431–440 of 784 posts
It might sound ridiculous but he's been involved with his foundation work now for several years so it should be running well. He could probably leave the foundation to others to run now. So, he could return to Microsoft to try to lead it's resurgence. It's a challenge I wonder if he's up for.
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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/21428797…
WP7 was released in 2010. Three years later they now have an estimated 3.3% market share. If that's not a failure for company the size of Microsoft, and with the millions spent on marketing, I don't know what is. I'll never say never, but it's looking pretty much like the Zune. Nice and solid product with some nifty features, but not different enough to dethrone the dominant players. The problem is that Apple dominat…
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OEMs like Dell were shitting all over the Windows brand with plasticky (and still expensive!), heavy, unreliable, loud-as-shit laptops with terrible screens. This is utter nonsense. There simply is no other way to put it. There have always been premium Windows machines (Sony was doing the extremely-thin, fits in an envelope, made-with-unobtanium laptop thing years before Apple did), and discount machines. Focus-on-ae…
Even the $3000+ laptops from Sony or other oems were littered with crapware. When consumers shifted from desktops to mobile all of the hardware innovation was moved to the oems' suppliers, which led them to drop all of their technical talent. Now the likes of dell and hp are full of mbas whose job is to make deals with companies like McAfee to squeeze an extra penny out of each sale and to annoy clueless consumers wh…
I believe it was somewhere around $800, and is a perfect device for my needs. Spent a few minutes after booting removing the various trials of junk on it.
Colour me clueless, I guess.
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.
Remember, this is how Microsoft overtook Novell, DEC and the likes that were the kings of business computing in the 80s/90s.
And Apple isn't just one bad iPhone away from being beaten. They have consistently released good updates to their hardware and software for the past 10 years, and have built up a huge, satisfied customer base because of that.
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Thank God. (Speaking as an ex-Microsoftie). Hopefully MS will lose the "we need to put Windows on everything, including embedded systems" attitude. Windows is a horrible bloated mess barely capable of successfully running on a tablet PC, much less smaller things. (And if you've ever had to /build/ Windows . . . OMG. OMFG). There are core bits of Windows that are great; the I/O system is incredibly well done. Then the…
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'm voting for private cloud.
1. They have a strong presence in businesses in both the desktop and server spaces.
2. They have the cash in the bank and plenty of good people to throw into a serious push to move the market.
3. They'd be playing to their established strengths, instead of trying to challenge the likes of Apple and Google in areas where the latter are already far ahead.
4. They'd be playing to today's cloud-happy market sentiment, but also able to avoid some of the inescapable flaws that have been starting to show as more businesses have gained experience with the reality of outsourcing too much.
5. This strategy is compatible with almost any serious strategy for the home user/entertainment market. In fact, with the rise of practices like remote working via VPNs and mobile working with BYOD, there is a lot of potential to bridge the two, again in ways their competitors simply aren't geared up for.
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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 peop…
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If an MSFT share was worth 35 when he took over (at the top of the bubble) and it's the same now then it does not mean (at all) that he was a crap CEO. MSFT still remains one of the most important tech companies ever, that's not a small feat. I don't think that he's an extremely brilliant CEO, but tech companies come and go, and MSFT is still close to the top. Even if everyone in the media is 100% focused on mobile n…
I think it depends on what you mean by "important". If you mean big in the industry and making products on which a lot of people depend, yes. If you mean influential in the future, then I think not. Microsoft is a railroad company in the early days of the automobile. They're a typewriter company in the early days of the microcomputer. They're a sailing-ship builder in the early days of steam. They're important curren…
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This may well be true. That doesn't make it any less sad.
No sadness here - Microsoft has been a stain on the last decade of the computing industry. The only sadness is that their trajectory of circling of the toilet might change, with a new CEO. But I doubt it.
Pretty easy to make bold claims without expanding on them.
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Yes - Lou Gerstner was a very rare bird as a CEO. He was a consultant who became a great executive, then a CEO, then led a transformation the likes of which he'd advised on as a consultant. What's needed is of that order of magnitude. How do you find folks like that?
As a side note, I really have a hard time figuring out what was it that Gerstner did at IBM. When he started, IBM was the mainframe company. What is it doing today? They say it's services, but what are services? When I did an internship there, everyone I asked just shrugged their shoulders.
Services in IBM's parlance are quite often high dollar customizations to IBM products or high dollar custom applications built on top of them or integrating them.
I'm not sure 'services' or a similar concept exists for MS. I hope they do pull in a genius outsider like Lou Gerstner though, I really hope he's/she's willing to make some very tough choices and honestly, I kind of hope that some of MS's better products are spun out in to their own independent companies to fly on their own. Fundamentally, whatever happens, MS is going to change in some ways and while I don't trust them or like them, I really hope it's a positive change that benefits the whole industry.
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That they see 12 months as a safe timeline for transition (I'm sure the board already has a short-list), but if they place a CEO in that role before then, and the transition is complete, then Steve will leave early.
I'm guessing the CEOs don't generally make announcements like this, unless a successor is already lined up. 12 months is probably just a guideline for transitioning to the new CEO.
"The Board of Directors has appointed a special committee to direct the process. [...] The special committee is working with Heidrick & Struggles International Inc., a leading executive recruiting firm, and will consider both external and internal candidates."