 "Ballmer mum on Stephen Elop's possible role as Microsoft CEO")
Microsoft on Tuesday announced that it will be acquiring Nokia’s devices and services divisions. Surfacing along with the surprising decision, came another intriguing factor. It has now been reported by the Verge that Stephen Elop will be stepping down as the CEO of Nokia, instead donning the title of the head of Microsoft’s Devices team. This is an intriguing development, taking into account that Microsoft’s current CEO, Steve Ballmer, will be stepping down from his post in the next 12 months.
In an interview with the source, both the current Nokia and Microsoft head honchos sat together, along with Nokia’s Board of Directors chairman Risto Siilasmaa. While the conversation was reportedly animated, there was no word from the current Microsoft headhoncho about Elop being considered as a prime candidate to step into his shoes. This estimate has been hotly discussed for a while now, with a gambling website betting good odds that Elop may take over for the top spot in Microsoft’s pecking order.
While talking about this, Ballmer said, “Our board is going through a process open to internal and external candidates. It’s a process that they wanted well-known so they could consider everybody internal and external. Stephen Elop happens to be going from external to internal but our board will consider everybody. They will do it in private — that’s the right way for the board to conduct its business.”
Steve Ballmer stays mum about Elop being considered for the company’s top position
Shifting the discussion back to the Nokia acquisition, Ballmer said that the deal was planned out before the announcement about his retirement had been made. According to the source, the current Microsoft CEO said, “I will say that before I announced my plans, shortly before, I called Risto because I wanted him to understand that the transaction was important to us despite my plans, that it was consistent with the strategy of Microsoft and our board, it wasn’t my action, and I wanted them to know about it before we finalised this deal. I talked to Stephen Elop about it, everybody remained enthused about the deal and about Stephen joining Microsoft, so that’s all happening and independently our board will go through with the succession activity.”
Ballmer also reportedly hinted that the partnership of the last few years between the two companies may have been a trial run for the deal that took place today. While talking about this, Ballmer said, “I wouldn’t say this was always in the cards. We have thought about over the last few years we have thought about our possibilities and strategic options to make sure we had success in phones. I would say I was going through a fairly diligent of that at about the time Nokia decided to take a look at opportunities two and a half plus years ago and considered its opportunities. And we leapt at the opportunity to form a strategic partnership; we invested in that partnership as has been well documented. We love the partnership.”
But Nokia’s hardware business is not the only thing that Microsoft is keen on, according to Ballmer. The Microsoft headhoncho, clarifying his statement, said, “People will focus in on the phone side. I think it’s as important that we were able open up a set of innovation possibilities, working with Here location services – which we are not acquiring. But the way in which we formed a deal where we could do more innovation around building off of the great core technology and data assets at Here is also an important part of the deal today. We look forward to being one of the big customers of Here.”