Even before Microsoft announced that it was buying Nokia's phone business, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop was a favourite to replace Ballmer, at least on the betting sites



From Techradar:

For many people that's because of his bold approach at Nokia, from his burning platform memo to mocking Samsung at the Lumia 920 announcement for announcing a phone they couldn't even demonstrate. He can be outspoken: back in 2009 he called the idea of putting everything in the cloud instead of using software on a device hogwash. But his record on predicting trends is generally better than that statement suggests: at the same time he talked about consumer technology and social networks arriving inside companies, and both are commonplace now.He's certainly pragmatic. Faced with operator complaints about Skype undermining call revenue, he cleverly turned it into a way of working with the networks: Instead of them just complaining about Skype, we can have a conversation. Some operators are looking at bundling Lumia, Skype and their own services with higher-bandwidth allotments to actually charge the consumer more and generate more revenue.Microsoft: emphasis on Start Screen shackled Windows 8But he also managed to turn around Nokia's culture, which ranged from paranoid (a Nokia developer once told me the company couldn't open source its LifeBlog software because people hated Nokia and wouldn't participate) to stodgy.

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