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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]?"

--Bill Gates



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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