Former Nokia executive criticizes Elop: Abandoning Symbian was a big mistake

News Topic: NOKIA Nokia\Former Nokia executive Lee Williams stated that sacrificing the company's cash cow Symbian and shifting to the untested Windows Phone platform was a grave mistake made by Stephen Elop. Williams was responsible for Nokia's Symbian S60 platform between 2006 and 2009, and at that time he had already served as Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation for a period, until Nokia took back the operating system in 2010. In an interview with CNET UK, Williams had almost nothing positive to say about Nokia's new CEO.\Stephen Elop joined Nokia from Microsoft about a year and a half ago. Williams said that Elop did not develop a growth blueprint for the company, Nokia was losing top talent, and he was replacing them with young managers from Microsoft. Elop ran the company more like a frugal CFO than a visionary CEO.\But his harshest criticism was that Elop did not protect Nokia's main cash cow, the Symbian system, for a long enough period, instead rushing to gamble on Windows Phone. He told CNET: "Symbian phones shipped about 20 million units per quarter, and when I was still at the company, the product accounted for seven of Nokia's ten highest gross margin products."\He also said that now, Windows Phone phones only sell 2 million units per quarter. If the situation does not improve, Nokia is doomed. It should be noted that Williams was not saying Symbian is better than Windows Phone; in fact, he said that even the worst Symbian products sold better than Windows Phone is doing currently.\This is the core of the innovator's dilemma. Although traditional large companies like Microsoft and Oracle are often criticized for slow action when facing long-term threats, Elop saw the situation and implemented dramatic changes, but he was criticized for it.\Written by Tencent Technology