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Ballmer To Retire
Today Microsoft announced that CEO Steve Ballmer will be retiring within the next 12 months. He said, "There is never a perfect time for this type of transition, but now is the right time. ... My original thoughts on timing would have had my retirement happen in the middle of our company’s transformation to a devices and services company. We need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new direction." Ballmer, 57, has been Microsoft's CEO since taking over the role from Bill Gates in January, 2000. The company's board of directors has formed a committee to find a replacement for Ballmer, and he will continue his duties until a new CEO is found. Questions about Ballmer's fitness to remain CEO have been circulating for the past several years, particularly after the company struggled to get a foothold in the mobile market. It will be interesting to see how this affects Microsoft's stock price. Upon retirement, Ballmer will be able to cash out hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Microsoft stock.
There was a perfect time for the transition:
Avoiding those disastrous products would have made Microsoft billions, and those decisions were made by you, Ballmer.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I think this "retirement" (which probably wasn't as voluntary as Ballmer and MS are pretending) spells doom for Metro, at least on the desktop. Virtually no one outside of MS actually likes it. The only reason why they haven't backed down on Metro on the desktop before now is that it is Ballmer's baby and he doesn't want to admit he screwed up. The next CEO will likely not have any such attachment, and will probably be much more willing to ditch Metro in response to market demands – or at least allow it to be an option that can be turned off completely, for a Win7-style experience.
Microsoft's foray into portable devices has been an abject failure. The smartest thing to do would be to focus on the business licenses that actually bring in the big bucks. That means stability, familiarity, and backwards compatibility – not flashy touch BS meant to appeal to non-technical home users.
The funny thing is, the market agrees with you. Thus, based on the jump in Micro$oft stock price, and looking at the amount of stock Ballmer owns, he made nearly a billion dollars by quitting.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
He transitioned Microsoft from being a desktop company to selling a range of server solutions which are quite profitable. He pushed Microsoft up market. He didn't do much in consumer he did a ton in enterprise and the growth in sales shows that.