No, regardless of the relationship between Ballmer and Elop, Micro$oft and
Nokia still have their own boards which they are legally accountable to, and
these boards are legally accountable to the shareholders.
If Nokia's board
fires Elop, then most of the M$ influence will go away and they *might* then
be able to turn the company around - still a very difficult task, but no longer
utterly impossible. The likelihood of Ballmer getting fired is I think pretty
low - the current board members and shareholders must already be perfectly fine
with the way M$ operates, or they wouldn't be in that position.
Over
here in Finland, I can tell you that we reacted with immediate and
near-universal horror when we heard that Nokia was switching to Windows Phone.
Nobody thought it was actually a good idea, even in the absence of any serious
love for Symbian (which is particularly well regarded *outside* of the Western
world) or knowledge of Meego's advanced state of development. Events have
proved us right.
Fortunately, a little startup called Jolla has taken up the
Meego banner. Time will tell what they come up with and whether they can make
it sell, but they've already got the Chinese interested which is a pretty good
start.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|