The context of this story

Year: 2011

Cutting MeeGo and Symbian

When Nokia unveiled the first phone with the new MeeGo system in June 2011, many people saw it as a second chance, a “plan B” if WP7 didn’t work out. As a reasonable alternative. But Steven Elop put a decisive end to these hopes when he announced at the end of June that no N9 sales results could change the decision to continue abandoning MeeGo. That this system would not get a chance.

This statement was difficult to understand. The Nokia N9 is the first Nokia phone in a long time to receive a very warm reception from reviewers, but the company will only launch the phone in certain markets, and definitely not in the main ones. To make matters worse, the company will only produce 50,000 units of its Nokia N950 “tablet,” also running MeeGo, for developers. What for? Why would developers buy a phone whose operating system will only be used in one phone and then disappear? What kind of gesture is it to immediately declare that any sales results cannot change the decision not to continue developing products with MeeGo and to have only a few units of a phone that is finished, clearly fine-tuned, and interesting manufactured? Few people understood this strategy by Nokia.

At this point, Elop’s plan still seemed more like a bold vision, an idea inspired by the experience of the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer and driven by the determination of a knowledgeable manager. It was necessary to persevere, weather the storm, prune the diseased, barren branches, and consolidate forces.

Then, on July 21, 2011, the financial results for the second quarter of this year were released, and the vision could be called by another name: an irresponsible gamble that brought the company to its knees, its stock price to a multi-year low, and its hopes of restoring its former glory to nothing.

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