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Steve Ballmer: We're a Devices and Services Company
Nerval's Lobster writes "According to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's latest shareholder letter (not exactly a gripping read), Microsoft sees itself as a 'devices and services company.' The subsequent 1,200-odd words hammer that point, mentioning software such as Office and Windows 8 largely in the context of tablets and other hardware — and while Ballmer acknowledges the 'vast ecosystem of partners' building a 'broad spectrum of Windows PCs, tablets and phones,' he leaves the door wide open to Microsoft building its own toys in-house. If one takes Ballmer's words at face value, it seems that Surface, the tablet Microsoft's building in-house and promoting as a 'flagship' Windows 8 device, isn't so much a lark but the harbinger of the company's future direction. Whether Microsoft's decision to build its own devices affects its long-term relationship with Dell, Hewlett-Packard and other manufacturing titans remains to be seen. Perhaps Ballmer can take some comfort from Apple, which profited enormously by pursuing the 'we build everything in-house' route. But it's indisputable that a devices-centric approach is new ground for Microsoft."
Microsoft's mice and keyboards have always been really good - or a better way to put that would be - the old ones I bought years ago are really good. Still using them! I don't know about modern ones. My point? I like their peripherals so there is a chance the tech they make will be good. Software ... another matter.
XBox?
Microsoft may fail often but every now and then they hit it out of the park.
Which, I think, was done out of a fear of Playstations taking over the home computing area (at the time it was going to be a linux box). Now they've been caught wrong footed by phones, and are struggling to catch up that area. MS has lost it's ability to turn on a dime it appears. Good/bad, BillG certainly was able to define a vision on where MS should be going, and get there quickly, throwing the whole company at the new market. Ballmer seems to be waiting...waiting...waiting...any second now...waiting... Oh, lighter mobile OS's are going to be all the rage? waiting...waiting...waiting...
Waiting for an amusing sig.
Microsoft is a monopolistic public utility that sells Windows and Office the way Consolidated Edison sells electricity. Everybody buys it, but nobody particularly likes it.
IBM is not a technology company; it's a multilevel sales organization.
Apple is not a hardware company; it's a software company that bundles its software with large, sleek, phone-shaped license-enforcement dongles.
Google is not an Internet services company; it's an advertising and market research company. So is Facebook.
HP is a printer ink company that's desperately trying to be something else. Anything else.
Oracle is not actually a company; it's actually a newly discovered type of supermassive singularity with a gravitational pull that only affects corporate accounts.
It seems Ballmer was tolerated for his ability the maintain windows and office monopoly via many very legally questionable activities and to extract a profit from it. However his manner blunders and his shocking failure with MSN has even Bill calling him Uncle Fester behind his back. MSN should be worth more than Google not wallowing in the background lost and forgotten behind the delusions of 'Live', 'Bing', 'Zune' and even 'XBOX'. M$ seriously blundered when they did not take the opportunity to split the company living windows and office in one group and taking everything else including the cash into another group and putting that group under far more creative management, M$ and MSN, were the logical split.
MSN was such an abortion, it's dalliances with commercial TV networks did nothing but help to develop those commercial TV network internet abilities and create real competitors. Stripping search out of MSN twice, first with Live and then with Bing crippled MSN's identity and weakened it's market presence. The gross mishandling of advertising on MSN with trialling some of the worst and most abusive content destroying and customer annoying advertising methods with delusional spreadsheets about how much money each method would make with literally no regard to how many customers they would drive away.
No company was more single handedly responsible and executive failures more directly tied to the success of 'Google' than M$ and Uncle Fester. Without Uncle Fester stumbling about the internet at the helm of the beast of Redmond, that grand canyon wide gap in the market would not have been left for Google to fill.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
What happened to the Doom-Gates icon? I mean, maybe it was outdated, but Slashdot could have replaced it with something funnier that just the company's lettering!
What's happening to you, Slashdot? Going politically correct? If so, how can you be PC and still be Slashdot? What comes next, no swearing in the comments? Fuck you.
Err, given Ballmer's performance when compared to other CEOs of that level?
Over the past 10 years we have watched some CEOs "of that level" run their tech companies straight into the toilette.
How is Sun Microsystems doing?
How is RIM doing?
How is Palm.. err USRobots.. no wait.. thats 3Com.. err.. PalmOne.. err.. Hows the hell is that Palm brand that Hewlett-Packard acquired doing these days?
We quickly forget about all the failures.
It was right about 10 years ago that AT&T went into the toilet, too. SBC picked up their rotting carcass and re-branded themselves, because the only thing AT&T had going for it by that point was its brand.
Any company that is maintaining in this economic climate is doing just fine.
"His name was James Damore."
Over the past 10 years we have watched some CEOs "of that level" run their tech companies straight into the toilette.
How is Sun Microsystems doing?
How is RIM doing?
How is Palm.. err USRobots.. no wait.. thats 3Com.. err.. PalmOne.. err.. Hows the hell is that Palm brand that Hewlett-Packard acquired doing these days?
By contrast, how are Intel, Cisco, Oracle, Apple, RedHat, Samsung, IBM, Google, VMWare/EMC, NetApp, Canonical, and about 100 other tech companies doing? Most are still stable-to-growing, even in this economic climate. Their brands are still very strong in the tech community, unlike the weakening Microsoft brand(s). They have growing mindshare, unlike Microsoft. They have greater *growth*, and they manage to do it without fudging numbers, channel-stuffing, or counting "downgrade licenses" as sales of their new goods.
Hell - Apple (a so-called premium brand!) and Google are almost printing their own money at this point, so don't go blaming the economy, either.
It's too easy to compare Ballmer with the short-sheeted dual-CEOs at RIM, the egomaniac (but vision-less) former CEO/lunatic of Sun, or the Eternal Microsoftie that's currently running Nokia.
Problem is, you illustrate my point for me, by comparing Ballmer to other, greater losers. Now compare him to the winners, and you'll notice that he comes up way the hell short...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
XBox will NEVER even break even on total dollars. Running tab right now is in excess of 5 Billion (with a B) negative. They've had approximately 2 quarters in 7 years where they made money at about $100million overall that doesn't even touch the 5 billion in losses. As we're gearing up for the next hardware release the massive losses in the early days of the console are about to start again. MS is never going to make money on XBox and will likely continue to poor good money after bad until they can't afford it anymore.
I fully expect a apologist to argue that losing $5 billion to control a console market thats likely to fade away completely in the future is some badge of honor or future proofing. These people are idiots, that $5 Billion even if distributed directly to shareholders would have done more for MS than what they've spent it on. Balmer should have been fired years ago if for no other reason the XBox strategy of lighting big piles of money on fire.
But that GROWTH is almost exclusively from squeezing Windows and Office (and associated tools) for more money every year.... I see the checks my company writes. XBox is just barely profitably.... Sure it's black now... But not 80% PROFIT MARGIN like Windows and Office.
Basically every other division takes money away from the profits Windows and Office make... It serves the company as a nice way to subsidize tech jobs, and they certainly wouldn't want to pay all those taxes.. But fundamentally, Microsoft has spent multiple BILLIONS of dollars a year chasing "the next big thing" that simply hasn't panned out for them.
Historically NO PRODUCT will ever match Windows and Office... That was their once-in-history chance. Microsoft hasn't built another product even close. XBox is almost able to stand on its own, but that's it.