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Will Ballmer Be Replaced As Microsoft CEO?
Strudelkugel writes "The Beast reports unhappiness with Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft: Sources say the talk around Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, headquarters — which has grown increasingly loud ever since Apple surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization — is that the company's stock suffers from a 'Ballmer discount,' and that the CEO is on the clock to significantly move the needle on its share price over the next two or three quarters or face a potential move to oust him. 'Ballmer is on the list of mega-executives under pressure,' says a banker who has negotiated deals for Microsoft. 'If he was asked to leave the building, I suspect there would be more happy than unhappy people.'"
Not St. Augustine, Norman Augustine, ex-prez of many a big corporation. His book has dozens of interesting graphs, the most appropriiate one is a X-Y scatter graph of company president pay versus company stock. No visible correlation at all. When you get up to a certain level, you're mainly a figurehead.
Though they seem to be doing OK with Xbox.
In terms of marketshare, Xbox is a success. In terms of finances, Xbox is a failure. It has been profitable for a few quarters but has yet to pay back the $7-8 billion spent over the lifetime of the product. Most companies would have declared bankruptcy or killed a money-losing product. But as CEO, this is a decision he has not made.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Spend $8 billion to make $200 million a year 9 years later. ROI is pretty shitty don't you think?
MS willingly taking losses to gain market share = buying market share. No wonder stock is stagnant.
But this, like almost every failure in the last years, isn't Ballmer's fault - almost every one of these sucky projects was started under Gates.
If you'd invested some money in MS shares 10 years ago you'd be able to sell them for half the amount today. If I was a shareholder I'd be furious. Generally you'd expect to make some (even minor) capital gain on a stock like MS over that period.
this post is now diamonds!
The console of that generation that I thought was laughable was the GameCube
Speak for yourself, the Gamecube had a really great library of games for people who are into the kinds of titles that Nintendo produces. I always kinda viewed the original Xbox as a gaming PC for people who couldn't afford a gaming PC.
Microsoft's fourth quarter profits were $4.52 billion dollars, up 48% from the same period last year.
This, in most circles, would be considered good news.
Lost from view is what arguably is Microsoft's very best story -- its transformation into a powerhouse supplier of the specialized software that meets the complex needs of large corporations, what the trade calls selling to "the enterprise."
Microsoft's enterprise software business alone is approaching the size of Oracle. But despite that astounding growth, Microsoft must accept that, fair or not, victories on the enterprise side draw about as much attention as being the No. 1 wholesale seller of plumbing supplies. Microsoft won't receive the adoring attention that its chief rival draws with products like the iPad. Even With All Its Profits, Microsoft Has a Popularity Problem
Keep up, the old Zune is long gone. The brown thing no one buys has become a black glossy sleek beautiful responsive elegant thing that no one buys.
I bought one. I love it.
I was also using the Zune Pass long before I actually bought the Zune, and it left me wondering why people don't demand that kind of model from iTunes. You pay $15/mo and get unlimited (DRM-laden, but that's to be expected) downloads on nearly everything in their library. Some albums don't want to be downloaded for free, so they give you 10 song credits every month with which you can buy any song and receive it in DRM-free MP3. It really is a great deal. The software has absolutely no support for plugins and new visualizations like WMP does, but you can still listen to all your DRMed music with WMP if you must have support for that.
I hate sounding like I'm being paid to write this, but I think more people need to know about it so they can stop paying $1.29 for every song they want to listen to. In iTunes terms, I have about $3000 worth of music.
(Oh also, I was pirating all my music before I discovered the Zune Pass. Now it's so fucking easy to get new music and without the need for microtransactions that I pretty much stopped pirating cold-turkey.)
Your an idiot. Spending $180 a year for nothing. The day zune pass closes or you stop paying all your music is gone. You can never listen to it again. You signed up for unlimited nothing. Stop paying them and listen as your music stops.
At least with iTunes and amazon. If you cantafford to buy more music youcan listen to what you have already bought instead of losing it all.
You're an idiot for responding in a fit of rage without actually reading (or at least comprehending) what I wrote. I get 10 DRM-free MP3s every month included in the $15/mo subscription and can download and listen to as many DRM-laden songs as I want. I can also log in online on any computer and listen to music there (though it could be a little better-integrated with the client... I'd like to have my playlists online for instance).
If Zune Pass ever shuts down, I still keep every song I bought with money or with the song credits... and what I downloaded on the subscription I will probably just start pirating again since they obviously don't want my money.
Fascinating point of view. I'm a recent hire at Microsoft (hence the AC posting), and this sounds more or less spot-on. Don't get me wrong, I like my job just fine, but there's no real passion from anyone on my team. It might be because I work on the cash cow with the least exciting future prospects (Office), but the company feels a whole lot more like a boring 9-to-5 job than working at an innovative and exciting company.