Ballmer To Retire 633
Today Microsoft announced that CEO Steve Ballmer will be retiring within the next 12 months. He said, "There is never a perfect time for this type of transition, but now is the right time. ... My original thoughts on timing would have had my retirement happen in the middle of our company’s transformation to a devices and services company. We need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new direction." Ballmer, 57, has been Microsoft's CEO since taking over the role from Bill Gates in January, 2000. The company's board of directors has formed a committee to find a replacement for Ballmer, and he will continue his duties until a new CEO is found. Questions about Ballmer's fitness to remain CEO have been circulating for the past several years, particularly after the company struggled to get a foothold in the mobile market. It will be interesting to see how this affects Microsoft's stock price. Upon retirement, Ballmer will be able to cash out hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Microsoft stock.
In the next 12 months... (Score:5, Funny)
He can't even retire properly, should have done so years ago.
Chairs just won't fly around the same without him
Re:In the next 12 months... (Score:5, Funny)
That should be a +6 (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the first non-lame chair joke I heard in a long time.
Hah! Slashdot likes Ballmer more than the Press. (Score:5, Insightful)
From a May 12, 2013 article in Forbes: Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, "Should Have Already Been Fired." Quote from the article: [forbes.com] "Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today."
More about Steve Ballmer from that article: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs."
Scroll down in this article [modgadgets.com] to see Businessweek's January 16, 2013 cover that called Steve Ballmer "Monkey Boy". The cover says "No More", but that doesn't take away from the fact that the magazine called him Monkey Boy -- on its cover. That's the greatest disrespect for a CEO I've ever seen.
Re:In the next 12 months... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:In the next 12 months... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:In the next 12 months... (Score:5, Funny)
Up more than 6% at the moment.
Drop from 10% up, typical profit taking. Probably Bill unloading a chunk.. more money to combat malaria and such
"Steve, could you do that again next week, the announcing your impending retirement?"
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In the next 12 months... (Score:5, Insightful)
Investors voice their opinion when a CEx quits, usually by selling. m$ stock went up, maybe more investers are favoring Linux?
It's about the most visible slap in the face to a CEO one can imagine - In one voice, from those who matter most to him it says, "We're glad you are leaving, please make it soon."
It may be lonely at the top, but this makes it humiliating, as well.
Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
This is bad news, having Ballmer in charge of MS is a good thing as he was slowly mismanaging the company into the ground. A successor could be more competent.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
This is bad news, having Ballmer in charge of MS is a good thing as he was slowly mismanaging the company into the ground. A successor could be more competent.
Listening to financial and investment analysts this morning, not one has a kind word for Steve. He has missed every big thing while pushing Zune, Windows Vista and then Windows 8, the XBox (games are working well for Atari, right?) Metro (which may be very cool to 10% of users) the RT tablet fiasco, honestly, why does this man actually receive bonuses? He's had the company coasting along on markets it was strong in, without creating new markets. Hardly visionary.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Funny)
Dude, the zune was awesome and I'd say the same thing about my surfce rt.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
He transitioned Microsoft from being a desktop company to selling a range of server solutions which are quite profitable. He pushed Microsoft up market. He didn't do much in consumer he did a ton in enterprise and the growth in sales shows that.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
One bright spot is Apple blatantly ripping off Metro for iOS 7, which is both a compliment to Microsoft and a way Apple may lose market share in portables.
There's a few things that MS have done that are fairly good. The UI for WinMo 7 / 8 is good; they're looked at the rest of the market, and they've genuinely tried to improve on that. Equally, the XBox Kinect was an innovative product that truly deserves credit.
And yet, once these products finally reach market, once upper management have decided how the market should be segmented, how the product will be marketed, it turns to shit. And that's the kind of "magic" that Ballmer brought to the table. That's what he did best... screw things up.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Disagree (Score:4, Informative)
Equally, the XBox Kinect was an innovative product that truly deserves credit.
They didn't invent it though, they licensed the most critical parts
http://www.primesense.com/casestudies/kinect/ [primesense.com]
Totally different (Score:4, Informative)
One bright spot is Apple blatantly ripping off Metro for iOS 7
You couldn't be more wrong and ignorant if you tried.
Just because they both dropped 3D bevels does not make them the same.
iOS does not have clipped areas like Metro, and has multiple layers of depth totally UNLIKE metro.
What's sad is most of the world thinks as you do and has no idea what is to come.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Funny)
Who knows? He might even get ousted after a huge sex scandal that shades what you listed. Think about it.
Why would you bring something like that up? Now I pictured him humping a secretary grunting "Developper Developper Developper!" and my brain bluescreened.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
This is bad news, having Ballmer in charge of MS is a good thing as he was slowly mismanaging the company into the ground. A successor could be more competent.
Bad news for competitors ... if Microsoft pick a replacement with the vision and ruthlessness of an older, wiser Steve Jobs. Even half a Jobs would turn Microsoft around from the stagnating business it has become.
Easy shoes to fill, because even Goofy could have done as well.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Funny)
Even half a Jobs would turn Microsoft around from the stagnating business it has become.
In this economy, good luck finding even a part-time-Jobs.
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Re:Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you want Microsoft to fail? They are no longer a monopoly. Competition is good.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
They're a very bad influence on the industry and are still trying to regain their monopoly (see: UEFI secure boot).
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
all companies want a monopoly. microsoft isnt unique in this regard. monopoly/homogenization is one of the natural products/extremes of a competitive market.
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Disagree (Score:5, Funny)
I'd be willing to quit his job for half that.
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Re:Disagree (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, no. Look at MSFT ticker, it's up nearly 10%.
In summary: the fact that people like like you are on this website is a good indicator of why it is becoming fucking annoying to any person who actually knows anything.
Re:Disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
If stock price is anything to go by, then Microsoft has been a stable multi-billion dollar corporation throughout Ballmer's reign. Microsoft needs to change, but their presumed failure has, so far, been a mighty success compared to most other survivors of the .com crash.
Re:Joke's on MSFT! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is bad news, having Ballmer in charge of MS is a good thing as he was slowly mismanaging the company into the ground. A successor could be more competent.
Note that the same guys who put Ballmer in charge will be picking his successor. We might not have anything to worry about. ;-)
Well, the board have not been happy with him for years, but he was Bill's BFF so there was little the board could do. I gather Bill or his foundation still control a sizable investment portfolio in MSFT. Perhaps they'll grow some spines and fight for a better leader, not yet-another-BFF-of-Bill.
fast forward to mid-2014: Melinda chose him, she liked his hair and the color of his eyes.
Ballmer's replacement - a possible strategy? (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps they'll grow some spines and fight for a better leader, not yet-another-BFF-of-Bill.
Unfortunately for them, a significant number of senior leadership figures at Microsoft who might have been credible candidates have instead left the company in recent years. Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, that limits the talent pool from in-house.
It will be interesting to see whether they can attract someone good from outside. Big tech firms don't seem to have a great track record in that respect lately, though perhaps that perception is partly because we hear about the spectacular failures at places like HP but modest success stories go mostly unreported.
Either way, MS still has an effective monopoly on desktops, a significant presence in business server rooms, a substantial war chest, and a lot of smart people. Someone with a better vision for how to use those assets than "It's like Apple but for people who didn't buy Apple yet" might do well there.
I've suggested previously, even before the post-Snowden cloud/privacy concerns, that Microsoft could be in a very strong position if they swam across the current a little and promoted private clouds. It looks like a much more natural fit for their portfolio and expertise, it plays on competitors' weaknesses, and it plays to their strengths as an established provider on both client and server ends for business. It even gives them a potential way into the mobile market, via consumer-friendly devices with integral BYOD features for those who also want to use them for business but don't want to hand over the root password to corporate sysadmins. Any takers? :-)
Re:In the next 12 months... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
*golf clap*
Re:In the next 12 months... (Score:5, Funny)
12 months left on his Windows Phone contract ... (Score:5, Funny)
He needs 12 months because his retirement is behind schedule. And of course, just days after his retirement, he will have to download all the new retirement patches and Retirement Service Pack 2.0.
No. He has 12 months left on his Windows Phone contract. Days after retirement he will get an iPhone 5S.
Re:In the next 12 months... (Score:5, Funny)
He can't even retire properly, should have done so years ago.
Chairs just won't fly around the same without him
Hope they tell him not to let the chair hit him on the way out.
Re:In the next 12 months... (Score:4, Funny)
From throwing chairs to rocking them.
Good news for stockholders (Score:5, Funny)
...in response, Microsoft's stock jumps up 10%
Re:Good news for stockholders (Score:5, Informative)
Actually opened $2.78 up or about 8.7% so yea basically
Re:Good news for stockholders (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good news for stockholders (Score:5, Insightful)
That and NASDAQ was down yesterday due to a computer glitch. Chances are investors are doing double time to get back.
Re:Good news for stockholders (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good news for stockholders (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Good news for stockholders (Score:5, Insightful)
Good guess, but I think you mostly mirrored what a lot of people think -- that clearly Ballmer hasn't fully understood the market in some places, and that Microsoft has had some misses lately.
Those are the kinds of things that, while not personally responsible for every detail, Ballmer as CEO gets to 'own' and take the blame for.
Microsoft may or may not fare better without Ballmer, but if the market watchers are looking at things which could bring Microsoft out of these doldrums, then the perception that his departure could change is bound to lift the stock.
Of course, this being the stock market, everybody is going to be buying and selling now based on what they think will be happening in 12 months or more from now -- and in 12 months, they'll be doing it based on something totally unrelated to this.
I will be interested to see if the next CEO is so arrogantly out of touch with what people want, or will continue with the standard party line of "we can do no wrong and people really want these things" even when nobody is buying them.
Re:Good news for stockholders (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the next CEO has a few big challenges on his hands. I'd highlight three in particular:
First, he needs to get the company out of the mindset that has it still behaving as though it commands monopoly power. It doesn't, or at least, it doesn't in many of the markets where it now needs to compete. It found that out with with the XBox One launch, where it thought that it had the power to force customers to accept things they didn't want to, then was forced into an embarrassing U-turn when Sony offered a viable alternative. It is finding that out in the mobile and tablet marketplaces, which it came to as a late entrant and failed to provide reasons for people to switch. And it's about to find that out on the desktop, where the message coming through on Windows 8 is that even die-hard Windows users will bide their time and see what else comes along rather than making the shift to an operating system that forces unwanted changes onto them.
Second, he needs to sort out communications. MS does have some good products. The Surface is by no means bad - but it was marketed via that whole incomrpehensible break dancing thing. The XBox One is turning into a decent product (thanks to the aforementioned U-Turns), but every time MS speaks about it, their message comes over as either an apology or a horribly mis-aimed pitch for TV services. MS needs to stop being afraid of selling its products on the basis of its features, rather than coming over like an embarrassing parent trying to be trendy at a teen disco. The obvious answer to the old "I'm a Mac, he's a PC" advertising slur was "yeah, Mac guy looks pretty, but he's actually useless. Look at what PC guy can do". They always seemed curiously afraid to go there.
Thirdly, judging by the stories that come out of the company, the new CEO needs to sort out some of the staffing and corporate culture issues. MS increasingly looks and sounds like a public sector bureaucracy. Its stack-ranking system in particular is a cack-handed system that's been demonstrated to destroy morale and drive down performance wherever it's used. If MS doesn't want to reduce the size of its workforce, then it needs to adapt its organisation structures in such a way that they actually enable an organisation of that size to respond to new challenges flexibly. That probably means a lot more internal devolution (including over staffing issues).
Re:Good news for stockholders (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the next CEO has a few big challenges on his hands. I'd highlight three in particular:
First, he needs to get the company out of the mindset that has it still behaving as though it commands monopoly power. It doesn't, or at least, it doesn't in many of the markets where it now needs to compete. It found that out with with the XBox One launch, where it thought that it had the power to force customers to accept things they didn't want to, then was forced into an embarrassing U-turn when Sony offered a viable alternative. It is finding that out in the mobile and tablet marketplaces, which it came to as a late entrant and failed to provide reasons for people to switch. And it's about to find that out on the desktop, where the message coming through on Windows 8 is that even die-hard Windows users will bide their time and see what else comes along rather than making the shift to an operating system that forces unwanted changes onto them.
Microsoft need to spin off XBox. They are an enterprise technology/consumer technology company and this foray into home entertainment is not within their core. Heck, why not buy a movie studio and a chain of fast food restaurants while they are at it. Sell it off, hold a stake in if they wish, but get their attention back to technology.
Re:Good news for stockholders (Score:5, Insightful)
The big thing? Games...
Apple's been culturally hostile to gaming for most of its history. And yet it remains a huge driver of home computer sales and platform choice - but it never so much as figures in MS's OS advertising.
Re:Good news for stockholders (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
It's closing, but only very slowly. Check the number of Mac games on Steam and it's still tiny.
If one or two big publishers were to say "we no longer target Windows as a platform, instead we target Steam, which means PC, Mac (plus Linux?)" that might change things.
But publishers generally need a lot of convincing to do that kind of thing and Apple's attitude is such that they will never even put out the feelers.
Re:Good news for stockholders (Score:4, Interesting)
No, gaming is moving away from computers, period. Mostly due to high piracy rates. It's also helped by Apple's more... favorable stance towards gaming (Jobs was not a fan of games, and in fact, wanted to ban games from the Mac way back in 1984).
Thing is, gaming's moved on. The PC had high piracy rates and extreme avoidance of DRM, so AAA publishers started moving towards consoles (which were getting more powerful at the time that it was doable).
Then Apple opened the App Store, which despite its approval requirements, thousands of indie devs flocked there and made mobile gaming a huge thing. In fact, a casualty of this was the casual arcade - a $2B industry in 2007, which collapsed to a mere $300M in 2008. These were from arcade machines that were put in places like a Laundromat and such and were played while people waited. In 2008, with the release of the App Store, people were gaming on their phones instead of putting quarters in the machine.
Sure we all mock how mobile games are crap (like anything, 90% of it IS crap), but it's a powerful force - how indie devs have prospered on the PC, and now iOS and Android. And the platforms have shifted too - fewer games are Windows-only and use of cross platform (iOS/Android/Windows/OS X/Linux/etc) tools have made most indie games available on at least three platforms - either Windows/iOS/Android, or Windows/OS X/Linux.
Gaming on Windows is mostly due to it "just being there" - we're talking desktop OS with 90+% marketshare. But a number of hours spent playing is taken up on iOS and Android as well. And AAA titles are more or less mostly on consoles now - few PC only devs exist (Valve, Blizzard being most prominent, but Valve now makes for OS X and Linux, and Blizzard is going to consoles).
Windows' days as a gaming platform are heavily numbered - most games are available on other platforms or even completely platform independent (browser based gaming).
Re:Good news for stockholders (Score:5, Insightful)
Disagree very strongly here. PC gaming is in a much better place than it was a few years ago. Back then, it was a toss-up as to whether the PC got a port of major multi-platform console games and, if it did, it usually got the crappy port. For the last 12 months or so, the PC has been the primary platform for most releases. The piracy rates and DRM-avoidance thing is a rather tired straw-man. PC gamers accept Steam DRM. Developers mostly live with the fact that somebody really determined can break Steam DRM.
The next-gen console may shift the balance back to the consoles. That's what usually happens early in a console cycle. If so, it will be a temporary thing (just as the current console decline is probably a temporary thing).
The App Store looked potent a couple of years ago, but it's losing momentum as a gaming platform - largely because of diminishing returns on IAP laden pay-to-win games. The bubble on those has already burst - Zynga and the other companies which rode the crest of it are now going to the wall.
PC gaming has been "dying" ever since I first started playing PC games myself in 1990. It's no more dying now than it was then.
Re:Good news for stockholders (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt that, as CEO, he actually did intend to make the company do better.
If someone truly wanted to put a company like Microsoft into the shitter, it's do-able, but takes a lot of effort. And you have to assume there are other people around who would be trying to stop it.
So, to me at least, it comes down to if Microsoft going forward is going to be capable of truly understanding what aspects of successful products people want, and actually being able to execute on delivering that. In the past, Microsoft has usually missed the boat on the execution and kept coming back to "Office + Outlook" as the entire purpose behind computers.
It's like when the first iMacs came out -- people rushed to put Windows machines in lovely candy colored cases, but underneath was the same old crashy turd. It wasn't just the bright colored cases that made it successful, it was the actual user experience.
If you only copy the superficial stuff and think that's close enough, you may never actually understand why your product isn't doing as well -- because all you see is that you also have a tangerine colored case, and people clearly want tangerine colored cases, so why aren't they buying your tangerine colored case?
If you don't realize that customers don't like the toxic fumes and broken glass in your product, you keep looking at the case. They're not just buying your competitor for the pretty case, but because they don't want the toxic fumes and broken glass you're giving them.
And I think it's that where Microsoft has been missing the plot the last few years.
Ballmer leaving. (Score:4, Funny)
I'm so happy I could throw a chair!
Re:Ballmer leaving. (Score:5, Funny)
Is that you Steven Sinofsky?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hurray for Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
Best news I've heard from a local employer in years !
Now to see if it's not too late to save the company after he's driven off so many of their top, talented people.
Re: (Score:3)
And by clarity you mean their monopolistic practices that they were convicted of?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corporation [wikipedia.org]
But I don't expect much because winners write the history and I had to go down all the way to the Judgment section to see that term used. Convicted monopolist.
CNN breaking news headline (Score:5, Funny)
"Microsoft says CEO Steve Ballmer will retire within 12 months. No successor named. Stock surges."
Captcha: finally
Still funny as hell (Score:5, Funny)
I love how he can state something as truth at the beginning of a sentence and then make a fool of himself by the end of it.
Re:Still funny as hell (Score:4, Insightful)
Virg
Re:Still funny as hell (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good [wikipedia.org]
Ballmer made $20 billion for investors today (Score:3)
It is funny that the value of MSFT with Ballmer in it is $20 Billion less than MSFT without Ballmer in it!
Re:Ballmer made $20 billion for investors today (Score:5, Informative)
Today, on the initial news, based on speculative market players making trades ... by next week the price of Microsoft will be fluctuating on some other random basis.
I've always found the stock market to be amusing -- because it makes huge swings on things which haven't happened yet, and by the time those things happen they've moved on to being excited/angry about something else entirely.
It's almost as if the stock market is more valuable at predicting the emotions of investors, than any actual financial factors. And in many cases, the actual financials don't seem important -- like when companies are worth more than they're going to earn for the next 20 years.
Re:Ballmer made $20 billion for investors today (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the direction that MS has been in for 5 years and the fact they are in such a hard sealed corporate bubble, hiring Carly (and Carly's mouth) would not be a very big surprise. She's got the ego the size of Africa and she's never right about anything. It seems an appropriate substitute for Ballmer.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What Microsoft needs (Score:5, Interesting)
Chair-monkey retires, stock up 9% (Score:5, Insightful)
I only hope he is replaced with someone as ineffective as he was. The last thing the world needs is an evil monopolist running Microsoft who actually knows what he is doing.
Re:Chair-monkey retires, stock up 9% (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the better outcome would be if he were replaced by someone who turns Microsoft into a non-evil success company. I prefer a successful good to a failing evil.
Re: (Score:3)
I think the better outcome would be if he were replaced by someone who turns Microsoft into a non-evil success company. I prefer a successful good to a failing evil.
Can I have a chocolate unicorn with a saddle bad full of 20 Zetabyte SSDs? I mean we are wishing for miracles here.
Ballmer is evidence of the role of luck in life (Score:5, Insightful)
Based on his overall personality, I strongly suspect that if Steve Ballmer hadn't just happened to be college buddies with BillG and Paul Allen, chances are pretty good he'd be selling used cars somewhere and enjoying the nearest football team. Instead, we're going to take him seriously for the rest of his natural life and possible beyond.
Steve Jobs Still A Better CEO (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Steve Jobs Still A Better CEO (Score:4, Informative)
There *was* a perfect time (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a perfect time for the transition:
Avoiding those disastrous products would have made Microsoft billions, and those decisions were made by you, Ballmer.
Re: (Score:3)
Badly executed maneuvers are worse than not entering a market space at all.
Nobel Prize as CEO (Score:5, Funny)
Death knell for Metro (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this "retirement" (which probably wasn't as voluntary as Ballmer and MS are pretending) spells doom for Metro, at least on the desktop. Virtually no one outside of MS actually likes it. The only reason why they haven't backed down on Metro on the desktop before now is that it is Ballmer's baby and he doesn't want to admit he screwed up. The next CEO will likely not have any such attachment, and will probably be much more willing to ditch Metro in response to market demands – or at least allow it to be an option that can be turned off completely, for a Win7-style experience.
Microsoft's foray into portable devices has been an abject failure. The smartest thing to do would be to focus on the business licenses that actually bring in the big bucks. That means stability, familiarity, and backwards compatibility – not flashy touch BS meant to appeal to non-technical home users.
Re: (Score:3)
True, but this is a problem with Microsoft in general, not just Ballmer. WinCE was released in Nov 1996, over 10 years before the iPhone. With a 10 year lead, WinCE was nothing ever than an also-ran, not even being able to beat PalmOS.
At least eight years too late... (Score:5, Insightful)
Balmer (Score:3)
How long until the Balmer movie is released?
Re:Balmer (Score:5, Informative)
He's featured in Pirate of Silicon Valley: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/ [imdb.com]
He's actually one of the more agreeable characters (and voiced by John Di Maggio aka the voice of Bender)
The Captain has left the building (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like the Captain of the Titanic is fleeing the sinking ship, after he turned the ship right into that iceberg.
Re: (Score:3)
We can only hope.... but you have to admit that it's going to take a mighty big course correction to fix their problems. Things that I personally think have been really bad decisions: Discontinuing technet; raising the price of the data center version of Windows server by 28%; the debacle that was the Surface; the metro interface (at least give people a choice of user interfaces); I mean I could go on for at least a few more paragraphs but those are the most recent things. Also this is a quote from one of m
Hazaa! (Score:4, Insightful)
This will be the best thing to happen to Microsoft in many years. Ballmer alienated customers, the public, the press, their employees, the enterprise and those who made their career out of Microsoft's products. 8.1's start button instead of start menu was the nail in the coffin for many, many people from a sheer contempt standpoint. Getting rid of technet and a hundred other things that showed their customers were viewed with contempt as the the enemy can all be cited as examples of why he had to go.
I wonder if they're bringing Bill Gates back (Score:3)
I mean, they would like to mirror Apples success. There is a certain part of me that wonders if Bill gates might be planning to come back in a the style of Steve Jobs. It would be very very tacky, but taste is not the MS strong suit.
So what would you do? (Score:3)
I forget exactly where Microsoft was when Balmer took over. Did they even have windows phone out? Was it still in the XP days or had Vista come out? Given the state of things, what should he have done differently?
A better question: where should Microsoft go now? They have a shrinking desktop market. Nobody seems to be buying either their phones or their tablets. They bought Skype, making them more or less the dominant player in VOIP services. The Xbox One pre-launch has been a mess. But Xbox is hugely popular, and people happily fork over $50 a year to subscribe to Xbox Live Gold. Where would you take Microsoft from here?
Correction (Score:4, Insightful)
Questions about Ballmer's fitness to remain CEO have been circulating for the past several years, particularly after the company struggled to keep a foothold in the mobile market.
LMFTFY. MS had Windows Mobile and Windows Tablets before the iPhone and iPad. They were uninspired and sometimes buggy translations of the Windows paradigm. MS had only lately realized that these devices need a different experience than Windows. However Ballmer still considers an iPad as a crippled PC. Well that crippled PC outsells PCs in some quarters making Apple the #1 PC seller. A key difference is that Apple is making tons of profit on it unlike the OEMs which make tiny margins on their PCs.
Re:Surface (Score:5, Informative)
Failure of Windows 8
Failure of Xbox One
Failure of Vista
Failure of the Kin
Failure of the Zune
Failure of Windows Phone 7
Failure of Windows Phone 8
Need I go on? You can only fuck up so many times before the board sends you packing. I'm amazed he lasted this long.
Re:Surface (Score:4, Informative)
Its a bit harsh to say the Xbox One has failed sure its had some bad press and the flip flopping on policies that has followed.
But its not out yet.
And its still sold out nearly everywhere like the PS4.
It would be fair to say it in 12 months time when he is leaving (whatever state it's in then)
Re:Surface (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of this I would say isn't Microsoft's fault for the failures. But other disruptive technologies forcing them to move faster then a company its size.
Apple in essence gave up Macs as their business model going to smaller devices.
the iPod only really loss its dominance after other companies started making Smart Phones, there was never an iPod killer, the iPod killer with the iPhone.
the iPhone in essence gave Apple a 2 year head start in the smart phone market, causing other companies to play catch-up including Microsoft. During this head start they were able to get a bunch of apps, and also push the iPad tablet market, giving an other year push.
Microsoft was working on their own future plans, but was disrupted by Apple, and all its other competitors following suit.
Microsoft is the Desktop Market. They were planning new and great things for the desktop, as seen with Windows 7, which really did shut Apple up in their I am a Mac and I am a PC adds. But their name is so connected to desktop it was a hard sell to reach out of it.
MS blew it big on DRM (Score:5, Interesting)
And that is totally MS's fault. They still don't get it. If they did, they would remove all DRM from Windows. That includes the whole product key and activation nonsense they continue to harass all users with, legitimate and otherwise.
There was a day when MS was cool. They broke the early Office software monopolies, software such as Word Perfect. They reduced Apple and their MacIntosh to a small niche market. MacIntoshes were more user friendy, but MS-DOS on a PC was way, way cheaper. MS didn't rest on their laurels either, they rolled out Windows to challenge the Macs. Then in the 1990s, MS started to slip. MS's slowness gave IBM a chance to grab back the OS crown with OS/2. Lucky for MS, IBM blew it. MS also nearly got the Internet wrong. Remember that at first they pooh-poohed browsers. They came to their senses in time, barely. Windows 95 was very nearly too late. In the early 2000s, even the anti-trust conviction didn't much damage the MS brand. People still believed MS knew tech.
But now? MS has made many mistakes, but I could hardly believe it some years back when MS signed onto the RIAA and MPAA position on DRM. One might expect entertainment organizations to fail to understand that DRM is a bad idea, but a tech company? MS should have been savvier than that. Instead, they happily poodled to the RIAA! Let the entertainment industry do their thinking for them! They should have been educating the entertainment giants, not the other way around. It was a terrible show of incompetence and anti-customer positioning. Having backed themselves into a corner on DRM, they then turned to their customers and compounded the mistake, trying to sell us on the idea that DRM is good for us, talking down to us most insultingly. DRM helps stop us from being naughty pirates, and that's why it's good for us, right? Windows Genuine Advantage, ha ha! MS treated those moronic entertainment moguls like they really know stuff, and then treated their customers, many of whom are quite tech savvy, like a pack of adolescents who would try to sneak a few beers if they weren't carded all the time. They further magified the disaster by then insisting that Vista was doing very well. MS lost a great deal of credibilty.
It is only sheer size and inertia that has allowed MS to survive such bad blunders. I don't know how much more blundering MS can tolerate. Quite a bit, I suppose. Will they pick a decent CEO? There any reason to think they will pick a winner there?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's easy to cherry pick. Watch, I can do it too-
Success of Windows 7
Success of Windows Server
Success of SQL Server
Success of Azure
Success of XBOX 360
Success of XBOX Live
Success of Office 365
Success of Lync
Success of SharePoint
Looky here, my list is longer than yours.
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Success of SharePoint?
Really? I thought it was dieing out now that most had figured out it really cannot be managed by non-IT folks. Which is how they sold it. Office 365 is a little early to call a success and I bet it will be a long time before it is in the enterprise. Azure is again too early to call, but looks good. If MS could deal with losing a little bit of the desktop market all this stuff could have been much better. Sharepoint for example should not be such a PITA for folks not running windows and
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Windows 7 (lost market share to Apple OS X)
Windows Server (lost market share to Linux)
SQL Server (lost market share to a variety of competitors)
Azure (new product, but not market leader)
XBox 360 (red ring of death and years of losses due to those hardware failures)
XBox Live +1 here for a legit success
Office 365 (jury is out)
Lync (New name for communicator. Not sure that this makes MS extra money or is a real success. I don't know that this has mass adoption)
SharePoint (I wouldn't remotely call this a succes
Re:They are still screwed (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that Microsoft is 'late to the party', it's simply that they make bad products.
Apple was late to the tablet party but ended up dominating it with pretty and functional products.
Re:They are still screwed (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not that Microsoft is 'late to the party', it's simply that they make bad products.
Apple was late to the tablet party but ended up dominating it with pretty and functional products.
As far as tablets go, Microsoft was there before Apple....they just did it wrong. It's kind of like Microsoft throws a party and nobody shows up. Then Apple throws a party, has the Rolling Stones there, and then everybody shows up. So Microsoft has another party with a Rolling Stones cover band and wonders why nobody is showing up.
Every once in awhile they come out with something good, but it's a few years too late...take the latest Zune. Too bad everybody was using their phones to play mp3s by that time.
Re:Truthful (Score:4, Insightful)
My prayers have been answered.
How so? Do you have a lot of Microsoft stock or you just hate the IT world and want it to suffer more years of monopoly abuse?
Re:Truthful (Score:4, Insightful)
How so? Do you have a lot of Microsoft stock or you just hate the IT world and want it to suffer more years of monopoly abuse?
Its amazing that people still talk about Microsoft being a monopoly. The boogeyman of the late 90's and early 2000's is long gone.
Markets Microsoft currently controls:
Markets Microsoft currently fights for control:
Markets either Microsoft lost or cant put a dent into:
The monopoly just doesn't exist anymore The government stepped in over the monopoly and forced their hand. So Microsoft entered markets that already existed and their products either flopped or fight for market share. The markets they did control like Web Browser saw increased competition and eventually Microsoft lost their grip which forced them to heavily improve Internet Explorer while continuing to lose market share. And the markets they still own they own because well the competition cant seem to put a dent into the market.
Re:Truthful (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
+7.12%.
Ballmer leaving is worth billions!
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or especially one not at the office...
Re: (Score:3)