Nokia were in a deep shi^W trouble way before Elop's memo.

Sure, MS benefited greatly from this situation but Nokia was in the steady downhill since 2008.

Nokia had credible mobile OSs for modern phones. Windows Phone was not one.

Yeah, we all know that a corrupt person in government is often sponsored by a corporation to rip off the government. I wonder if sometimes a corrupt person is put into leadership at Corporation A who is really on the take from Corporation B with the job of wrecking a competitor.

this does happen: Imagine company B poached staff from A, presumaby for'insights' into company A IP, which had nothing to do with costly decisions and some missteps of unknown causes whereafter A os still in business and B? not so much. seems like a plotline by Sun Tsu

Remember too that from the Nokia board POV selling the phone division to MS was a $1B+ dollar exit.