Submitted by “While Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop has steered the company into a Microsoft future, not everyone is happy about it. Workers have walked out in Finland, and now a group of shareholders is planning a new strategy called “Nokia Plan B“. The new plan has been formulated by a group of young Nokia shareholders who all have experience working for the company. None of them are happy with the decision to embrace Microsoft, and all of them plan to challenge the decision and strategy going forward.”
While I’m all for this Plan B,
I wonder if waiting for May 3rd is too late to hope for an wider acceptance.
By then Elop ‘the arsonist’ would have left only ashes of MeeGo and the other fundamental ingredients of Plan B.
The only ashes left will be his own.
I quote myself to note that there is an update: Plan B is no more http://nokiaplanb.com/2011/02/16/calling-it-quits/ and one of the reason is exactly what I feared:
It’s a shame, I think of any company that had the ability to take on Apple and Google, it was Nokia. The problem is they lacked the attitude.
It seemed from the outside Nokia was in a state of denial: Symbian was competitive, MeeGo is just around the corner, and Qt will be write-once/run-anywhere that ties it all together (remember when they said that about Java?)
They were on top of the world, then the iPhone came along. Google answered the challenge a few shorts years later, and then Microsoft and WebOS and RIM. I never would have guessed that at the end of 2010, Nokia had the crustiest OS, and that Microsoft (Microsoft!?!) had out-inovated them.
It took a dramatic step, but I think they made the wrong one. They gave up, and surrendered. Now Nokia is becoming an HTC, their margins are going to get squeezed like never before.
They had the ability, just not the attitude. They didn’t have the attitude that Microsoft had, to buck up, realize their platform was dying, and accept the new reality. Chuck out the old stuff, swallow their pride, and go all-in. There was a condescending arrogance at Nokia regarding their platform. That kept them from having the right attitude to take on the others.
While I’d like to believe that, what’s the difference between attitude and ability, really? It’s like saying our kid is smart but doesn’t do well in school because [s]he doesn’t try. In most cases, it’s more of a denial than an actual assessment.
Remember when Apple was sinking? And everybody was telling them that they should ditch OSX and become just another PC manufacturer?
Yeah, sure, there actually are kids who aren’t just applying themselves, so the “in most cases”. I don’t know. From what I’ve seen coming out of nokia, I’m quite skeptical about it as a software engineering company.
Edited 2011-02-15 15:47 UTC
They have plenty of software developers on staff which means the problem is management. You can hire the best mercenaries but you can’t expect them to direct themselves into battle.
Please note that MS didn’t completely dith their os. They simply left the good parts (kernel) and replaced what’s rotten (explorer, Win95 inspired user dlls ) with nice gui and modern managed API.
Nokia tried to do the similarly, the QT have even started api to get some traction.
They failed to innovate at the GUI layer, inconceivable for a company that brought up beloved N3510 UI.
I don’t know what will come out of the alliance. WP7 fans and .net devs have certainly a reason to rejoice. But the fact is EU has probably lost one of the few technological powerhouses that were capable of making a difference on a global market. It’s now pure Asia-US play.
I still think Nokia had a chance to still differentiate on HW requirements and battery life of their phones (and less computationally demanding osses) while reaching the good enough level of UI experience.
In a 2 years there won’t be any capable, net enabled phone that lasts a week on a battery. This sucks.
Edited 2011-02-15 16:08 UTC
You know what hurts them on the Linux side.. is that I can’t believe that they will support phones with updated software… because they don’t support my n800 yes I like it alot but its running a years old kernel and application updates are so scarce is isn’t even funny :C
Part of that is just because we can’t update to a new distribution because they used binary blobs in the kernel… which have no business being in an embedded device.
Edited 2011-02-15 13:45 UTC
I think these “young shareholders” have it all wrong.
Nokia is already failing all other the place. They need urgent action. So siding with MS makes practical sense. It re-asserts Nokia as a power for quality hardware with a useable interface. Then, while they’re clawing back some lost market, they have time to develop their own “next-gen OS”.
However to try and change the fate of the company without partnering up with another company that offers a ready made OS would just be futile (we’ve seen this already). Nokia going Android wouldn’t give them market distinction they crave and Apple are never going to release iOS. Blackberry are struggling themselves so Nokia basically have HP (webOS) or MS to choose from.
Maybe webOS might have been a more favourable choice? However in light of Nokia’s falling market position, I not only forgive them for siding with MS – I actually sympathise with their decision.
The people crying foul over this decision did not learn from history.
What if Apple hadn’t bought NEXT?
This plan B would kill Nokia within a few years, withuot a shred of doubt.
So you’re saying that Microsoft will be getting a great product to build their future success on and Nokia will be gone and forgotten in a year or two?
Sounds like an awesome deal for Nokia…
No, I’m saying that sometimes, you need to rely on others for your own success.
And what company has ever relied on Microsoft and succeeded?
Dell, HP, HTC, and just about every other OEM. Thousands of businesses all around the world using Microsoft technologies, to name but a few.
Three manufacturers who chose other mobile OS (android or WebOS).
(HTC was likely coerced into making a Win7phone handset after being sued by Microsoft for software patents over android.)
HTC was making Windows phones before WP7. They’ve been a long term partner for MS. Taiwanese hardware companies have been more reliable for them than US companies.
Thom is right about there being a list of hardware companies that have successfully partnered with Microsoft.
He shouldn’t have been voted down.
And they ditched it and put all their efforts behind a big android strategy (with nice results, as their Sense custom interface is very well-received). That is what their experience with microsoft lead them to.
Shall we add Sendo, Motorola and Nortel to the list of successful partnerships?
(It reminds me that when I see in an advertisement the word ‘bargain’, I always wonders for whom…)
We can find more in http://www.asymco.com/2011/02/11/in-memoriam-microsofts-previous-st…
Dell.
Compaq.
Lexmark.
Dell. HP. Compaq. Acer. Asus. MSI. Toshiba. Sony etc
Hundreds of thousands of whitebox makers.
Thousands of OEM manufacturers.
What if Apple had chosen Windows XP?
Thom, you are becoming less and less insightful.
And here we see the outdated, false 90s mindset again that dominates among geeks.
Choosing Windows Phone 7 is not akin to choosing Windows XP since unlike XP, WP7 IS NOT A MONOPOLY.
I’m surprised of your recent contributions. Did someone replace the Tom we knew ?
Neither NeXT, WXP or WP7 can be compared, I think that’s the point.
Unfortunately you seem blinded into fanboism toward WP7.
WP7 is not a bad OS.
Nokia’s choice is better than doing nothing.
I think most of us agrees on this. But while it’s a /better/ choice, is it the /best/ choice?
Many of us don’t think so in the long run. Added to that, and on a non-Nokia-centric idea, many of us think that closed source OS aren’t the way to go for ethical/moral (and even practical) reasons.
I won’t get started on this. Just see http://www.osnews.com/permalink?462557
Like all analogies they are similar on some parts and dissimilar on others. I think the point of the comparison was that by adopting windows xp a non unique operating system, Apple would have lost a key differentiator. By choosing windows phone 7 Nokia has done the same.
However, Apple did almost die even after buying NeXT. They really survived due to an investment deal from Microsoft. I think Apple really faced very long odds at that time regardless of their strategy ( the stock price reflected that). It took them a while after buying NeXT to release OSX 10.0.
Nokia is actually in better condition than Apple was when it had to decide its future OS strategy. I don’t know if the bigger picture decisions of Win phone 7 vs MeeGo was the need to ruffle some feathers. Meego was going at a snails pace, and they were focusing too much energy developing new symbian OS versions and phones that no one wanted.
They would have got BeOS. Arguably a far better desktop OS.
Actually, history has taught that there is simply no precedent for a company in decline being able to recover by entering into desperate partnerships with Microsoft. It is often the final nail in their coffin.
To your example, what if Apple had only licensed NEXT instead, effectively leaving control of the design and function of OSX to an outside company, having only moderate input into it’s design and function? Could it have had the same impact? Would Apple be the same company if they were dependent upon a third-party software stack?
Nokia hasn’t addressed the management and structural shortcomings that have led to their current predicament, they’re simply downsizing to recover profitability. WP7, or Android, or Meego, isn’t going to address that. Plan B would at least force a shake-up, and while I doubt Plan B will gain traction, it will hopefully encourage the shareholders to start asking very uncomfortable questions of Nokia’s executive leadership and holding them accountable.
Apple managed.
As much as some people like to talk about Apple as the shining example of successful independence from Microsoft, Apple have often fallen back to Redmond during hard times. I seem to recall one particular occasion when a bribe / financial bailout came from MS in exchange for Apple including IE as the default web browser and allowing MS to port Office to MacOS 8 (or whatever version was out at the time)
But from purely-software houses, then you’re right. They all end up worse for it.
However this situation is different because Nokia needs an OS fast and MS need more hardware vendors interested. WP7 isn’t gaining half as much traction as Redmond wanted. Given that MS don’t make phone hardware and nor do Nokia have an OS that’s competitive, this partnership makes good sense to me.
My only concern would be that Nokia hadn’t signed away their future rights to expand into other OSs in exchange their their customisation exclusivity. If that has happened, then they will end up no better off than any other OEM in Windows-land.
I will concede that I might have been more excited if I read about Nokia teaming up with HP to use webOS. However Nokia needed to act fast and this move by them is at least going to save the company – even if it doesn’t return them to previous greatness.
I wouldn’t view the Apple deal as being comparable, because there was no risk on Apple’s part. In exchange for settling the lawsuit, Apple received a token amount of cash (that paled compared to their cash on hand at the time) and market credibility from having office support on the Mac. At no point did they have to give up any control over their products or strategies to some sort of dependency on Microsoft.
Microsoft needed to make the lawsuit go away, particularly since they were in the midst of the DoJ lawsuit, so they had far more to lose.
The problem with Microsoft, and the potential risk to Nokia, is Ballmer’s zero-sum game philosophy. In order for Microsoft to win, everybody else has to lose. There is really no such thing as true partnership with Microsoft, because Microsoft believes that every deal should be leveraged to their benefit. Any technology company experiencing market success is a potential threat to MS even if they don’t participate in that market.
Granted, all companies strive to work opportunities to their advantage, but few can survive by continually scorching relationships and not ceding a degree of independence through mutually beneficial partnerships. Companies like MS are generally an exception due to their entrenched market base.
Your point about Nokia’s future is the key concern here. Elop has basically stated that the deal concerns Nokia’s current smartphone strategy and doesn’t extend (at this time) into pursuing future product development. Yet realistically, what is Nokia leaving themselves as a Plan B? They’re going to slash and burn their (admittedly) heavy R&D units, they’re basically walking away from Qt, Meego and Symbian, they’re gambling that their current developer base will follow them to WP, and they’re taking a very big risk of diluting their brand.
If the Nokia partnership doesn’t succeed, or MS decides to radically shift their strategy (which isn’t unprecedented), history has shown that they won’t hesitate to walk away and leave Nokia holding the bag. Where does Nokia go from there?
Conversely, what if Nokia succeeds beyond expectation and establishes WP as a dominant platform, comparable to Android and iOS? They suddenly become a liability for Microsoft. Not only does Microsoft avoid dependence on any single technology partner, instead preferring to play them off against each other, but they would likely not be satisfied with successfully competing alongside Android/iOS and would strive to gain further share at any cost.
I’m not the CEO, and I know most of us are armchair quarterbacking this whole thing, but I do think the market reaction is telling. Prior to the announcement, the analysts were all a bit bullish on Nokia and the thought of an MS partnership. Having seen the deal, though, they are more or less collectively issuing a formal WTF and punishing their share price. It’s very rare, possibly unprecedented, that a strategic partnership with Microsoft results in an immediate and significant stock decline.
At the end of the day, I don’t think the issue is that Nokia has elected to sell WP handsets. I think the problem is that they’re committing their future to it, without any introspection or addressing of the real issues that have made it necessary.
Anyways, just my 2c…
Answer this question:
Was it the fault of Microsoft that Novell was unable to sell enough Suse contracts to remain listed on the market?
Microsoft gave Novell a lifeline but it was Novell that didn’t give Fortune 500 companies enough reasons to leave Red Hat.
It wasn’t as if Microsoft was trying to sabotage the efforts of Novell. That partnership was just as favorable to Novell as the Apple deal. No other company was going to give them that much cash overnight. But the difference is that Novell failed to capitalize on the deal.
Why contract with Novell instead of Red Hat or Oracle? They never gave a good reason. They took their MSFT money and invested into endeavors like Mono without a sound business plan. It isn’t as if Mono required Suse to run, so where is the revenue going to come from?
Their business plan stunk, just like Sun they threw a bunch of money at random open source projects without any plan. Novell is the one that came up with the idea of Mono, not MSFT. Cloning ASP.NET was not even part of the agreement. They just tossed a bunch of money at Icaza and crew with the hope that it would somehow pay off.
Of course they were trying to sabotage Novell. They trumpeted the deal as some sort of admission that linux does violate the mythical MS patents, and they gained indemnity from Novell’s patents, neutralizing Novell’s biggest weapon if Microsoft decided to attack the wider linux market with a direct IP strike. This led to a wider debate and the whole GPL v3 controversy, none of which would have helped assuage the licensing concerns of potential linux customers.
Aside from the patent issue, Microsoft was hoping to disrupt Red Hat in the market, which didn’t really happen. Their sales people certainly weren’t tripping over themselves to hand out those SuSE “vouchers”, and the improved operability that was supposed to occur through collaboration between MS and Novell never really materialized.
In short, MS didn’t really bring anything to the table other than throwing money at Novell, and was still working to undermine them.
Your comments about Novell’s ineptitude are certainly fair, however. Shame on Novell for that. But it doesn’t change the fact that Novell entered into a deal that favored MS without MS having to deliver on any of the vague commitments that would have benefited Novell, such as sales and development support from the MS side.
The parallels with Nokia are striking. Two leading tech companies that lost their way, struggled with misdirected and mismanaged engineering efforts that failed to materialize into tangible gains, and then loudly proclaim collaborative partnerships with MS that will somehow solve their problems, without having addressed the management and leadership issues that are at the core of their difficulties, and resulting in confusion, controversy and mixed messages for the marketplace due to poor planning and communication. Much like Novell, this is going to be nothing but a temporary panacea unless Nokia can fix their broken company.
BTW, I’m not criticizing MS in as much as MS is simply doing what MS always does in leveraging opportunity. What I am criticizing is the history of CEOs that jump into these deals with eyes wide shut and fail to study or acknowledge the circumstances for previous companies that have tried and failed in similar opportunities.
Perhaps most importantly, Microsoft cannot be held responsible for the incompetence of these companies in the first place. That doesn’t change the fact that desperation partnerships with Microsoft are generally the death knell for declining companies.
Totally and absolutely wrong.
Apple was saved by MS in a very public gesture. Bill Gates bought $150m worth of Apple stock and promised to maintain Office for Mac and Internet Explorer.
MS could have killed Apple simply by closing the Mac software division. The only reason MS didn’t was to avoid antitrust actions.
I would not call thas move “a desperate partnership”, Apple had bought NeXT, was preparing its “next” operating system, needed money and got a lot without losing the control.
A desperate partnership for Apple would have been to deal with Microsoft, abandon its operating system and start selling computers with Windows pre-installed. The equivalent of what Elop is doing now.
Really? Going with WP7 is not a huge differentiator for Nokia. Even their mock-ups are just like any other WP7 phone.
If they would have said that their WP7 devices would have some distinctive features, then I would be saying that this is a great move for Nokia. Or if they would have been left the only WP7 OEMs.
The people that made up the list, sure hit the nail. Because that is exactly the internal problems Nokia has been having. If you compare any company to Nokia, no other company has had the NIH problem as bad as Nokia.
But the main problem was lack of “Developer, developers, developers”.
I could literally, rant on Nokia’s internals for hours…
Nokia buying Microsoft would be way cooler than becoming another generic phone/tablet manufacturer.
Yes, we all sympathize with their plight
Seriously though, how is going from “having one Meego handset out in 2011” to “not have a WP7 handset out until end of Q1 2012” an improvement? Then again, I’m not a high-powered CEO making deals with my former employer so what do I know.
Edited 2011-02-15 17:08 UTC
At current rates MeeGo would have been unrefined and to the consumer would just look like Android but without the software library. WP7 is a slick OS with Office and media tie-ins but lacks a user base.
To get to either level with MeeGo would have taken them years. Android already is a knock-off of the iphone. Nokia couldn’t show up at the end of the year with another iphone knock-off. I understand that MeeGo has developer advantages but the same is true for WP7.
I know MeeGo and Nokia fans are disappointed but MeeGo was doomed once Android became popular. You can’t sell an OS to consumers based on developer advantages or on the point that it is like a mini Linux distro. Carriers do not want another iphone knock-off. Android already fills that role. Google got their OS out early and to Verizon customers who were desperate for anything close to the iphone. They now have the solid userbase and market inertia, MS barely has a foot in the door with WP7.
MeeGo has the advantage of enormous Lunux software library. Everything is native, coded and field tested , just waiting to get UI refactroing (that have been happening for last 3 years anyway)…
That’s the advantage no other mobile OS shares.
As a developer you don’t have to stick with C++, get whatever supported scripting lang you need.
Besides I don’t think that adding that Android compatibility that has just been announced would fare many problems for Nokia.
Edited 2011-02-16 00:30 UTC
MeeGo had a key advantage, though – it could use the same development platform and deployment infrastructure.
Nokia would have been able to make every attempt to retain and perhaps grow their group of developers and app consumers. With the WP7 switch, they will lose most (even all) of them as Symbian is wound down, and they will have to start from nearly zero as WP7 begins its Nokia rollout.
Even if MeeGo took years to reach the polish level WP7 will have in 12-18 months’ time, it will take Nokia much longer to build a WP7-based ecosystem as large as the one they’re abandoning.
Edited 2011-02-16 05:54 UTC
I can see your point.
Still, how exactly does this move to WP7 solve Nokia’s root problems? The root problem isn’t “we don’t have a competitive smart-phone model”, the problem is it is taking them forever to create something. Switching to WP7 doesn’t really solve this problem at all and if it has taken them forever to produce anything with MeeGo it’s going to take long with WP7 too.
It also doesn’t solve the, supposed, management and R&D problems.
At least the Plan B statement had pinpointed some areas that definitely needed improvement. I dunno, maybe Elop has more plans but still…exactly why was this partner deal really made?
Edited 2011-02-16 18:28 UTC
nope, i don’t think so. or better said, what i think really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of history.
and history says that any company going into bed with ms exclusively simply prolong luxurious life for a little, while actually shortening their life span. there never was a winner, ms kept status quo and poor sods went under.
as for Nokia failing all over the place. can you actually name one company doing the same exclusive deal and not being in the same position? look how well things turned out for them.
being original doesn’t matter. android by it self fares more than well. just as well as Nokia could provide their own apps. hell, htc and samsung android phones do… phones and their usage completely differ. and as a big plus you can extend them with extensive shared library of software.
I agree, they would just take the company back to the burning platform.
The downside to webOS is that it is not a market tested product and HP would not give them as good of a deal. I would actually be more skeptical of the deal if I hadn’t tried WP7.
It’s a shame that RIM has done little to counter the iphone as well. I assumed they would rush to develop a touch phone after the first iphone was a success. I expected a lot more alternatives by now.
History shows your argument to be wrong, actually.
Digital, SGI, Intergraph, and a few other companies used the very same reasoning you applied. And every single one of them eventually went out of business when they became heavily dependent on Microsoft.
I am not saying that their previous business plan were not flawed. But becoming nothing more than a Microsoft VAR is not a reasonable strategy for companies like Nokia, because they can’t survive in an environment where they have little differentiation from other companies which have been from the get go Microsoft’s VARs operating with razor thin margins.
Nokia has much more experience in the mobile software dept than Microsoft does, depending on Microsoft for their core mobile OS is simply put: stupid.
Have you tried WP7? I have to wonder if that is a common factor among cynics. If I was given a blind test I would have guessed it was from RIM.
Partnering with MS is their best possible move since becoming another Android carrier would only strengthen Android and Google has no need to offer any type of deal to Nokia.
It’s rumored that Nokia also went to Google for offers and they were probably laughed at.
With Microsoft they can get a lucrative deal and discourage the market from becoming a duopoly, which will make it easier to enter in the future if they so choose. It’s risky but so is any move at this point.
My post had nothing to do with WP7’s experience for the end user.
I was simply pointing out that there are plenty of examples, indicating somewhat of a pattern, of vertically-integrated companies failing as soon as they try to become “profitable” by depending on Microsoft. Vertically-integrated companies depend on differentiation, without that they go the way of the dodo.
Microsoft business plan revolves around producing commodity products. So it is not as important for them that a specific VAR succeeds as much as they want their whole VAR ecosystem to succeed. Which is not the same situation that Nokia just placed themselves in. Since now they depend directly on the success of their commodity provider: Microsoft. Who happens to be one of their main current competitors.
What it is stupid is for someone to adapt their business plan so that they depend on one of their direct competitors. Because in fact Microsoft just accessed a possible customer base for peanuts, whereas Nokia is still struggling for dear life.
That it is why the decision is stupid. And as I pointed out there are plenty of examples in recent history to corroborate such a pattern.
Whether or not WP7 is the bee’s knees is irrelevant for this discussion.
Nokia did go to Google. Google basically told them to f@#k off!
Hmm…from what source do base this statement?
Google says the opposite…
Let’s just say Google wasn’t offering any concessions. The effect is the same.
What sor of concessions could they offer?
The platform is open…Nokia were free to do anything they wanted with it.
http://nokiaplanc.com/
http://nokiaplans.com/
Nokia made many wrong decisions last few months (years?). They slow down with developing anything new, thinking that they got “mark” on all over the world. And this “mark” of greate Nokia will make people still buy their products. But times are different. Information about “better”phone spreads very fast. Also Nokia failed making every new mobile model less good. I mean quality goes down. For example few months ago my bros gave me Nokia C3. Quiet new mobile, with not bad hardware (208MHz CPU, with ARM inside). They do not make it smartphone, while it looks like that. It is based on S40 platform. Have WiFi, BT, qwerty keyboard. It is very cheap phone. But software quality is so terrible. I mean,there are thousands problems with updates, errors, crashing, problems with wlan support. I know S40 isn’t best platform for WiFi and advanced netowrk usage, but still, it is very old, and should already be stable and prepared. If Nokia cannot handle S40, how they can handle MeeGo, Android, or any other advanced OS properly. I think they can’t. So WP7 is their only way to go. Maybe not best, but better than now. And i wish good for Nokia.
how the narrative on Nokia changed over night. It went from “Nokia is terrible, slow, and dead in the water” to “Nokia DEFINITELY could have taken on Apple and Google”.
No they could not. Look at what MeeGo has to show for it one year after its announcement. Essentially NOTHING. They were on a dangerous trajectory and needed a fundamental change.
People can deny, mock, ridicule, and vote me down all they want, but Windows Phone 7 is by all accounts and measures on the right track. Their ecosystem is growing, swelling to 8,000 applications a few months after availability, they have, even if .NET isn’t your cup of tea, unquestionably good value to add in the developer space with their tools, and they bring valuable brands to the table which have a real world effect (WP7 will become the defacto gaming portable in short time, their #1 selling genre is gaming applications through XBox Live on the phone. The games are also very high quality).
It makes business sense for Nokia, they didn’t want to get lost in the sea of Android. MeeGo was getting them nowhere slowly. At least with WP7 they have a genuine sot at differentiation and at bringing value to the tablet, at least they have a fighting chance.
MeeGo is an open source project, Intel is still behind it, and if it is truely that great of an Operating System for phones, then you’ll soon attract other investors (as I’ve pointed out, it’s ironic that big corporate overlords are often the lifeblood of these FOSS bastions) and eventually get something to market.
I don’t disagree. I lament more of the wasted potential. I’ve often said Nokia is making stupid choices, but they could have turned it around with the right attitude. Looking realistically (which Elop did) at their platform, and taking drastic steps.
They did take a drastic step: Surrender, and be at the mercy of another vendor for their OS. It’s just astonishing.
Keeping on their current path, they would have died a slow death. Now, part of them died overnight, and what will be left? Not the same Nokia, that’s for certain.
Nokia went from leader, to lagging behind, to now, they’ll never be a leader in the market.
What’s amazing is how many developers they have on staff.
They obviously had some management issues but I have to wonder if they would have gotten MeeGo out earlier if they focused on ARM and never partnered with Intel.
I knew something was up when MSFT showed no interest in partnering with Intel for x86 phones. Did Intel promise Nokia power gains that never materialized? Did Nokia have a hard time using existing libraries that were built around ARM? Maybe some ex-employees will eventually explain.
Here is more
http://nokiaplans.com/
As unbelievable as it might seem I agree this will be the death of Nokia, at least as a differentiated brand.
On the other hand I don’t think this Plan B will work – in fact I think it will create even more instability in the company – they could implode very quickly if it all goes pear shaped.
Popcorn anyone?
Nokia is controlled by a group of pension funds and banks. They have already made up their minds.
The Plan B group would be very unlikely to control even 5% of the shares.
There is zero hope of Plan B succeeding.