From the moment I heard that Elop would lead Nokia I assumed that the Nokia board wanted to be acquired and were doing whatever it took to become attractive to the most likely (or highest) perceived bidder.
But to say that Elop sank Nokia is to ignore the trend of the company's financial performance leading up to that point.
The claim that the trend was unstoppable ignores at least two key opportunities that were foregone:
1. The Meego smartphones were selling well, and could have been continued.
2. Android-based products could have been added to the product line at relatively little cost.
While this is all theoretical, we do know other OEMs, like Sony and LG, have had strong comebacks with Android products, and several other OEMs have broken into the top 10 with Android, all despite Samsung's dominance.
Elop did sank Nokia , and he got rewarded for that. How do you call it , a win win contract? But that's the price one pays when one does business with Microsoft => Scroogled !
Sure, but even if Nokia was already on the path into irrelevance, Elop greatly accelerated the pace. He did this by announcing that Nokia would abandon the Symbian OS for Windows Phone OS; a distant 3rd in terms of the OS penetration. All this while the company had NO products to introduce with the Windows Phone OS for another 6 months, leaving all Symbian smartphones they did have at the time dead in the water. (Who wants to buy a phone with an obsolete OS?) This ensures a definite and immediate share price slide.
But to say that Elop sank Nokia is to ignore the trend of the company's financial performance leading up to that point.
(minor edit, redundancy)