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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

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Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#261

Post by deveac »

silverlake wrote: post #124
lbarrow wrote: post #23

He'll be remembered as a terrible CEO. Ballmer took over as CEO in 2000. In the 13 years since then, Apple has experienced an unprecedented resurgence. Google and Facebook have gone from being obscure startups to giants. The tech industry went through the bubble, recovered, and today is stronger than ever. What happened to Microsoft? While the rest of the tech sector exploded and prospered, it stayed still. A MSFT sh…

To be fair, MSFT revenue and net income has climbed steadily these past 10 years. AAPL finally overtook them in 2011-12. Microsoft very publically bumbles their consumer products, but their enterprise division is doing well AFAIK. And that's a steady reliable revenue stream compared to the fickle consumer market. AAPL is one bad iPhone away from getting beaten by Samsung.

>Microsoft very publically bumbles their consumer products, but their enterprise division is doing well AFAIK.

MS is surprisingly well rounded regarding where its revenue comes from. More so than I had assumed reading a lot of the reporting.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/microsoft-apple-and-google-wh...

>AAPL is one bad iPhone away from getting beaten by Samsung.

Look at how much of Apple's revenue is just iOS. Crazy. I'm not sure that Samsung is the threat, as they are just a hardware vendor like Apple, but without the profitable app and digital goods store (I'm assuming that App Store revenue is falling under iPhone/iPad in chart but could be wrong). I also see Apple more willing to change the business it is in if it needs to than some of its competitors. Apple got a lot of flack for the Maps "debacle," but it was a bold and decisive move. Apple couldn't come to terms with Google so they just built their own global mapping service. With so many eggs in one basket though, the revenue is certainly Apple's to lose or keep, depending on how it executes.

The Google chart is just amazing. Everybody knows why Android is free, but this just hits it home. They're an advertising company plain and simple. Anybody, anywhere, that can build better storefronts (search, email, native apps, etc) is a threat.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#262

Post by edw519 » 

  +------------------------------------+
  |                                    |
  | Microsoft has encountered an error |
  | and Wall Street is not responding. |
  |                                    |
  | If you choose to retire the CEO    |
  | immediately, you will lose any     |
  | unsaved cash cows and reboot the   |
  | corporate strategy.                |
  |                                    |
  |     [ Retire ]      [ Cancel ]     |
  |                                    |
  +------------------------------------+

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#263

Post by venomsnake »

justincormack wrote: post #199
JaakkoP wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never thought of Ben Horowitz until now, but since you mentioned it, I'd really like to see that happen! Chances are that Bill Gates becomes interim CEO and personally recruits the more permanent leader from the outside.

Not sure they can afford an interim leader. They need to got for someone who will be decisive soon.

And Bill Gates always lacked decisiveness.

I think that he could turn the company around in months. After all recent failures in MS history are policy errors and not execution ones. The teams still ship high quality software - the problem is mostly with what management wants (at least what I see from the consumer side)

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#264

Post by microtonal »

balakk wrote: post #129
gregd wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not entirely sure any of these can be attributed to Ballmer but Microsoft has been entirely successful in the enterprise. Active Directory (copied, but marketed better than Novell), Group Policies, Visual Studio (arguably the best IDE available today), Sql Server, .NET, Azure. And trust me, I am no fan of Ballmer. I think this announcement is the best thing to happen to Microsoft in a LONG time.

Azure probably will get credited to Ray Ozzie. Rest of them are from Gates era. There are some monumental fuck-ups that happened under his guard though - Vista, Windows Phone are enough proof.

Vista

Most hardware was not powerful enough for Vista when it was released. It's the pressed who killed it. Windows 7 received glamorous reviews. However, in hindsight, Vista and 7 are not all that different. Most of the changes that daily users would encounter are cosmetic.

Windows Phone

Microsofts primary problem was that it was late and (as one of the consequences) there are not that many Windows Phone apps. However, WP7 and WP8 were generally quite well-received by the media. Windows Phone is really a nice phone OS, what Microsoft f*cked up is the transition from WP7 to WP8.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#265

Post by JonnieCache »

gregd wrote: post #238
JonnieCache wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're marking off the copies, the last two in that list weren't exactly original ideas either.

Sorry, I wasn't so much pointing out what were copies as I was trying to (albeit terribly) point out that Netware was actually BETTER than AD at that time (access-based enumeration anybody???)

Nah I was just being childish tbh. Your point was far more useful.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#266

Post by ant512 »

film42 wrote: post #241
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So has Steve Jobs missed social and search as well? No. All companies need not do the exact same thing. Missing mobile is relevant because it is eating into Microsoft's PC revenues, but social and search is a whole new business that Microsoft didn't need to get involved in at all. In my view, Ballmer's mistake is to not go after Oracle and SAP much more than chasing Apple and Google.

Microsoft saw social and search and thought, "we must create our own!" While apple saw social and search, and said, "that's not our market, let's have google handle that for us." Edit: Apple did acquire ping, but that was social music, which is a bit different. They also introduced siri, which simply plugged in to preexisting search services (Google in iOS 6, Bing in iOS7) so it really is agnostic on that front.

I think that's one of Microsoft's main failings.

"Google are making baked beans? Why aren't we in the baked bean market? Let's make beans!"

"What? Now Facebook are making Facebook Soda? We need to make Microsoft Soda!"

Every time a tech company produces something new MS have to muscle in on the market, despite having a) no prior experience, b) no aptitude, c) existing products that could use their attention.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#267

Post by wslh »

RyJones wrote: post #214
gregd wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft's licensing schemes are riddles, wrapped in enigma's and covered with shit. I'm actually surprised that Windows doesn't have In App Purchases. You want to search? It's only 2.99! You want the desktop? It's only .99! I've never encountered the issues you have with MSDN. I believe you only because the team that dreams up their licensing/key schemes, should be forced to use them. The jury is still out on Windo…

Licensing being complex is a feature. It gives Microsoft something easy to wheel and deal on; it also gives OEM salespeople something to hide profit in ("gosh, sorry your enterprise desktops came out $40/seat high, but Microsoft gets all of that" while $35 of that is pure profit for the OEM)

MSDN is a different beast. They give you a lot of licenses for development. In our company we have hundreds of VMs that are created and thrashed all the time so having issues with licenses is a problem for QA.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#268

Post by nixy »

kjhughes wrote: post #61

What were the key Ballmer era highlights? == Negatives == * Clashes with Gates during CEO transition of power: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121261241035146237.html * Developer relations / motivational speaking (thanks mathattack): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvsboPUjrGc * Employee retention (thanks JonnieCache, Ziomislaw): http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/microsoft-ceo-im-going... * Windows Phone: http://…

Negatives must also include Microsoft Mediaroom, the much yelled at[1] IPTV platform which was recently handed over to Ericsson for an undisclosed sum which I can't imagine yielded a good ROI for MS.

[1] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/03/bt_vision_upgrade/

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#269

Post by LarryMade2 »

hvs wrote: post #200
eykanal wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for missing search. And for missing social. And for insulting OEMs. And for his failed Windows Vista launch, and Windows 7, and Windows 8. For one man, he sure has a lot of failures on his plate.

Windows 7 was hardly a failure.

I think the bad pat about windows 7 is that they put out Windows 8 way too quickly.

There are a lot of people that would be OK with being dragged into upgrading if Windows 7 was an easily available option. Bu now, MS is pushing manufacturers into pre-installing 8, which is NOT a good transition path from XP as Windows 7 was.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#270

Post by jasonlotito »

d4nt wrote: post #223
1337biz wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what could be the future of MS look like a strategic perspective? I am pondering a bit about that. They are somewhat squeezed in between closed system and open source. How can they position themselves for a solid path for the future in that middle-ground.

I've always felt MS is two businesses, an enterprise systems (Office, SQL Server, Project, Dynamics, Azure) business and a consumer devices business (Windows, Xbox, Phone, Bing) which should have started building hardware sooner than it did. They really need to either spin off a separate business, sell some divisions or just stop trying to compete in some areas. Experience shows their OS dominance doesn't count for m…

Cloud market? You mean Azure, which I last heard held 20% of the market. Is that what you mean?
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