Let's do the math there, shall we? Three years, 75% drop. That's 25% per year, so approx. 25% per 365 days. 5% per 73 days, and I don't feel like mentally doing the math lower than that. But the point is, you're using a big sounding number over a relatively short sounding time span, which has this wonderful effect of sounding like it actually makes your point, while it actually doesn't. Human brain is funny like that.

This is the same three years in which iPhones and Android phones came out in bulk. Yes Nokia stock was falling, but stock value is so delicately effected by so many factors, that simply saying: Stock dropped x% over y years so obviously what they were doing sucked - no, it means what they were doing wasn't as good as what others were doing, or was perceived as such. Any long-term fix also takes a long time to show itself in stock prices, which is what MeeGo development was - you weren't going to see that strategy reflecting in stocks until at least a couple of weeks after the first MeeGo handsets rolled out, or advertisements for them were turning heads, etc.

But this is a drop of 20-something percent in two days, at the time that was quoted. Wanna try stretching that rate over 3 years? Or better yet, wanna try and find me another similar head-first dive in their stock in the last two years? Not the steady decrease as people migrate out, but this plummeting?

Even if we take your logic and move it down to dollar amounts, 30 dollars per stock lost in 3 years, so -10 in one year, -$1 every 36.5 days or so. Against, what, about two dollars lost in two days?

Nokia's stock lowering in the last three years no doubt had to do with what their strategies were, two-three years ago. But in case you hadn't noticed, they actually were modifying their strategies as time went on, especially towards the end. OPK was at worst half-responsible for those drops, the guy before him, in how he split up departments, equally so, if you want to look at the long-term. I don't think the strategy they were on when Elop came in was actually ideal - far from it - but it was not the same strategy that lost them their stock prices.

The board'/stockholders'/Elop'/whoevers'(s) decision to bend over for Microsoft (while Microsoft gives them the reach-around - at least there's that, and it's not completely one-sided) was not a decision made from truly understanding the strategies employed or their long term gain - it was a decision made by panicking people who were out of their comfort zone with all this open source stuff around them - people who didn't understand it or the economic advantages of something that isn't proprietary and making profits directly, and whose understanding of customer loyalty amounts to "are they giving us money?", not actual human sentiments like trust, being treated/supported well, having your desires/preferences actually met, even when they don't have to be for you to buy something, and agreeing with the direction of the company you buy from.

"Are they giving us money" can approximate those factors, but it is at best only that - an approximation - and failure to understand that leads to both the initial strategy problems that perfect-stormed into Nokia's stock losses the last three years, and to this little response to EloBalmer's announcement, because if it's the only thing you see, you will fail to consider the things being approximated, which is where success and profits ultimately lie in the long-term.