Ballmer is out. What does this mean for the company? Can they successfully transition to a “devices and services company” or is it too late and this is just a harbinger of the next shoe to drop?
Microsoft has missed every major tech innovation of the last decade. Every single one. Can they make a come back with new leadership?
No position but I don’t think they have the DNA to do it. I’m not really passionate about that view since I have done any substantial research into MSFT, but I’d be surprised if they can turn this sinking battleship around.
I don’t believe Ballmer was the problem. As you noted, there are cultural issues that limit how quickly MSFT can adapt to these new tech innovations. Many forget that Gates was here for a large section of the time MSFT missed out.
Personally, I’m pretty bullish on MSFT, their turnaround strategy has been in place for a few years now, and there is strong growth in areas like S&T, and a lot of potential growth in Search and mobile.
Not only have they missed every tech innovation, their software sucks and is getting worse. Vista was a flop and Windows 8 was universally panned by everyone except Blake.
Good at nothing except it’s biggest cash cow in Office and the fast growing Server and Tools business, or search, which has been dramatically cutting losses.
Ok, if you think Excel and Powerpoint are worth $270B go for it. Bing sucks except for pr0n (for which it is quite good actually). Servers and Tools? I’m not saying MSFT is going out of business. They’re just not the powerhouse they used to be.
MS has only really missed consumer tech innovations, in enterprise, it’s been pretty strong, but market only wants to talk about smartphones, tablets and search. Even iCloud runs on Windows Azure.
now that Bing is starting to power the backend of Siri and Facebook search, I think we’ll see market share increases, along with growing WP adoption.
Thwt bring said, I think it will be a mistake to try to catch up to Apple and android in smartphones and tablets, which at maturing martkets, and instead sell services that layer on top of these platforms, just IMO.