Being the CEO of a struggling company is not an enviable job and sadly, this is the position which Nokia’s (NOK) CEO, Stephen Elop, finds himself in presently. When Elop’s predecessor could not stop the decline that was hitting the company hard, Elop took over in 2010 and made certain moves that were geared towards improving the company’s future. Onesuch move was the switch over to the Windows Phone platform, which turned out to be a completely disastrous move. This was reflected in the company’s most recent earnings report.

Nokia’s quarterly earnings showed that the company suffered a loss of over $5 billion in the first three quarters of 2012, and a loss of $1.2 billion in the third quarter alone. This was compared to a loss of $519 million in the third quarter of 2011. This led to the massive layoff of most of the company’s staff. The company has seen a steady decrease in smartphone sales since 2010, but it came to a head with the companyphasing out its range of Symbian handsets. While Nokia was working towards getting its target audience to buy its Windows phones, the company invariably killed the Symbian phone without knowing it. This happened when the company failed to release new versions of Symbian, and instead channeled its attention to Windows phones.

To prove that Nokia’s efforts in trying to make people buy these Windows phones were fruitless, late into the second quarter of 2012, people werebuying more Symbian based phones than Windows phones. To continue reading, click here.