Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

That's sort of the point... Microsoft's game plan ought not to have started with the iPhone launch.

Keynesian beauty contest etc

GE has underperformed the S&P by 40% since Immelt took over, Microsoft by 30%, Walmart by 40%, and while both Lampert and Chambers created value for a while, their companies have substantially trailed the market over the last 3 and 10 years, respectively.

Ballmer is perhaps guilty of inheriting a growth company just as it stopped growing, but you can't deny that Microsoft has essentially stopped growing under his watch.

This is so false it is painful for me to read. I'm embarrassed for the author.

"The company's core competency is a process it uses for entering and consuming existing industries. After it enters a market, it rides off the innovations of its competitors, uses its existing brand power and sheer size to tackle a large surface area at the bottom of the market, and then, finally, it develops a valuable platform on top of the new market. As the platform grows, it slowly squeezes out the existing players."

Name one instance of this in the past 15 years. One. Oh wait, the author lists a few!

Xbox? Well, they have operated at a loss for the first seven years or so, ousted the entire create leadership team (Bach and Allard say howdy), and now are turning nice sums of coin. But this isn't truly Microsofts win, it is the entire industry's failures. Nintendo and Sony are seeing bad times. The currency difference is hurting Japanese companies, who are tired of innovating. Even many lead game designers are admitting the Japanese are years behind the US market. With Sony in turmoil and Nintendo trying to figure out how to right the ship, it is no wonder the years Xbox has seen a profit are only recently.

"Windows Mobile"

In 2010 Ballmer himself said they' lost a "whole generation of users". They dropped the ball so hard that even after the debut of the iPhone, when Google realized it was time to explore a new approach to Android, Ballmer didn't understand why it would be popular. Ballmer displayed a weak passion for mobile yes, but the crime here is that he displays no vision.

Windows 7 is years too late. Nokia will die in a vain attempt to give this OS a chance, but it will never work. The audience only sees two contenders in the ring.

"Windows" This is the only horse worth mentioning. It, and thus Office, are the default winners. Xerox, Kleenex, and Windows. They win this category by default as 99% of users could care less about the OS they use.

But there are an insane amount of products not mentioned here! Where are the Zunes, the silverlights, the Vistas, or the Azures? There are hundreds of horrific decisions we all watch spiral out of control. Remember the Kin? How I so wanted to play with its awkwardness. Or the Courier? How I pulled at my hair when they killed not only the product, but laid off the entire team. Remember Ensemble or Bizzare Creations? They made some beautiful games. Remember Surface? Remember a decade of IE's disgraceful finger in the face of all web users?

This is a history of successes? It sounds like a meandering path of exploration, where one in one hundred connects. This is luck.

The overall premise here is that Microsoft deserves a gold star for existing. They made 6.3B profit last quarter! Give them a break.

For comparison, Apple made 11.6B profit last quarter. That was a 47% increase from the previous year, which also had a 41% increase. These products were ideas that Microsoft had left behind, too busy swerving around trying to find a mission. Apple took the best ideas and developed a valuable ecosystem to grow as a platform. Sound familiar?