A lot supported Forbes' Adam Hartung, but the number that rose up and spoke in support of Steve is amazing. The summary, Microsoft and Balmer are doing averagely well and shouldn't be tagged with that WORST label thing.
Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
101–110 of 122 posts
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#102Who actually is this Dustin Curtis guy? Looking at the list of the members of the "svbtle blog network" (here: http://svbtle.com/), he seems to be the only one without a company or achievement by his name (instead, he's labelled as "villain"). His writing is good, I'm just wondering who he is :-)
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#103"Microsoft's execution in mobile has been excellent". This could not be farther from reality. Microsoft has consistently lost money in the mobile market, to a point they are ashamed of it, and don't even give sale figures for the Windows Phone OS anymore. Profits from this business unit is reported in the "Entertainment and Devices" unit, which has turned a loss this quarter, again, of $229M. The only argument the au…
Windows Phone 7 could have the slickest API, the best hardware, the largest numbers of users, and the most developer and customer-friendly application market and I would still resist making apps for them. This is a company that has a long and storied history of sitting on their ass and doing nothing to push the state of the art, once they've captured market share. Their mobile strategy over the past decade is itself a good example of this. And it isn't like there has been some big culture shift over there that might put the lie to this, either. In fact it seems to be getting worse.
(Although, in fact, if they were to pull off all of the above without e.g. first buying Samsung or some bullshit, my opinion of their capabilities and culture might need some reworking at that point.)
Unless you're really exciting by the prospect of developing for Windows Phone 7 for the next fifteen years, you should be glad MS barely qualifies as an also-ran in the smartphone game, and hope that never changes.
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#104The contrarian opinion is refreshing but the fact is that Microsoft does not own any of the platforms that emerged in the past 10 years, maybe with the exception of game consoles, which is a rather fleeting business.
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#105"Microsoft's execution in mobile has been excellent". This could not be farther from reality. Microsoft has consistently lost money in the mobile market, to a point they are ashamed of it, and don't even give sale figures for the Windows Phone OS anymore. Profits from this business unit is reported in the "Entertainment and Devices" unit, which has turned a loss this quarter, again, of $229M. The only argument the au…
They should make a stripped down, Windows-based feature phone. Something simple, like Nokia used to be famous for, solid and simple. They could even partner with Nokia ...
According to what's known this far, Nokia's new feature phone OS is not Windows Phone but Meltemi.
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Welcome to consumer electronics. Comparatively speaking, Microsoft has fared quite well.
Comparatively speaking, Apple has done much better in consumer electronics.
Sure. Apple has done spectacularly well. It's a big jump from "not as good as Apple" to "worst CEO in America".
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#107Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Comparatively speaking, Apple has done much better in consumer electronics.
Sure. Apple has done spectacularly well. It's a big jump from "not as good as Apple" to "worst CEO in America".
I won't make any judgement on leadership, and want to just point out this fact. A peer of Microsoft is succeeding very well in consumer electronics, meaning Microsoft could potentially as well and would become insanely successful (big profits beyond enterprise). Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft and so would love for them to realize that potential. I'm sure it is much more complicated than "replace CEO" to get there.
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "The stock market" Microsoft isn't beholden to the stock market in the way Google or Apple are. The two largest shareholders are Gates and Balmer. They have about 9% of the company between them - that's more than the three largest institutional investors. As part of Dow Jones Industrial Average, many index funds have to hold Microsoft stock and have a strong disincentive to create turmoil which might drive the pric…
Page Brin and Schmidt own over half of GOOG voting shares, and intend to never sell off their majority stake. I expect Jobs was similar, but what happened with his estate?
Jobs sold his founder Apple stock in the 80s (except for exactly one share), and I don't think he ever amassed very much of it after he came back, definitely not enough to be considered a major holder.
Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
#110"Microsoft's execution in mobile has been excellent". This could not be farther from reality. Microsoft has consistently lost money in the mobile market, to a point they are ashamed of it, and don't even give sale figures for the Windows Phone OS anymore. Profits from this business unit is reported in the "Entertainment and Devices" unit, which has turned a loss this quarter, again, of $229M. The only argument the au…
I think people are also conveniently forgetting that the first Windows Mobile reboot was ACTUALLY the Kin. Its funny to look back at it now, but the Kin cost Microsoft 2 years as well as a ton of talented engineers.
Just imagine what things would be like if WP7 was released when the Kin was ... it probably would have been even earlier than that if they had focused all of their effort on WP instead of fragmenting the company (and causing a ton of internal strife) between the Kin and WP. We would be looking at a much different situation right now.