Nokia Microsoft deal leads to shareholder revolt, calling for a "plan B"

Were the celebrations champagne a Nokia-Microsoft partnership premature?

An unnamed group of nine young Nokia shareholders "were also employees at some point today published an open letter to the company of other shareholders and institutional investors, in a nutshell, said that the deal with Microsoft is a bad one for Nokia and that CEO Stephen Elop should be replaced. (Techmeme)

In the letter, the group said it intends to contest the collaboration of Microsoft and the strategy of the company's annual general meeting of shareholders on May 3. He said that he also developed an approach of "plan B" that involves not only replacing Elop but also looks to renew the strategy of hiring company and eliminate "outdated and bureaucratic R&D practices."

These shareholders said they want to avoid at all costs, "becoming a poorly differentiated OEM with only low margin commodities that are able to attract top talent and software cannot create value for shareholders but innovation."

In past generations, a small group of shareholders may have had trouble generating support for a plan that runs contrary to what the leaders determine to be best. But in the modern age of communication, the Group has spread its message virally over the Internet and other calls-from other shareholders to ventilators, employees, users or developers-join the cause by spreading the word through its blog, Twitter and Facebook.

It is not clear whether these shareholders will gain any traction with their efforts-but they seem to be in good company. Financial markets also seem to have a bad feeling about this agreement with Microsoft, which, like Nokia, suddenly you find yourself scrambling to catch up because it failed to respond and innovate fast enough when the market is headed.

It's almost ironic that HP, which has been a long time partner is distancing itself from Microsoft on the mobile front, pushing its WebOS on Windows while the Nokia, which has also seen a decline in its leadership mobile, would turn to Microsoft as his Savior.

Separately, the Mobile World Congress Conference in Barcelona today, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said his company severely tried Woo Nokia and that the two were involved in discussions confidential "extended", according to a Reuters report.

see also:Fear of Google has pushed the collaboration of Nokia-Microsoft

Meanwhile, Nokia Executive VP Mary McDowell told Bloomberg that Microsoft was the only put before the governing body of a vote at the meeting on 10 February, a day before Elop and CEO Microsoft has made their announcement of partnership. McDowell said Bloomberg:

We put three scenarios: continue with the current record, an option of Google and an option of Microsoft but the recommendation that we did to them was the option of Microsoft so that what they have approved.

That report noted that, since then, Nokia shares decreased by 18 percent and wiped out about $ 5.5 billion, or 7.4 billion, the company's market value.

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Sam Diaz is a senior editor at ZDNet.