That probably would've happened anyway. Nokia was far to late in the post-iPhone introduction market. In fact, I get the impression that they are slowly recovering. They have a good hardware lineup and are starting to get traction in lower-income markets (e.g. South America). Also, the Lumia 521 and 520 are now topping the non-contract phones best-seller charts on Amazon.com.

That would have happened whoever they'd hired, their inertia towards inevitable doom was unstoppable. His failure was to not not see this and turn down the job.

> What about Stephen Elop?

How so? The guy is absolutely brilliant!

Of course, you must realize he actually works for Microsoft, not Nokia.

Elop started with Nokia in a bad position compared to when Ballmer took over Microsoft.

You can't stop a train immediately. At least Symbian/MeeGo/Android chasm has been avoided.

Apologies, but Harmattan (aka Maemo 6 aka ‘MeeGo Instance’) is still my favourite mobile OS, and even though it was released in 2010 it still easily keeps up with the standard stuff on Android, iOS and Windows Phone (no voice recognition à la Siri, though).

That was too late for a new OS. Their effort alone wouldn't have been enough to fill their app store.