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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

#321

Post by at-fates-hands »

shawkinaw wrote: post #297
at-fates-hands wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>>>He will be remembered for missing mobile Windows 7 and 8 were the first mobile OS that didn't completely rip off Apple, had the first original interface since Apple's iphone and you're saying they missed the target? Seriously? WP 8 has some incredibly original features my Android and Apple friends swoon over. Not to mention the platform is completely wide open for developers. It's not completely crowded out like…

Based on market share Windows Phone is a disaster, so yeah that's a miss.

A disaster that was released in 2012? In the fourth quarter of 2012 Windows 8 phones had sold around 6 million handsets.

http://www.neowin.net/news/gartner-windows-phone-sales-incre...

I'm sure you must have been saying the same thing about Android then huh?

By comparison they only sold around 640K handsets in 2008 (their first year of release) then sold around 6 million in 2009.

http://digithoughts.com/post/21428797724/android-and-apple-s...

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#322

Post by rahoulb »

deveac wrote: post #261
silverlake wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Craz…

This is Horace Dideu's take on Apple's revenue: http://www.asymco.com/2013/08/22/the-revenue-table-imperial-...

Profit-wise, Apple claim that their digital stores only break-even, but revenue-wise, the stores dwarf the Macintosh line, with music alone matching Macs.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#324

Post by onebaddude »

RogerL wrote: post #295
wnevets wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is stock price the only measure of a company and its CEO? Unless of course you're a share holder.

The CEO's job is to make the company valuable. That's kind of a sociopathic view, of course (gee, I thought our job was to make heart valve replacements or whatever). But, that is the trade off you make when you go public. And, just in case it isn't clear, stock price + dividends over time should equal the cash flow generated by the company. So, looking at stock price over a ten year period is a decent proxy for eval…

>Stock price + dividends over time should equal the cash flow generated by the company. So, looking at stock price over a ten year period is a decent proxy for evaluating a CEO's performance.

So why are you completely ignoring dividends and a stock split?

Looking at 10 years of stock performance while ignoring those factors isn't decent analysis, it's terrible.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#325

Post by cma »

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…

You have to compare it dividend adjusted.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#327

Post by tanzam75 »

Yuioup wrote: post #252
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that he will probably not be remembered for having more than doubled revenue and almost tripled profits. He will not be remembered for transforming Microsoft into one of the most important enterprise software companies. Not for introducing .NET, C# or Kinect either. All of that will be forgotten. He will be remembered for missing mobile. He will also be remembered for caring a lot about developers and about d…

.NET and C# are the brainchild of Anders Hejlsberg, the creator of Delphi who moved from Boland to Microsoft. Kinect was invented by an Israeli company before being bought out by Microsoft. Your point still stands though :-)

> Kinect was invented by an Israeli company before being bought out by Microsoft.

No. The sensor was developed by PrimeSense.

However, the key part of Kinect is the software, which was based on machine learning work done at Microsoft Research.

MSR is somewhat infamous for developing all sorts of whiz-bang prototypes that never make it to market. Kinect was an exception.

As for who convinced Anders Hejlsberg to jump ship, that was Bill Gates. He was still CEO of Microsoft in 1996.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#328

Post by nl »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #94
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…

I agree that he will probably not be remembered for having more than doubled revenue and almost tripled profits. He will not be remembered for transforming Microsoft into one of the most important enterprise software companies. Not for introducing .NET, C# or Kinect either. All of that will be forgotten. He will be remembered for missing mobile. He will also be remembered for caring a lot about developers and about d…

It's hard to disagree with sarcasm on the internet. But in this case you are absolutely correct.

Microsoft used to control the future of computing. Now they are yet another enterprise software company with no apparent mission except to make money.

The lay somewhere on a continuum with IBM, Oracle, SAP all the way through to companies like CA. At one end of that spectrum they do research and produce software that people use to do their job 0.5% better than they used to. At the other end they may as well be accounting companies for all the impact they have on the future.

Yes, they make money. And yes, I admit they try to compete with consumer oriented technology companies and have some interesting products. But you are 100% correct - Microsoft is now primarily an enterprise software company.

Meanwhile Apple/Google/Amazon/Facebook/etc look toward the future.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#329

Post by Sonicrida »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #283
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that he will probably not be remembered for having more than doubled revenue and almost tripled profits. He will not be remembered for transforming Microsoft into one of the most important enterprise software companies. Not for introducing .NET, C# or Kinect either. All of that will be forgotten. He will be remembered for missing mobile. He will also be remembered for caring a lot about developers and about d…

>>>>>He will be remembered for missing mobile Windows 7 and 8 were the first mobile OS that didn't completely rip off Apple, had the first original interface since Apple's iphone and you're saying they missed the target? Seriously? WP 8 has some incredibly original features my Android and Apple friends swoon over. Not to mention the platform is completely wide open for developers. It's not completely crowded out like…

Timing plays a pretty big part in them missing their target.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#330

Post by zanny »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #197
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.

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.

What about Bing? Microsoft didn't get into social because that is entirely outside their market. The limit of it seemed to be something like msn messenger, which had business use cases as much as social ones.

I mean, its not like MS didn't try the search thing, but search is something Google will own until they fuck it up, not from anyone entering to compete with them, because free & good enough are hard to break. Albeit, Google has been doing a good job fucking up their search in the last several years.

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