Ballmer to Retire from Microsoft "Within Twelve Months"

[T-Rexx]

I'm sure you've heard by now, but Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today announced his retirement from Microsoft. He will be staying on as long as another twelve months in order to allow time for the board of directors to find a replacement.

Ballmer says he made the abrupt decision to retire two days ago as a result of a "board call" (I presume he means a telephone conference call with the board of directors). This suggests to me that the board is/has been trying to get rid of him.

Ballmer has been brilliant at making money for Microsoft, but his lack of vision for the future has left the company in a poor position competitively for the long-term future. Once the dominant smartphone platform by far, Microsoft now holds just 3.7% of that market. Microsoft tablets have not proven to be especially popular, either. Last quarter, they accounted for just 4.5% of all tablets sold (including the Surface RT tablets, which were just 0.5% of the market). Microsoft's cash cows have been Windows and Office, but these are very much desktop computer products. With the desktop in what now appears likely to be a long-term, slow decline, Microsoft is not well-positioned to maintain the dominance of the computing industry that it has enjoyed in the past.



http://techland.time.com/2013/08/23/microsoft-ceo-steve-ballmer-to-retire/

http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-ballmer-on-his-biggest-regret-the-next-ceo-and-more-7000019810/

 

[borg69unimatrix]

I'm rather surprised to hear they're declining. Granted, these Pad devices are ok for casual web browsing and checking e-mail, but that's about it (IMO). Microsoft started out in, and should still be pushing the OFFICE aspect of their line. There's a ton of stuff one just can't do on a hand held Pad. I prefer the speed, storage space, processor speed, KEYBOARD of a desktop/laptop. Touch screens are fine for everyday life on Star Trek, but I'm not ready to make that leap just yet for most of the software I use.

It's kinda like when Madonna started out, she was the ground breaker. Now I feel like she's copying Lady GaGa, who was copying Madonna. It's a vicious, cannibalistic cycle.

 

[trawler69]

One commentary I read said that under Ballmer Microsoft has been making money from people who HAVE to buy their products rather than from people who WANT to buy them and that, in these days of cloud computing, people will be less and less tied to their products. This is not a good position for them to be in.

 

[T-Rexx]

^ That's a good point. Ballmer became CEO in 2000. There has never been a time when he has not had a monopoly position from which to operate. It actually would have been rather hard for Ballmer to fail, financially speaking, regardless of what he did. But Ballmer was particularly effective at exploiting the monopoly. Because people were dependent on the Microsoft ecosystem, Ballmer was able to hang them upside down and shake the change out of their pockets. Microsoft under Ballmer has consistently ranked as one of the most profitable companies on the planet. MS makes twice as much per dollar invested as does Google. Ballmer's effectiveness at making money is why he has remained CEO for so long.

Ballmer has also been effective at keeping the monopoly going. He has bribed officials in many countries to lock out rivals and he has beaten back attempts in the USA to break up the company. In retrospect, it now seems that a breakup would have done Microsoft a world of good.

The monopoly made protecting the (insanely profitable) status quo job #1 at Microsoft. Web apps, cheap tablets, cheap smartphones, cheap netbooks, etc. all threatened to cut into the margins of Windows and Office. They therefore needed to be beaten back. And, since Microsoft had successfully beaten back everyone (including the US government), surely it could destroy all of those things.

Ballmer tried, I think, to stop the future from arriving. Because everyone was dependent on Microsoft, Ballmer believed the company could maintain that dependence by refusing to change. I actually think he succeeded in doing this to a remarkable degree, much to the detriment of the IT industry, of course.

 

[trawler69]

I think any industry held ransom by a monopoly will always suffer and risk stagnation but it will also resent. My hope is that Microsoft's greed and profiteering on the back of this monopoly will backfire when the competition offers increasingly viable and cheaper alternatives. When that time comes I think And hope that Microsoft will fail spectacularly. Their problem is that they are not innovators any more, they tend to try to badly copy others, this leaves them with only their software to fall back on and the suitability for purpose of that is very debatable and I hear increasingly, from the industry that supports it, how dissatisfied and frustrated they are with it. All IT, by the nature of it, will need support but why make the lives of those whose job that is even more difficult by supplying them with capricious software?

 

[maxpowr9]

The biggest flop that Microsoft did recently is the same mistake Adobe did and went to a subscription-based service to use the new Office just like Adobe did with their "Photoshop" suite. Businesses will cling to Office 2010 and not bother with the subscription per license bullshit. How much has Microsoft Office really changed in the past decade to warrant a new purchase?

If it wasn't for its gaming division like Sony, Microsoft would be seeing a sea of red ink.

I just love how Microsoft thinks it has an "ecosystem" to boast about like Apple does with its stores. I am no Apple fan but to say people get excited about Microsoft products is a joke at best.

And TBH, "retire" should be in quotes and not the time span. It's pretty obvious that Ballmer is being forced out.

 

[T-Rexx]

I think any industry held ransom by a monopoly will always suffer and risk stagnation but it will also resent. My hope is that Microsoft's greed and profiteering on the back of this monopoly will backfire when the competition offers increasingly viable and cheaper alternatives. When that time comes I think And hope that Microsoft will fail spectacularly. Their problem is that they are not innovators any more, they tend to try to badly copy others, this leaves them with only their software to fall back on and the suitability for purpose of that is very debatable and I hear increasingly, from the industry that supports it, how dissatisfied and frustrated they are with it. All IT, by the nature of it, will need support but why make the lives of those whose job that is even more difficult by supplying them with capricious software?

I agree, trawler.

I am a little reluctant to wish ill upon any man, but Microsoft has really hurt the IT industry. Yes, they have a long list of contributions they can point to. But, overall, I believe the effect of the monopoly has been far more negative than positive.

For the sake of technology, that company really does need to fail spectacularly. And, I suspect that is what will happen. Not overnight, of course. It's going to be long, slow, and agonizingly painful. But I think it is going to happen.

The biggest flop that Microsoft did recently is the same mistake Adobe did and went to a subscription-based service to use the new Office just like Adobe did with their "Photoshop" suite. Businesses will cling to Office 2010 and not bother with the subscription per license bullshit. How much has Microsoft Office really changed in the past decade to warrant a new purchase?

Microsoft has been trying to develop an online subscription version of Office (SaaS) primarily as a means of stopping Google's moves in this direction. This has created conflicts within Microsoft. Online Office may cannibalize sales of desktop office, especially since Google offers these services free to individuals, forcing MS to respond in kind. MS-Office has never been free to anyone (in fact, it has been remarkably expensive even for individuals). Also, online services are platform-independent. Google Docs require only a browser. They don't care whether the browser is running on top of Windows, OS X, or Linux. That, in turn, threatens the Windows franchise. If I can do all of my work identically without paying for Office or Windows, why would I?

This is a lose/lose proposition for Microsoft. They will lose if they do not move to accommodate changing business habits, and they will probably lose if they do. The company is not well-positioned for the future. Ballmer is getting the blame for that, with some justification, IMO.

If it wasn't for its gaming division like Sony, Microsoft would be seeing a sea of red ink.

Although Xbox made a little money between 2008 and 2012, the gaming division has overall lost a fair amount of money over the 11 years of its run. Had Xbox been an independent company, it could not have survived this long. The gaming division at Microsoft (like so many other things at MS) is subsidized by Office and Windows.

http://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-xbox-division-has-lost-nearly-3-billion-in-10-years

Xbox, Bing, Windows Phone, and Surface tablets are all money-losers. They are all subsidized by Windows and Office. As sales of desktop software slowly decline with the decline of the desktop platform itself, Microsoft will reach a point where Windows and Office are no longer able to sustain the other money-losing operations. At that point, MS will need either to spin these things off as separate companies, or terminate them entirely. I'm not sure how soon that moment will arrive, but I am sure it was a factor in Ballmer's termination by the board. He does not seem to have much of a plan for dealing with this mega-problem.

Ballmer's strategy, IMO, was a reasonable one. He attempted to leverage the desktop monopoly onto phones and tablets by creating a common interface across all of these devices. Microsoft knows from the Linux experience that people are lazy and have poor tolerance for learning new things. If Microsoft could force people to learn the Windows 8 tablet-centric interface on their desktops, they would be more likely to choose a Microsoft phone and a Microsoft tablet with the same interface. The desktop monopoly could become a phone and tablet monopoly as well.

It didn't work, but that may not have been because it was a bad plan. It didn't work because the products arrived far too late for the market. Microsoft spent a lot of time trying to fight the advance of technology in hope of protecting the Windows and Office monopolies. When the company belatedly decided to embrace tablets and smartphones, the company's glacially slow software development process (again, a result of years of monopoly) could not deliver a product in anywhere near the necessary time frame. The Window of future opportunity for Microsoft closed while they were making lots of money off of their past.

And TBH, "retire" should be in quotes and not the time span. It's pretty obvious that Ballmer is being forced out.

Yes, obviously. Ballmer has been surprisingly frank about the board forcing him out. Frankness is not very Ballmer-like behavior. It makes me think he already regards his time at Microsoft as over, and now he is free to speak honestly.

 

[keitherson]

We'll never forget...

 

[trawler69]

I only recently saw that video. The man was obviously well out of his comfort zone and similarly out of his head. He should stay in his accountancy office and not be allowed out! He is neither a front man, charismatic nor an athlete, he needs to stick with what he knows.

The above is no doubt horribly unfair but is an honest observation.