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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

#521

Post by kaolinite »

nailer wrote: post #367
kaolinite wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How on earth is Apple TV a failure? It's a product they don't really seem to care about and they have the majority marketshare[1] (in 2012) and have been selling millions of the things each year. They have had failures though, of course. Ping was another, for example. [1] http://9to5mac.com/2013/07/16/report-at-56-apple-tv-takes-ma...

Apple TV should be replacing cable set top boxes, the same way iTunes replaced music stores. It has yet to do that (Netflix has gotten closer than Apple has though).

It seems like they're moving towards it. They've been signing deals with cable companies and hiring people related to TV. It's certainly not an easy process, especially as people in TV are wary of Apple.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#522

Post by dennisgorelik »

potatolicious wrote: post #130
Delmania wrote: post #63

I think Ballmer is an interesting case study in perception versus results. He's commonly portrayed as a poor CEO that has led Microsoft in the direction of irrelevance. And yet, to quote oft critic Gruber, "he knows how to make money" ( http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/04/19/msft-q3 ) I'd love to sit down and talk to him, and see if his vision is a bit more long range than your average industry analyst, similar…

I think both are correct. Ballmer was gloriously good at extracting profits - out of existing, successful product divisions. I believe Ballmer has a firm grasp of the enterprise market, and Microsoft's revenue and profitability numbers reflect this. But new product development, particularly consumer product development, at Microsoft has largely fallen flat in the Ballmer years. WinPhone, Win8, Kin? So while Ballmer h…

Would Balmer be good CFO for Twitter then?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#523

Post by bencollier49 »

bengrunfeld wrote: post #291
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…

I feel that many people dislike the idea of him, without exactly knowing what he did during his time as CEO, because the Windows platforms are known as being notoriously buggy and unsecure. XP was a nightmare that caused SysAdmins to cry themselves to sleep until the expansion pack 3 came out, Windows Vista was an unmitigated disaster, Windows 7 was surprisingly decent, and Windows 8 has been hailed as a terrible ide…

On the contrary. I'd characterise the fall of Microsoft as beginning around 2000, and I suspect that interesting / good things might be about to happen.

I used to hate MS. Now I feel sorry for them, I hope they can make a go of it in the future. The people who came after them in market dominance were so much worse..

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#524

Post by yuhong »

camus wrote: post #37

Hmm , so who will be the new boss ? I think it should have been Sinofsky. He delivered W7 which the best Windows ever period ( and i'm a linux fanboy ). W8 was not that great but i dont think he designed that whole Metro fiasco, Metro came from the top. Anyway good luck MSFT.

http://hal2020.com/2013/07/12/doing-the-successor-speculatio...

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#525

Post by gnaritas »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #511
gnaritas wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS and Android are largely for consumer devices, .Net is largely used in the enterprise for B2B products that consumers never see. .Net and Java dominate the enterprise market. Apples and oranges.

iOS and Android are largely for consumer devices Gee, when have we heard this before. Oh, yes: when the iPhone was released.

What does that have to do with anything? The iPhone is still a consumer device as well. The enterprise isn't about mobile anything, it's about internal applications and B2B systems integration and .Net and Java rule the roost here, as does SOAP still. What works on the public net and what works in the enterprise are light years apart and probably always will be.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#526

Post by typon »

nailer wrote: post #354
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…

> 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? Personally I think WP8 is an excellent OS. But it's a distant third in market share.

Just wait till Windows Phone 8.1.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#527

Post by bengrunfeld »

bencollier49 wrote: post #523
bengrunfeld wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that many people dislike the idea of him, without exactly knowing what he did during his time as CEO, because the Windows platforms are known as being notoriously buggy and unsecure. XP was a nightmare that caused SysAdmins to cry themselves to sleep until the expansion pack 3 came out, Windows Vista was an unmitigated disaster, Windows 7 was surprisingly decent, and Windows 8 has been hailed as a terrible ide…

On the contrary. I'd characterise the fall of Microsoft as beginning around 2000, and I suspect that interesting / good things might be about to happen. I used to hate MS. Now I feel sorry for them, I hope they can make a go of it in the future. The people who came after them in market dominance were so much worse..

Are you talking about their fall in the idealogical sense, that happened in 2000? I seem to remember at least 10 years after that where their software dominated every office I walked into. Even today as far as private cloud goes, they are a major player. Again, this references my point of Microsoft getting a bad name for releasing buggy and insecure OS's.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#528

Post by harigov »

altcognito wrote: post #249
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.

Nope, he screwed up even bigger than that. As recently 2005, IE's browser share was well into the 90's. Now, it's hovering roughly 40% depending on whose stats you trust. This on the desktop , to say nothing of mobile which would make the comparison between years even worse. This is after Microsoft recognized that the web was their big challenge, after the so called Tidal Wave memo.

It's a business decision - web makes all the OS platforms equal. It is against Microsoft's interests to do that. They wanted to keep the status quo as long as possible.

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#529

Post by lostlogin »

deveac wrote: post #369
rahoulb wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've read that their digital stores run near break even before. In 2010 CFO Oppenheimer stated that it was near break even. In 2011 it was estimated near 300 million. Now in 2013 it is alleged to be making over a billion: http://seekingalpha.com/article/1470121-apple-app-store-now-... Still small potatoes profit-wise, but if the share of actual revenue is that significant, than this is definitely a nice little trend…

I'm no financial expert at any stretch, however the following occurs to me. My iTunes bill comes at the end of the month. Presumably developers and content producers are paid monthly at a minimum. So Apple must have same very loaded bank accounts by the months end. I have read/heard discussion around how (at a vastly greater scale) Amazon have a similar situation. It might be a relatively low profit area, but it must give a massive fund?

Re: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months

#530

Post by BrandonM »

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://…

What about Microsoft developing some of the best enterprise programming tools in the world? I don't use any of the following, but I have to admit that they are (or at one time were) best-in-class is basically all of them:

  * C#, F#, and all of .NET
  * Visual Studio
  * SQL Server
  * DirectX
  * ActiveX[1]
[1] ActiveX is not the best technology, but it paved the way for the AJAX programming that everyone does today.
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