[M] Beyond Nokia: a love story

From the «no love for Microsoft though» department:
Title: Beyond Nokia: a love story
Author: Thom Holwerda
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2016 15:58:39 -0500
Link: http://osnews.com/story/29505/Beyond_Nokia_a_love_story

With another wave of restructuring underway, which would see Nokia lay off tens
of thousands of employees over the next few years, conversations like these and
the close but remote relationship that the two had established might soon come
to an end. What they and their fellow Nokians needed was a way to stay in
touch. And so, with little fuss or fanfare, Rentrop and Parumog set up the
'Beyond Nokia' Facebook group. [...] "It's a love story," says Sotiris
Makrygiannis, who was previously director of applications and site manager of
Nokia's Helsinki RD center. "I've never seen such a large group of people
adoring a company. It's remarkable. All these tens of thousands of people lost
their jobs and instead of hating the company, actually admiring the company".
To understand why, Rentrop points me to Nokia's old company slogan: Connecting
People. "It was not just a marketing phrase," she says, "for many members Nokia
became a family". That sentiment is echoed in the hundreds of messages and
photos currently being posted to the group every hour. To this day, the demise
of so much of Nokia is a black page in the EU's history. The deal with
Microsoft should have never been allowed to go through, and there's definitely
grounds for more thorough investigation into the history and circumstances of
the deal. Of course, it's impossible to say if Nokia's smartphone arm would've
survived with Android, but I'm quite confident the company would've faced far
better odds. As I said from the very beginning: the moment Nokia decided to
share the bed with Microsoft, was the moment Nokia signed its own death
warrant.