic too got lifted.
“Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It’s good that we have museums to document them.” ~Bill Gates, March 10th, 2005
Learn about what Bill Gates called his “Jihad” against Linux at Intel: http://techrights.org/2009/01/12/bill-gates-jihad-vs-linux/