In his new book Hit Refresh, Microsoft’s current CEO Satya Nadella confirms that he was never in favour of the company acquiring Nokia.
As Thurrot.com pointed out, Nadella says he voted against the acquisition when then-CEO Steve Ballmer conducted a poll of senior leadership team members.
“I voted no,” writes Nadella, “I did not get why the world needed the third ecosystem in phones, unless we changed the rules … But it was too late to regain the ground we had lost. We were chasing our competitors’ taillights.”
Building on that sentiment, Nadella suggests that Microsoft should only enter the mobile market with a product that has a unique value proposition.
“Buying a company with weak market share is always risky,” says Nadella. “We should only be in the phone business when we have something that is really differentiated.”
These sentiments haven’t been kept a close secret over the years — a 2014 Bloomberg report noted that Ballmer faced pushback on the acquisition — but this is the first time Nadella has publicized his own feelings on the subject so candidly.
Microsoft wrote off the Nokia acquisition in 2015, cutting thousands of jobs in the process.
Via: Windows Central
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