Stephen Elop could rule the roost as Microsoft CEO thanks to picture-perfect career history

Roles at Adobe, Juniper and recent Nokia experiences mean return to Redmond is no surprise

When Stephen Elop was appointed chief executive at Nokia in 2010, he no doubt allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction on his career, especially as many years ago things would have felt less glamourous when he was CIO at fast-food chain Boston Chicken.

Almost 20 years on from that time, Elop was heading to Nokia as the first foreigner to hold the top job there in its 150 years of history, a period that had seen it make everything from paper to mobile phones.

However, hard work lay head. Having dominated the mobile landscape as recently as 2006, by 2010 the firm was in crisis. Apple and (ironically now) BlackBerry were destroying its market share with innovative smartphones that made Nokia feature phones look archaic.

Elop would have known the situation was bad and that Symbian, beloved though it was by millions, would have to go. The only alternatives were Android, or his former employer's new Windows Phone platform. He went for the latter.

A Trojan horse?

Immediately, questions swirled. Was he a mole, sent in to soften up Nokia by making layoffs, cutting costs and lowering the share price to help Microsoft swoop in for the firm at a lower cost?

Elop faced these questions a week after he made the deal with Microsoft when an audience member at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona shouted: "Are you a Trojan horse?"

Naturally, he denied this: "The obvious answer is no. We made sure that the entire management team was involved in the process, and of course the board of directors of Nokia are the only ones who can make this significant of a decision about Nokia," he said.

Of course, though, given the announcement this week that Microsoft is going to pay around €5.44bn for Nokia's phone business, including some patent licensing, the question from the anonymous audience member some two and half a years ago seems prescient.

It is perhaps a touch too far into the realms of outright conspiracy theory to suggest from day one that Elop was sent with the express intention of grinding Nokia down for Microsoft, but the clues are there. He never even moved his family to Finland.

Regardless of this, Elop's time at Nokia has seen the firm drag itself out of the doldrums - or off a burning platform to use Elop's own term - and begin to get back into the mobile market. It may not be much but Nokia's growth over the past two and a bit years has been far better than BlackBerry.

It has done this by grabbing headlines with its innovations - notably incredible camera technology - and with slow but steadily rising sales in emerging markets where its Lumia 520 is proving enticing to first-time smartphone buyers.

This work has helped give Elop a solid grounding in the mobile market, and no doubt he is considering tablets too for the Lumia brand, as another key area of growth all hardware vendors must play in.

Perfect timing

This is apt timing given the huge push taking place at Microsoft to become a 'devices and services' company, in a strategy outlined by current Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer earlier this year.

Now, with Ballmer set to retire, and Elop returning to the Microsoft fold in a role that will see him move above Microsoft stalwart Julie Larson-Green (also a potential candidate for the top role), it seems likely he could be being prepared for the chief executive role.

What's more, while his device experience is a huge boon for a company as it now considers devices vital for its future, Elop also has solid business experience at all levels.

He's held roles ranging from chief operating officer at Juniper Network to president of worldwide field operations at Adobe, and, of course, there was that time at Boston Chicken.

Most tellingly, though, he was head of Microsoft's business division, responsible for the Microsoft Office and Microsoft Dynamics line of products, as well as being central to the launch of Office 2010 at the firm.

This breadth of business experience, including time spend on Microsoft's key line of business services to enterprises, gives him a unique combination of attributes that means the smart money should be on Elop to be the head of Microsoft by the end of 2014.

Talking of smart money… even if my arguments don't convince you, the fact Ladbrokes slashed his odds for the top role from 5/1 to 2/5 after the Nokia deal yesterday should tell you all you need to know. After all, the bookies are rarely wrong.