

Mr. Ballmer did not underperform - a closer look at Microsoft's "lost decade" - grellas
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/a-closer-look-at-microsofts-lost-decade/2176?tag=nl.e539

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philwelch
The article seems to argue that Microsoft did well for a company in the PC
industry, which totally ignores the fact that Microsoft spent the past decade
desperately trying to diversity its way out of the PC industry the same way
Apple has.

You have to judge Ballmer based upon the expectations and goals he set out for
himself. If he was content to manage a PC software company in a period of
maturity, he wouldn't have wasted resources on trying to dominate every market
from web applications to internet search to gaming consoles to mobile phones
to digital music players to god knows what else. He would have focused on a
smaller number of extensions with more strategic value rather than chasing
trends.

Instead, Ballmer set out consciously to expand Microsoft into new markets,
with limited success and multiple costly failures. Their biggest success was
Xbox, and I don't know if that's even broke even yet (considering the loss
they took on consoles for so long).

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fr0man
Yeah, Ballmer's not the most pleasant person, and it's easy and fun to hate
Microsoft, but they've consistently made a LOT of money for 25+ straight years
now. Jobs record is much spottier over that time frame, to say the least.
Granted, Ballmer didn't take over till 2001 or whenever, but still, that
Gassee article was myopic at best.

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tlack
Wouldn't you agree with the general idea that Microsoft has lost their ability
to successfully innovate and release products that anyone cares about? They've
failed so many times in the past decade that their reputation is greatly
tarnished. They may still be making money from entrenched customers, which
means ongoing profits, but you have to be nervous when there horizon looks so
bleak.

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fr0man
I would agree that that's the perception, and certainly the case with some of
their products (I'm thinking of IE and Vista, among others), but Windows 7,
Xbox Live, Zune music software, and the ZuneHD/Windows 7 Phone Series are all
pretty darn good products. Oh, and Bing. Bing is actually great. That's not to
say they're going to be successful, but they've definitely been innovating in
recent years. They've simply been eclipsed by both Apple and Google in the
media.

And I have a hard time agreeing the horizon is bleak when they still have like
80-90% marketshare in desktop OSs, Office Suite, and Exchange. I work with
Dynamics AX at work, something no one's ever heard of, and it makes them like
a billion dollars a year in revenue.

It does look bleak on the mobile and tablet horizons, which are certainly the
growth markets, but I'm not ready to write off Microsoft there yet. Perhaps
Windows 7 Phone Series will bomb and perhaps not, but they started off in the
hole on desktop OSs and word processing and spreadsheets as well. And they
succeeded there with inferior products for the most part.

Personally, I'm cheering for the Google model over the MSFT and Apple models.
But none of them seem to be facing an early 90's Apple-style crash anytime
soon. Should be fun to watch any way it turns out, though.

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tlack
The author of this article seems to totally forget that Microsoft sells
something other than Windows.

