Redmond – The rumors about a possible departure of the CEO, Steve Ballmer, have now been circulating for quite some time. In 2008 some analysts and in 2010 Newsweek, in a tech prediction for 2010, were foreseeing a change in the guide of the Redmond company as a result of disappointing results of Windows Vista and in the mobile operating systems environment.
The recent good results of Windows 7 sales are apparently not sufficient to invert the fate of a company that seems to have lost its appeal and keeps suffering from strategic defeats on every side.
The rise of Apple in the market of desktop and mobile operating systems and the upcoming Google Chrome OS, along with the Android platform, could help giving the final push and mark the end of the Ballmer in a really short time.
Bing, the search engine that was supposed to counter Google supremacy, which has about 85% of the global market for Web search, is nailed to the aforementioned paltry 3%.
Zune, the MP3 player born as a response to Apple’s iPod has never taken off and in many countries its market share is close to zero.
Windows operating system for mobile devices has been left many generations behind by its main competitors in the industry. While waiting for the release of Windows 7 mobile, Microsoft has launched two smartphones, the Kin 1 and 2, aiming at eroding significant marketshare, but hardly successful so far, despite the good features and competitive pricing, in making them attractive to younger consumers groups.
Frankly I find this a questionable choice to say the least, taken without any business logic of medium to long term. Indeed, I believe that the Kin will remain a product with limited commercial success, destined not leave any significant mark and soon to be forgotten.
Maybe Ballmer’s problem lies in his unclear strategies and an in a vision of market developments that’s not always been really far-sighted. In a seminar held in May 2005 in Stanford University Ballmer decreed the end of Google’s dominance within five years. In April 2007, not long before the sales would confirm the opposite, he claimed that the iPhone, the new mobile phone by Apple had “no chance” of gaining significant market share. But we all know how it went.
The biggest problem for Microsoft, if a change in the leadership could be a viable option, would be to find an alternative to Ballmer, somebody who, more than his predecessor, could draw a sharp dividing line with the past and at the same time be capable of finally bringing positive implications to business decisions.
It would be an extremely complicated and challenging effort. Probably though it’s the only way for Microsoft to get back to really making a difference.
They lost it when they started this “partner” crap. They wanted programmers to become sales people. We are NOT and will never be sales people. Sales people are fine people, I am sure, but programmers and sales people are a completely different breed. OTHERWISE, we programmers would not have to hire sales people to sell our software products. We’d just do that ourselves.
Microsoft wants us programmers to sell THEIR products, however. Sorry. I dont do play that game. And, apparently neither do a HUGE VOLUME of other programmers who have moved on to Oracle, Google, open-source whatever..
Oh, and one other thing… That “we’ve killed VB6″ thing really killed you Microsoft. That was when it REALLY ended for you.
You can fix things, if you really want to, ONLY because you have the money to do so. Stop charging developers ourtageous fees for the MSDN product. Go back to having ONE MSDN subscription and sell it for $300 each. Every developer, no matter who, can afford $300. Make it yearly. $300 times the millions of developers out there (including the ones who left you who may purchase it just because…..) I think you get my point.
You lost it when you threw developers under the bus with VB6 and when you turned something very easy to create (Classic ASP) into some horrendous garbage (ASP.NET). Also when you ASSumed that we developers would become your sales people.
I’d be glad to see Micro$oft go down the pan. They cost me a fortune making website work with their brain damaged, broken IE products (pick any version you like).
Businesses follow them like sheep because no one ever got fired for buying MS products, but there are plenty of good (or even better) alternatives out there.
Also, if Windows dies then a significant number of viruses and exploits die with it, and the volume of spam I receive will drop right down.
Long live the revolution!
I like your revolutionary view of how things could go :)
Microsoft will hardly disappear, at least in the short to medium term. Unfortunately it is still the number one business solution (MS Office being a de facto standard) and this, for a growing portion of users, it is indeed a pain in the back (as you point out). I speak about IE, but I also speak about cross platform compatibility of the same file formats, backward compatibility… This is something I have to face every single day in a corporate scenario and in 2010 it doesn’t really make sense.
All I really hope is for Microsoft to resurrect from its own mediocrity and invest in a change. They’ve been sitting and capitalizing what’s been done in the nineties for too long now and they can’t go on just rejoicing for being the pre-installed software on PCs.
The biggest problem for Microsoft, if a change in the leadership could be a viable option, would be to find an alternative to Ballmer, somebody who, more than his predecessor, could draw a sharp dividing line with the past and at the same time be capable of finally bringing positive implications to business decisions.
Steve Jobs perhaps?
Ha! Could you even imagine the reaction of the Apple and Microsoft fanboys when facing such a shocking change in leadership? Everything they (and we) are used to see and believe crumbling under their (our) feet.
Jokes aside, while highly unlikely, it would open up a paradoxical scenario and I would be absolutely eager to see what he could do in order to do bring Microsoft back for good.
Microsoft is so 90′s, it’s the IBM of the 80′s. Let Ballmer stay a couple of years so we can see that company go even more deeper down the pipe.
Micorsoft products are not about innovation, they are cheap, inferior copies. Companies should really re-consider their IT strategy towards MS products.
As I said to Dave, Microsoft has been exploiting its supremacy to the last bit.
Small companies are more reactive to changes while bigger companies still have to stick to obsolete software (IE6 – six, yes – to name one) because their policy says so (also read: it’s too high a cost if you had to upgrade everything).
To me this is the real problem. Microsoft is just comfortable with that. But how longer can it last?
Ballmer being canned is long over due in my opinion. His entire reign has been a complete disaster for Microsoft. Right now it really feels like the entire face of the PC is changing and with him in charge Microsoft could find itself losing big time. They need someone in there that can get the ship back on track.
Personally, I’d like to see Microsoft and Apple either merge or joint-venture or whatever and then proceed to kick Google’s butt. Google is the threat. Their one-two punch of “free everything but we’re tracking everything too” philosophy is far more dangerous than Microsoft has ever been.
I used to love Microsoft development tools but since they stomped all over their developers, Apple began to look better. I’ve been a Microsoft user and developer since the beginning. I recently purchased an iMac, after 20+ years of not having touched an Apple product. I have an iPhone and will be getting an iPad shortly. I think they have the right idea with their attitude toward developers. Developers are key to these sort of company’s survival.
If anyone has ever seen the movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley” then you might recall the scene just after the meeting with IBM where Ballmer asks why IBM would trust a small no-name IT shop with producing what was to become their flagship OS for a new hardware platform. Gates’ reply was something like “Success is a menace. It fools people into thinking they cant lose.”.. This is Microsoft today. It has been Microsoft since the early 2000′s. Too many versions of products and tools.
“…an alternative to Ballmer, somebody who, more than his predecessor, could draw a sharp dividing line with the past and at the same time be capable of finally bringing positive implications to business decisions.”
Antonio, that would be almost anyone. Ballmer is the main reason for Microsoft’s stagnation and incredible stream of misfires, even while sitting on one of the largest piles of cash in the history of US companies.
Microsoft who?