Should Nokia fire Stephen Elop?

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: yes, absolutely.

Really long answer: yes, absolutely, along with anyone on the board of directors who has approved of Elop’s actions so far. And I am not talking about the decision to go with WP7, though I am not a fan of it, but rather how Elop has decided to execute certain key events, specifically:

1) the burning platform-”leak”.

2) how he decided to announce Symbian’s EoL on Feb 11, without any replacement for it for the following 12 months at the time of the announcement.

3) Elop’s public statements about how there won’t be any more MeeGo devices no matter how successful the N9 is, before the N9 is even available and despite the rave reviews it received after it was presented.

4) Elop’s “leak” of the Sea Ray right after the N9 announcement, seemingly in an attempt to stifle the N9 excitement, instead of riding the N9-wave that had been created.

5) His decision (as opposed to “action”) to only release the N9 in select countries and seemingly the ones where Nokia’s first WP7 phone won’t be launched, instead of releasing it world wide and let it go head to head with WP7 if necessary, and let the consumers decide, and directly gauge, which platform/device they like better. But by selling the N9 in limited markets he not only artificially chokes the N9′s success but also deprives Nokia of much needed revenue, as the N9 is a premium device and as such has high profit margins.

Elop’s actions have, at best, been naive (as an ex-colleague of his noted in the Bloomberg interview: “His superpower isn’t his great intuitive judgment…“) or, at worst, sinister. All the conspiracy theories about him and Microsoft come as little surprise when you look at some of his actions so far, and the rumor that the BoD was pressured to pick Elop rings ever more true.

But even if Nokia decided to stay right on course with the plans so far, including everything regarding WP7, at the end of the day it is quite simple: if you believe that Elop handled the Feb 11 announcement poorly and that he only poured more gasoline on the “burning platform”, then that would be reason alone to remove him from his position; the potential consequences of such a misstep at that level, with the loss of device sales and Nokia’s dethroning as the smartphone leader, is simply inexcusable. And if he did that with the BoD approval, though it seems unlikely, then they should all go.