The destruction of Nokia's mobile phone business in the past made this person a suspect.
Stephen Elop is a Canadian businessman who before leading Nokia had a flashy reputation. He was the President of Worldwide Field Operations at Adobe. Later became COO of Juniper Networks. In 2008, he was recruited to be the head of Microsoft's business division. It was only in 2010, Elop became CEO of Nokia, replacing Olli Pekka Kallasvuo.
Stephen Elop spoke to the media with the then Chairman of Nokia, Jorma Ollila. This photo was taken in 2010 at Nokia's headquarters in Finland. Elop revealed his strategy for Nokia to rise again.
Stephen Elop immediately made various drastic decisions. Among them turn off Symbian and choose to use the Windows Phone OS in the Nokia smartphone line. He was sure, Windows Phone will climb like Android when it started to squirm.
Stephen Elop with Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft at the time. "If you use Android, of course it will be too late for anyone in this industry because there is already one vendor that has dominated and sacrificed other vendors," said Elop, possibly referring to Samsung.
In 2010, Nokia's position as the world's largest mobile phone vendor began to be seriously threatened where its market share declined drastically. "We can't see how Symbian can be brought to a competitive level against for example the iPhone, which was launched three years earlier," Elop said of his decision to eliminate Symbian and adopt Windows Phone.
Stephen Elop was aggressively promoting Nokia phones with Windows Phone. "There is an opportunity to create a third ecosystem. And this will be our capital to move forward. With Microsoft and Windows Phone, Nokia has the opportunity to make their own names and devices instead of having to follow the rules of Android," said Elop.
Elop also introduced the Asha line of phones as an affordable Nokia model targeting developing countries.
"We're not in a situation where we're considering anything other than Windows Phone combined with what we've been working on with Asha (Nokia's budget phones in the past)," Elop said.
As is known, the strategy to use Windows Phone failed miserably. Until finally, Nokia was bought cheaply by Microsoft in 2013. In 2015, Elop was also laid off when Nokia's mobile phone business failed and Microsoft did not continue it.
Coming from Microsoft and using Microsoft software and finally Nokia was bought by Microsoft, Elop is often accused of being an intruder or a Trojan horse sent by Microsoft to finish Nokia. But he denied it.
"Regarding the Trojan horse issue, I really only work for the benefit of Nokia shareholders. In addition, all fundamental business and strategic decisions are made with the support and approval of Nokia's board of directors," Elop defended.
After Microsoft, Stephen Elop is still flying. He was appointed Group Executive Technology, Innovation and Strategy at Australian telecommunications giant Telstra in 2016, but was dismissed in 2018.