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Ballmer Admits Microsoft Whiffed Big-Time On Smartphones

Nerval's Lobster writes "During an executive Q&A at Microsoft's Financial Analyst Meeting on Sept. 19 (video), outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer admitted that Windows Phone had a minuscule share of the smartphone market, and expressed regret over his company's inability to capitalize on burgeoning interest in mobile devices. 'I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused on what we had to do around Windows that we weren't able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone,' Ballmer told the audience of Wall Street analysts and investors. 'That is the thing I regret the most.' Back in 2007, Ballmer famously denigrated the first-generation iPhone as an expensive toy that would fail to gain significant market share. He was forced to eat his words after the iPhone became a bestseller and ignited a huge market for touch-screen smartphones. Google subsequently plunged into that smartphone arena with Android, which was soon adopted by a variety of hardware manufacturers. While the iPhone (running iOS) and Android carved up the new market between them, Microsoft tried to come up with its own mobile strategy. The result was Windows Phone, which (despite considerable investment on Microsoft's part) continues to lag well behind Android and iOS in the smartphone wars. Even as he focused on discussing Microsoft's financials, Ballmer also couldn't resist taking some swipes at Google, suggesting that the search-engine giant's practices are 'worthy of discussion with competition authority.' Given Microsoft's own rocky history with federal regulators, that's sort of like the pot calling the kettle black; but Ballmer's statement also hints at how, in this new tech environment, Microsoft is very much the underdog when it comes to some of the most popular and lucrative product segments."

278 comments

  1. Let's be clear by djupedal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    MS whiffed when they put balless in charge of anything. He can stop blaming others...

    1. Re: Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Agree

    2. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Ballmer is a sales guy. Sales guys look good on paper because they're bringing in the revenue. But they're a disaster in a leadership role. Sales is always based on short-term goals. That's the nature of the job. So sales guys do whatever they have to do to meet their quota or monthly targets or get their commission. It's not in the best interest of the costumer, it's not in the best interest of the company, it's in the best interest of themselves.

      I've worked and consulted for plenty of companies where a sales guy get promoted to the top. It never works out well.

    3. Re:Let's be clear by danomac · · Score: 1

      MS whiffed and then they cleared the room. But then afterwards nobody went back in that room to fix it. That's some lasting effects there.

    4. Re:Let's be clear by MightyYar · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I disagree that was the problem. The problem was that he made the same mistake that most of us geeks on here make - projection. He thought that people wanted smart phones to be little computers. Most of the commenters on here want the same thing - a little unix box that they can ssh with and such. He led MS down a path of making little pocket computers, complete with Start menus and everything. And you know what? They were more successful than just about any other smart phone. Things looked good... good enough to dismiss the iPhone as a toy when it came out.

      And he was right, it was a toy. But apparently the toy market is a lot bigger than the pocket computer market. It turns out that people wanted a pocket toy, and not a pocket computer. That the toy happens to use a computer to make it so much fun is a technical issue.

      Where Balmer gets blame is how badly MS executed on their toy once it became clear that the market liked the iPhone. Google figured it out IMMEDIATELY, so it's not as if it was too much to expect. Sure, initial Android sets kind of sucked, but they were toys and they were cheap - so people could overlook a lot. And since then, it has gotten quite slick. Microsoft, meanwhile, assumed that kids were the driver and brought out that ridiculous Kin based on CE. Then they tried coming out with a refreshed CE in 6.5, which fooled no one. Finally, after losing out the low-end to Android and the high-end to Apple, they come out with a proper Windows Phone. Even then, while it certainly has it's merits, it is essentially another iPhone/Android and really brings nothing to the table that would make people choose it over the competition. And on top of this, it was still trying to pursue the "charge for software" model, when the chief competition is free!

      Now they finally made the right move in buying a hardware vendor. If they go toe-to-toe with Samsung, I'm not sure they will ever recoup their investment. After all, Samsung is vertically integrated and is a monster in their capacity to turn a small profit on low-end phones. They are going to have to chase Apple (and Samsung) at the high end. I wish them luck!

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    5. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even if Microsoft had a phone way back when, it NEVER would have taken off had it not been for Apple, and everyone copying it!

    6. Re:Let's be clear by ackthpt · · Score: 4, Insightful

      MS whiffed when they put balless in charge of anything. He can stop blaming others...

      A man can fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.
      - John Burroughs

      Steve's been a failure and has just capped his career. Notice his use of the royal we, deflecting direct blame to the company, not its leader:

      I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused on what we had to do around Windows that we weren't able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone,' Ballmer told the audience of Wall Street analysts and investors. 'That is the thing I regret the most.'

      Should be...

      I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when I was so focused on what I had to do around Windows that I wasn't able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone,' Ballmer told the audience of Wall Street analysts and investors. 'That is the thing I regret the most.'

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    7. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Interesting points, but I can't say I agree. Microsoft was not looking to make a Phone a PC, they were looking to dominate the market and abuse their monopoly to shut down competition. That is half of what the Nokia fiasco was and is. MS does not want to be good at tech, they want to "rule" tech with an iron fist. It's that mentality across the board that has lead to disaster after disaster.

      I agree with what you stated, just not that it was the primary issue with Ballmouth and MS.

      Posting AC for modding purposes. s.petry

    8. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Michael Scott: sales guy

    9. Re:Let's be clear by MightyYar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But that isn't why it is popular.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    10. Re:Let's be clear by nine-times · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Finally, after losing out the low-end to Android and the high-end to Apple, they come out with a proper Windows Phone. Even then, while it certainly has it's merits, it is essentially another iPhone/Android and really brings nothing to the table that would make people choose it over the competition.

      And I think this is a big issue that people overlook: People have a tendency to think in dichotomies, rightly or wrongly, especially regarding issues in which they lack deep knowledge. As a result, markets tend to be perceived in people's minds as a choice between the default/incumbent and the alternative/newcomer. This is in fact part of what has kept Windows in such a dominant position for so long. People are only willing to consider the two options that they were most aware of: commodity Windows machines or Macintoshes.

      The tables are flipped on Microsoft in the mobile market. For all the same reasons Linux has trouble breaking into the desktop, Microsoft is having trouble breaking into phones. People are increasingly seeing their phone purchase as a choice between iPhone and Android, seeing one as the default and the other as the alternative, and people generally aren't looking for a second alternative. If Microsoft wants to succeed, it's not enough to be "as good". They have to be significantly better in ways that people care about, and they need to maintain the advantage few a few years, without allowing Apple and Google to catch up, so that there's time for people's contracts to expire. Good luck with that.

    11. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What the fuck are you talking about? The iPhone literally is a little Unix computer you can ssh to.

      You are confusing iPhone-"physical object" with iPhone-"brand". The iPhone-"brand" consumer base doesn't give two shits that it's technically "a little Unix computer you can ssh to".

    12. Re:Let's be clear by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      Good luck with that.

      I think what they need to do is pick a niche or a few niches and specialize like crazy to those niches. Be the best in class and get a reputation for being the best in class. Slowly grow from that position.

      Nokia had the right idea with the good cameras in their smart phones, but they got drawn in to the low end, selling the crappy version at Walmart. I suspect both the Nokia and MS cultures are very hung up on growing market-share when what they need to be doing is brand-building and trying to find under-served markets.

      Still, that's a long term strategy that will burn a lot of cash.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    13. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's an interesting theory, but I think you're just a little off calling this new "smartphone" style device a "toy". People want more than a toy, they're not buying PSP's and Gameboy's like they are iPhones. People want a device that does it all, phone / text / email but also web browsing, video, music, apps - specific web functionaliy, paying bills, etc. It's not a toy to many of us, it's a tool.

    14. Re:Let's be clear by mcgrew · · Score: 2

      For all the same reasons Linux has trouble breaking into the desktop, Microsoft is having trouble breaking into phones. People are increasingly seeing their phone purchase as a choice between iPhone and Android, seeing one as the default and the other as the alternative, and people generally aren't looking for a second alternative.

      With the desktop, you really did have two choices: buy a Windows PC or a Mac.

      If Microsoft wants to succeed, it's not enough to be "as good". They have to be significantly better in ways that people care about

      Exactly. And not only that, people have to be aware that it exists and exactly HOW it's vastly superior, and so far afaik Windows Phone brings nothing but Microsoft's reputation for bugginess to the table. If it's superior to the other two in any way, their advertising sure doesn't show it.

      Ever see a commercial for Linux on TV? Nobody's even heard of it and have no idea their Android phone runs it, let alone knows that it has more features and better ease of use. Every non-nerd I know talks about "that damned computer" when the computer's not the problem, the OS is.

    15. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is pure and simple reputation management - a shill posting as a person

    16. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even then, while it certainly has it's merits, it is essentially another iPhone/Android and really brings nothing to the table that would make people choose it over the competition.

      I don't think it's so much that Windows Phone brings nothing new to the table (as you said, "it has its merits"), but rather that it's lacking more and more-important features that its competition has than the number and importance of the unique features that Windows Phone has.

      I own both a Lumia 920 and a Galaxy Nexus, and think these are the biggest shortcomings in WP:

      • Lack of a swipe keyboard and proper dictation/speech-to-text (it's difficult to effectively input text with one or no hands on WP)
      • An actionable notification center with history/filtering; bonus points for a Nexus-style notification LED (the ability to see what types of notifications I have from across the room is nice)
      • Quick-toggle for bluetooth/wifi/data/etc. (On this note, the settings menu is a mess.)
      • Editable dictionary/shortcut-expansion

      However, despite lacking many features in comparison to Android, I find myself on my Lumia more often because it feels better to use due to the dynamism and greater sense of personalization (even know I know Android could be customized to a greater degree, it still doesn't feel like "mine").

    17. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, you completely missed the point of what the iPhone became (and what Android and the iPhone are still). They are general purpose computers with slick interfaces.

      That's what people want. Ask your friend who thinks his phone is a toy if he would like it less if Pandora/Facebook wasn't available on it. Because if these had been built as toys that's where we'd be. There were a hundred phones on the market next to the iPhone that were toys. No ability for third parties to write software for them. They end up dying one at a time. And part of that is that you can't compete if you can't get people to fill in the thousand little holes in your lineup of applications.

      People on Slashdot were right that these things had to be little computers. They all knew no one else cared about things like ssh. But they knew that something that let them write an ssh client would let someone else support pandora.

      The only people who don't care that about the iphone being a computer are the people who have never used a third party app.

    18. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'll say. Big mistake was making everyone wait for the ms app store with Win8 and Win phone. As soon, as Apple's app store was showing success they should have brought the windows app store to every platform they had. Who cares about windows upgrades (sales guy think)... get the app store rolling on... xp, vista, whatever. Too little too late now.

    19. Re:Let's be clear by ackthpt · · Score: 1

      I'll say. Big mistake was making everyone wait for the ms app store with Win8 and Win phone. As soon, as Apple's app store was showing success they should have brought the windows app store to every platform they had. Who cares about windows upgrades (sales guy think)... get the app store rolling on... xp, vista, whatever. Too little too late now.

      Microsoft have become the K-mart of tech companies. Well played, Mr. Ballmer.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    20. Re:Let's be clear by MightyYar · · Score: 2

      No, I think it is fun and that is why people want it. Flip phones were good at calls and texting and (some) took good pictures. Blackberries did email. But what really blew open the smartphone market was the ability to pull in entertainment: usable web browsing, watching YouTube, and decent games. The people who needed pocket tools already had them. The fact that the iPhone can ALSO make a good tool is simply a result of the underlying tech that makes the toy possible. It's probably not fair to call the productivity stuff an afterthought, but productivity phones were already common when the iPhone was launched.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    21. Re:Let's be clear by gallondr00nk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      People have a tendency to think in dichotomies, rightly or wrongly

      Ahh, I see what you did there.

    22. Re:Let's be clear by mwehle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused on what we had to do around Windows that we weren't able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone,' Ballmer told the audience of Wall Street analysts and investors. 'That is the thing I regret the most.'

      Should be...

      I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when I was so focused on what I had to do around Windows that I wasn't able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone,' Ballmer told the audience of Wall Street analysts and investors. 'That is the thing I regret the most.'

      Absolutely. Years ago I was working for Microsoft at the Mountain View campus when Ballmer interrupted his address to a cafeteria full of employees to chastise a guy who had an iPhone, belligerently telling the crowd that we should all practice brand loyalty the way his family did. At the time I was still holding out hope for Windows Mobile, and had a Blackjack in my pocket, but I remember thinking Ballmer was a royal asshole, without a shred of humility and unable to have the common sense to recognize an engineer's choice of superior technology. At the time there were a number of MS employees in the audience with iPhones in their pockets. Ballmer could have made points by admitting the worth of the competition, and trying to rally opposition. Instead he just looked like a chair-throwing lunkhead.

      --
      Wir sind geboren, um frei zu sein - Rio Reiser
    23. Re:Let's be clear by spire3661 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The web browser on the iphone was like nothing we had seen before. It actually worked for the vast majority of the web. THAT more then anything else is what drove its adoption. Calling it a toy is just ignorant hyperbole to make your point.

      --
      Good-bye
    24. Re:Let's be clear by el+cisne · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Thought I was logged in, sorry. Exactly! They have over time appeared to be outwardly a 'market share protection', 'monopoly sized market share protection' company. Windows is the castle keep. Everything else serves to augment and bolster it's position. That is where the money and the market power come from. All things serve Windows. Even Office is subservient, to help promote and hold Windows share. They are not a technology company, they are a 'market share product protection' company that happens to use software and licenses and such to operate in. That's largely why their efforts fail or near-fail when they are not able to tie them to Windows' dominance somehow and/or threaten other industry players with their lives if they don't play ball.

    25. Re:Let's be clear by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      No ability for third parties to write software for them.

      All of the smartphones - and even most feature phones - available when the iPhone was released had 3rd party apps. ARM even used to have a built-in Java accelerator (which I think is now deprecated).

      In fact, the iPhone was odd in that it only supported web apps when it was launched, and yet it was still a success. Even when it added native app support, it severely restricted what they could do compared to other platforms.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    26. Re:Let's be clear by mitchell_pgh · · Score: 2

      I respectfully disagree with your use of the word "toy" when referencing the original iPhone. Apple, like a few others, simply understood the mobile experience users wanted when using a mobile communication device.

      This argument goes beyond an iPhone. We really need to fire up the Way-Back-Machine to 2001 with the release of iTunes and the iPod (remember "Rip Mix Burn"? I sure do!). Apple used their "Software/Hardware" formula to build a truly unique ecosystem that really took off in 2004 with the release of iTunes for Windows. When 2007 rolled around (the launch of the iPhone), they already had millions of loyal iPod users that were hooked on the simplicity of the Apple ecosystem. They also had an e-commerce solution that made sense (for the most part). Apple simply built upon their success: iTunes -> iPod -> iTunes Music Store -> iTunes Store -> iPhone -> iApps -> iPad

      Microsoft was simply unable or unwilling the make a true iTunes competitor, which made them unable to move to the next step and create a viable iPod/iStore/iPhone/iPad competitor. Also, their various DRM solutions were flat out confusing. They didn't negotiate the big music deals Apple was able to negotiate, and by the time they figured out that they missed the boat, others had already capitalized on the missed opportunities.Google did exactly what Microsoft wanted to do (control the Operating System), but Google trumped Microsoft by offering the OS as open source to the manufacturers, expecting the make up for that with their App store.

      In many ways, I feel sorry for Microsoft. They do a number of things well, but it's clear they aren't able to deliver a viable mobile solution without cutting their ties to manufacturers, which is problematic.

    27. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Going balls deep or go home.

    28. Re:Let's be clear by UnknowingFool · · Score: 4, Interesting

      And he was right, it was a toy. But apparently the toy market is a lot bigger than the pocket computer market. It turns out that people wanted a pocket toy, and not a pocket computer. That the toy happens to use a computer to make it so much fun is a technical issue.

      That's the thing that most geeks and MS didn't get. The average consumer does not want a computer much less a pocket computer. They use computers because they have to use them to surf the web and do other things. As soon as someone offered them a product that met most of their needs without being a computer, they bought it. If you want to consider it a toy, go ahead. To consumers, it's not a toy; it's what they wanted. That's why tablets are selling even though you can get a cheap laptop for the same price.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    29. Re:Let's be clear by Jartan · · Score: 1

      People did want a pocket computer with real web/email. The carriers kept blocking that. Apple came along and bribed ATT. MS should of done the same years before.

      Then after the iPhone took off Google gleefully went to the other carriers and put their balls in a vice. MS missed both those chances.

    30. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Should be...

      I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when I was so focused on what I had to do around Windows that I wasn't able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone,' Ballmer told the audience of Wall Street analysts and investors. 'That is the thing I regret the most.'

      Last I checked :
      - there is no I in team
      - I do not believe Ballmer to be skilled to be redoing work in Kernel nor would he be micro-managing engineering teams
      - Windows 2k was great, but lacked functionalities and ease of access.
      - He dropped out of Stanford Graduate School of Business to join Microsoft [source: wiki]. Doesn't mean he made a bad choice; Look at the proportion of Windows based servers in operation in the world. They might've miss the first boat by focusing on their main source of revenue, but they made the acquisition of Nokia. Had they gone cell phone, Android might have plunged into servers - who knows.

    31. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Those "apps" were hard to find, didn't work on half the phones, buying them (if for-pay) was real achievement, and for a lot of things they would do less than a web app could have done.
      The only app I actually ever really used (i.e. I didn't give up and delete it due to being useless after at most a day) was the opera browser, nothing else was worth the hassle. And it was used quite a bit, even though not really being a browser.
      While I'd _never_ have spent the price of an iPhone on it, a proper, useable browser was something rather new and significant.

    32. Re:Let's be clear by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      I used the term toy not as a derogatory term, but simply as a word that is clearly distinct from tool. Smartphones are mostly about entertainment and social communication - not about business. Blackberry and CE had business nailed for years.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    33. Re:Let's be clear by wickerprints · · Score: 2

      I'm old enough to remember what mobile phones used to be like before the iPhone, and old enough to remember Windows CE, the PocketPC, and Microsoft's first foray into tablet computing.

      The fundamental reason why Microsoft failed in the mobile market was because they doggedly tried to shoehorn some scaled-down version of Windows into a mobile device, and the hardware at the time simply did not permit that to happen. Their strategy had always been about leveraging their existing dominance in the OS market, because they knew people were hooked on Windows and Office. So, in theory, by extending these products into other areas of computing, they could continue that advantage.

      This, of course, simply did not work. It certainly didn't work the way it worked with Internet Explorer back when they crushed Netscape, and yes, a lot of that had to do with the teams that were responsible for developing Windows CE and their mobile strategy. But what is most telling about Ballmer's disclosure here is that it reflects a continued inability to understand exactly why Apple (and later, Google) were successful when Microsoft was not.

      Apple succeeded because they built a self-contained, refined product that was better than anything else at the time. Back in 2007, remember what kind of phones existed then. Don't measure the original iPhone by what we have now, but by who were the market leaders at the time, which were Nokia and Samsung. Apple's success came from taking what the hardware at the time was capable of doing, and then building software that worked seamlessly with it, while offering new features. What they recognized was that the existing mobile phones were being held back by hardware companies who were only interested in incremental improvements on old hardware and old design. They saw an opportunity to break through that by offering something completely new.

      That's not to say Microsoft didn't have vision. It's just that their vision was essentially that they would have miniature versions of Windows on all kinds of mobile devices. The proof of that is the Casio PocketPC I owned way back in the day. It was clunky and slow but I was so enamored of the idea of a portable computing device I put up with it. And I remember my friends buying their tablet PCs too. But ultimately, Windows just didn't translate well, and that's why they were failures.

      The lesson is one that Apple has always espoused--build the hardware and software together. Make them work together. It doesn't have to be fully featured, but it does have to work seamlessly and reliably, and be easy to use. How you get there is up to you. Google approached it from another angle--they built the OS and gave it away. And now we can understand why Microsoft bought Nokia--they realized that this integrative strategy is the only way to compete. But it is much too late.

    34. Re:Let's be clear by mjhans · · Score: 1

      Whoosh!

    35. Re:Let's be clear by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      I agree that the web browser was the "killer app". I'm sorry that my use of the word "toy" stirred up so many negative emotions - I simply wanted to show a distinction from the popular business "tools" of the day: Blackberry and CE. I'm happy to use a different word.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    36. Re:Let's be clear by XopherMV · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Microsoft was not looking to make a Phone a PC

      I worked at Microsoft from 2004-2005. This was before the iPhone or Android phones. Most people had flip-phones. If you wanted a smart phone, you either got a Blackberry or a Windows phone. Those were the most advanced phones on the market. They were around years before Apple thought of getting into the phone business.

      Keep in mind that Microsoft mainly earns its money through the sales of Windows and Office. So, every product they make is engineered to drive the sales of those two products. One of the initial groups I interviewed with at Microsoft were the guys making the Windows phones. (No, I didn't end up working with this group.)

      Yes, they absolutely were attempting to bring the Windows PC experience to the phone. And yes, that was a disaster.

      The problem was that tiny screens don't work well with a Windows type of interface. Users don't like the clutter. Microsoft needed to make the interface transparent and focus on what people actually wanted to do with their phones, which is use applications.

      Hiding the Windows interface doesn't work when you're attempting to promote Windows. Marketing which promotes "Windows on your phone!" doesn't sell phones. I remember thinking during my interview, "what does Windows on my phone actually get me? Why would I want that?" Microsoft itself couldn't adequately answer that question until the iPhone and Android came out and focused on the apps. Even then, Microsoft still screwed up their answer to the iPhone and Android. They simply can't get away from promoting Windows and Office.

    37. Re:Let's be clear by MightyYar · · Score: 3, Informative

      Those "apps" were hard to find, didn't work on half the phones, buying them (if for-pay) was real achievement, and for a lot of things they would do less than a web app could have done.

      Yes, one of the things Apple got right when they added Apps was the App Store. It took all of the hard work out of finding and installing apps. I suspect that even on Android, most people use the Google Play store. On Slashdot, we view the App Store with disinterest because we've been using repositories and package management systems forever, but to most of the public the concept was pretty new.

      While I'd _never_ have spent the price of an iPhone on it, a proper, useable browser was something rather new and significant.

      It really was something. It blew away anything else at the time.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    38. Re:Let's be clear by timeOday · · Score: 1

      The fundamental reason why Microsoft failed in the mobile market was because they doggedly tried to shoehorn some scaled-down version of Windows into a mobile device, and the hardware at the time simply did not permit that to happen.

      For this reason, I think Microsoft's prospects may improve. They were and are a PC company. But the pull for mobility was strong enough for consumers to accept an "embedded" level of capability at first, so Apple (which was willing to make a clean break from its personal computer ecosystem) won. But the smartphone is becoming less and less a constrained-computation device. All the heavy-duty software that Microsoft has, and knows how to develop, will run increasingly well on it. The new Haswell Surface Pro, and Bay Trail tablets, are good examples of this.

    39. Re:Let's be clear by phoenix_rizzen · · Score: 1

      The problem was that he made the same mistake that most of us geeks on here make - projection. He thought that people wanted smart phones to be little computers. Most of the commenters on here want the same thing - a little unix box that they can ssh with and such. He led MS down a path of making little pocket computers, complete with Start menus and everything.

      Please! Someone bring back the pocket computer, complete with keyboard!

      Someone needs to take the guts of the LG Optimus G/Nexus4, or the LG G2/Nexus5 and add a keyboard. Something like the one on the Motorola Photon Q, although with the proper symbols above the number keys. That would be the ultimate in "pocket computability".

      Motorola had a chance to corner the market on these, but they locked themselves into exclusive contracts with Verizon, lagged way behind in hardware specs, and then just gave up.

      I had really high hopes that the new Google-owned Motorola would release a high-quality, high-spec, leading-edge phone with a hardware keyboard. Alas, 'twas not to be. :(

    40. Re:Let's be clear by ackthpt · · Score: 2

      Should be...

      I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when I was so focused on what I had to do around Windows that I wasn't able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone,' Ballmer told the audience of Wall Street analysts and investors. 'That is the thing I regret the most.'

      Last I checked :
      - there is no I in team
      - I do not believe Ballmer to be skilled to be redoing work in Kernel nor would he be micro-managing engineering teams
      - Windows 2k was great, but lacked functionalities and ease of access.
      - He dropped out of Stanford Graduate School of Business to join Microsoft [source: wiki]. Doesn't mean he made a bad choice; Look at the proportion of Windows based servers in operation in the world. They might've miss the first boat by focusing on their main source of revenue, but they made the acquisition of Nokia. Had they gone cell phone, Android might have plunged into servers - who knows.

      To justify his position in the company he is the ultimate leader and facilitator for company success. Failing to be a good observer or listener and missing the boat, time after time does not bode well for his final mark. Many of the structural problems within the company he has failed to address, which is how a nimble competitor, such as Google, blew past Microsoft in the interval following the initial success of the iPhone and successive launches of Android. The play field was there and he was so blinkered he utterly missed the opportunity. Good leaders take the responsibility, poor leaders spread blame.

      The acquisition of Nokia may be the last great screw-up of Ballmer. Where they should be pairing with a company which specializes in the hardware, they've gone and tied their wagon to one horse, named Nokia. The layoffs at Nokia will be coming fast and furious as Microsoft wind it down. They know this already in Finland.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    41. Re:Let's be clear by grumpyman · · Score: 1

      "They were more successful than just about any other smart phone. " - In fact, they were dominant with 62% market in PDA/smartphone http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/506328 I used SDA back then and people are already looking for 'smart' features like web browse, email....etc. That SDA is total crap. In fact it is trying to be a mini windows machine.

    42. Re:Let's be clear by unique_parrot · · Score: 1

      really?? even if you don't jailbreak it? i thought this is the big advantage of an android phone. and the other being: using it as a usb stick, on any (not even authorized itunes) computer and put and document, pdf, photo, mp3, mp4, avi, etc. on it without any conversion?

    43. Re:Let's be clear by phoenix_rizzen · · Score: 1

      Ever see a commercial for Linux on TV? Nobody's even heard of it and have no idea their Android phone runs it, let alone knows that it has more features and better ease of use. Every non-nerd I know talks about "that damned computer" when the computer's not the problem, the OS is.

      Actually, yes, I have, even way up here in Canada! IBM ran a bunch of ads a few years back that trumpeted their use of Linux. They didn't really explain what Linux was, and the ads didn't really promote any products, but I do remember them, and Linux was mentioned.

    44. Re:Let's be clear by nine-times · · Score: 1

      With the desktop, you really did have two choices: buy a Windows PC or a Mac.

      Well those were the two choices deemed most practical. For a long time there have been Linux and the BSDs. For a while there was NeXT and BeOS. There have been options, but the mass market often wasn't very aware of them. That was largely my point.

    45. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...People have a tendency to think in dichotomies, rightly or wrongly...

      Isn't that a dichotomy?

    46. Re:Let's be clear by nine-times · · Score: 2

      Nice, I didn't think anyone would.

    47. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think microsoft needs to suck it up and put android on their lumia phones (aka n9)
      The only advantages of the windows phone (lumia) is the offline maps courtesy of nokia
      and the exchange integration.

    48. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      People have a tendency to think in dichotomies, rightly or wrongly

      I see what you did there...

    49. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ok smartass, but how many of the iPhone user base ssh into their little Unix computer? How many even understand what that means?

    50. Re:Let's be clear by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 1

      The web browser on the iphone was like nothing we had seen before. It actually worked for the vast majority of the web. THAT more then anything else is what drove its adoption. Calling it a toy is just ignorant hyperbole to make your point.

      I had an HP iPaq 6315 back in 2004. The browser worked just fine. So I'm not sure what was so new about a browser on the iPhone. But Windows mobile was pretty damn clunky compared to the iPhone.

    51. Re:Let's be clear by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 2
      The Windows phones of that era were unmitigated shite, constantly crashing losing apps and data, and bug fixes never happened. When a new version came out, the customer base was publicly shafted. They are still doing this while Android and IOS ship regular upgrades to their user base (Maybe not in America).

      Many business users tried this technology, and none will risk trying it again.

      MS have yet to learn that customers do not like being publicly slapped in the face with a wet fish!

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    52. Re:Let's be clear by PhxBlue · · Score: 1

      - There is no I in team

      When the team succeeds, the good leader takes no credit. When the team fails, the good leader takes all the blame.

      --
      !#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
    53. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      interrupted his address to a cafeteria full of employees to chastise a guy who had an [competing technology], belligerently telling the crowd that we should all practice brand loyalty the way his family did. [...] I remember thinking [CEO] was a royal asshole, without a shred of humility and unable to have the common sense to recognize an engineer's choice of superior technology

      Funny. I'm reading Steve Jobs' biography currently and this quote could apply just as well to him...

    54. Re:Let's be clear by steelfood · · Score: 1

      Only now with Metro, it's the tail wagging the dog. Which makes it all the dumber of a move.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
    55. Re:Let's be clear by gtall · · Score: 1

      I don't believe that your opening premise. I think MS made them look like little computers because (1) that's all MS knows and (2) they think they must tie everything to Winders. So they see smartphones, see they have processors so (1) Robot MS: Must put Winders on it, and (2) Robot MS: With Winders on it, the world is ours...bwahahahahaha!!! That's it, MS isn't very deep. That's what Jobs really understood about MS. Mind you, he didn't get that from day one, but he learned. And Gates was just as simple minded as Ballmer, but then Gates was never a geek and always a salesman, he just didn't have the MBA to back up his pointy-haired decisions.

    56. Re:Let's be clear by ackthpt · · Score: 1

      interrupted his address to a cafeteria full of employees to chastise a guy who had an [competing technology], belligerently telling the crowd that we should all practice brand loyalty the way his family did. [...] I remember thinking [CEO] was a royal asshole, without a shred of humility and unable to have the common sense to recognize an engineer's choice of superior technology

      Funny. I'm reading Steve Jobs' biography currently and this quote could apply just as well to him...

      It was widely feared to be on the elevator if Steve entered it. When you got off you may not have still had your job because Steve may have made a decision your work was unessential. Given that he had some flaws, he did have a very clear vision.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    57. Re:Let's be clear by sjames · · Score: 1

      My Android phone has an ssh client on it as well as RDP.

      The old Windows phones failed because they were slow and because MS insisted on putting the same old clunky interface on it as they use on the desktop. That clunkiness made the desktop experience bad but it made the phone experience intolerable.

      The real problem is that the world is passing them by. If Windows came out today, it would tank too. They're living on inertia.

    58. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The biggest problem is they want to keep the hardware in house because they want more margin. Well they will get higher margin, on the very few devices they actually manage to sell. Bill Gates' genius was that he was happy to cede the hardware to IBM in the beginning, because he KNEW that the real money was in software. Software had very little physical costs...the cost of the printed manual and the floppy disks were the main expense, aside from development costs. Today that is even more true, as most software doesnt have to exist physically at all! Google is eating Microsoft's, Apple's and Nokia's lunch right now because Android runs on hundreds if not THOUSANDS of different devices, and each one out there gives them a revenue stream. This is how Microsoft "won" over Apple on the desktop. But Ballmer thinks he knows better, and is taking the company in exactly the opposite direction...in a lame attempt to ape the success of Apple's vertically oriented business...but Apple is starting to lose it's luster as well...people dont WANT to buy into a whole ecosystem! They don't want to be limited as to who's services they use. Some people may prefer DropBox to Samsung's cloud storage, for instance...and on an Android phone, even a Samsung one, you have that choice! On other platforms, you get shoehorned into using whatever tools Apple or Microsoft will ALLOW you to use...and 3rd party competing programs and services are often intentionally crippled or blocked to force you to use those services.

      Customers arent stupid. This is why they can't sell a Windows Phone! They realize what MS is trying to do, and they are actively avoiding WP, RT, and Windows 8! Until MS executives can wake up to WHY customers are avoiding Windows, they are essentially doomed to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over...the end result will be Microsoft being broken up and sold off in chunks....cant wait to watch it happen, personally.

    59. Re:Let's be clear by peragrin · · Score: 1

      Blackberry had the business arena nailed. until the iphone came out. now the Iphone and android phones are killing blackberry in features, ease of use, and cost.

      Businesses don't use blackberries much anymore. simply because they can't keep up.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    60. Re:Let's be clear by ackthpt · · Score: 1

      The main argument for leaving the hardware to others is you can then promote the best of what they produce (and ignore the abysmal flops). With it in-house they have to match what Apple and Samsung are already doing, which is a tough mark to toe.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    61. Re:Let's be clear by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      A similar example for me is the way the Palm Pilot took th PDA market from Casio, Sanyo, etc. They rethought the user interface first, then the hardware. I think Apple owe a lot to Palm for doing that.

    62. Re:Let's be clear by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      Balmer should have said: okay, make me a better phone.

    63. Re:Let's be clear by Your.Master · · Score: 1

      No, because he's not demanding that you pick "rightly" or "wrongly", he's accepting both (and, by implication, anything in between). No dichotomy is posed.

      If I say "a sabre-toothed tiger is scary whether it's frozen in glacier ice or it's been set on fire", that doesn't mean that a living sabre-toothed tiger in a stable temperature zone is non-scary. No dichotomy is posed.

    64. Re:Let's be clear by fatphil · · Score: 1

      Nokia N900 with more grunt? That would be the Neo900. The only thing that's lacking is its state of existence.

      Yes, I mostly hate it, but I'll still be a lifelong n900 fanboi, as I hate everything else more.

      --
      Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
    65. Re:Let's be clear by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      Smartphones not about conventional work like geeks think they should be. That doesn't mean they are not tools for the average consumer. For example blood sugar monitoring apps are much easier for a diabetic than using Excel spreadsheets. For small businesses, the Square app has been huge in lowering barriers for them to accept payment. It's just the UI has changed from the Windows model that MS offered. There was a time when geeks would say a GUI was for entertainment; real geeks should stick to a command line. Well editing video and audio is much easier using a GUI than command line.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    66. Re:Let's be clear by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      "And you know what? They were more successful than just about any other smart phone. Things looked good... good enough to dismiss the iPhone as a toy when it came out."

      No they weren't and things didn't look good either. The iPhone was successful not only for what it was but because its competition sucked so bad. The iPhone was not technically a smartphone in its first year, no Apps, and might have failed had competition "looked good".

      Frankly, the touchscreen MS phones were terrible. The non-touchscreens were better. Symbian was a far better OS and Palm had far better apps, but all were unstable and had terrible, fatal flaws. The iPhone was the first device that didn't crash multiple times a day.

      What people have wanted to do with smartphones hasn't changed nor is there any reason to call them "toys".

      MS will squander what's left of Nokia. Buying a failed business doesn't turn them into Apple.

    67. Re:Let's be clear by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      Right, like people only choose between two brands of cars, to use a popular analogy. Linux's failure on the desktop has nothing to do with its own shortcomings, it's because there's only room for two and those are preordained.

      Since when do people have to be looking for a "second" alternative? What does that even mean?

    68. Re:Let's be clear by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      "It really was something. It blew away anything else at the time."

      No it didn't, the iPhone had the most incompatible phone browser ever introduced "at the time". Every phone browser then was better than Apple's, it's just that their platforms sucked. Apple's approach is only now considered good after the industry accomodated their removal of the pointer which had been a mandatory element up until then. Then there's flash...

      Apple did do the App store well, but don't forget that Jobs told us that we really don't want Apps on a phone, it's too unsafe. Palm did apps better than Apple in many ways. You could transfer apps between phones on a Palm and it was very quick. Apple wouldn't get their cut that way, of course.

    69. Re:Let's be clear by dfghjk · · Score: 1

      The iPhone web browser work on less of the web than any other phone browser when it was introduced. Any website that assumed a mouse pointer was broken. That was 100% of commerce sites and most sites that required input via forms. Anything with flash was broken and that was a huge portion of the web. No other phone had problems of this magnitude.

      The revisionist history is strong on this topic.

    70. Re:Let's be clear by symbolset · · Score: 1

      He's really good at being Bill Gates's college roomie.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    71. Re:Let's be clear by symbolset · · Score: 1

      I'm a sales guy, and I would thank you for disassociating sales guys from this prick. Sales guys live and die buy giving people what they want, and this guy subsists on denying people sustenance, He is the exact opposite of us.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    72. Re:Let's be clear by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      The real reason why M$ failed with windows is basically people didn't really like it all that much. They didn't appreciate the change for upgrade charges sake, they didn't appreciate the BSODs, they didn't appreciate failed standby mode, the didn't really appreciate the in your face nature of windows. Why did they buy it because M$ effectively (illegally, the were investigated and prosecuted) manipulated the application makers and the hardware manufacturers and 'OH YES' IBM fucked up big time by being so stupidly greedy with OS/2 to kill it at birth by overcharging for it, rather than going in dirt cheap.

      Basically once M$ came under real competition that slipped by whilst they were under anti-competitive constraints and that customers were already looking for they lost. People were looking for an alternate, that is why they choose it, as soon as it became readily available and was not choked under monopoly abusive practice. Ballmer could only win by cheating ie look no further than the standards debacle that truly showed Ballmer for who he is and for what he turned M$ into.

      The reality is M$'s biggest mistake was losing Paul Allen and keeping Steve Ballmer, face it, it couldn't get any more stupid than that (apart from Lotus's failure to adjust price's and offer an Office suite and IBM's failure on OS/2 pricing, dang, mind bogglingly stupid mistakes).

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    73. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I carried an XV6700 for 4 years. Winmo 6 and the web browser was unusable. I carried that brick for 4 years and never did anything more then make calls with it. The iphone browser just worked. I think you forget just how bad mobile browsers were.

    74. Re:Let's be clear by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      No they weren't and things didn't look good either.

      What do you mean? They had something like 60% market share. If they were afraid of anyone, it would have been Blackberry. At the time, they probably thought they were in a pretty good position.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    75. Re:Let's be clear by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      Yes, you could install an alternate OS even before Windows. I was running FreeDOS for a while before DOS 6.2 came along, it was vastly superior to the DOS 3.3 that came with the computer (on two floppies).

      But when you buy a computer it has an OS installed, and that's either Apple or Microsoft.

    76. Re:Let's be clear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. I've known several people that had Windows CE phones way before Android and iPhone were around, and only the diehard MS fans would actually use them. Of course, "using" them involved rebooting the device at least 3 times a day, living with connectivity dropping out on a whim and sometimes not coming back online for hours, fat-thumbing around an interface with buttons that were way too small and having a stylus that mostly missed it's mark because of the terrible touch screen, and regularly losing documents and data to never be found again.

      I.E. a typical Windows experience. MS really outdid themselves.

    77. Re:Let's be clear by algoa456 · · Score: 0

      When I worked for Ballmer in the early 90s his nickname was Blamer. Nothing was Steve's fault - someone else always screwed up, so it is quite remarkable that he takes responsibility for blowing Microsoft's phone strategy. Perhaps he is getting mellow in his old age.

    78. Re:Let's be clear by RespekMyAthorati · · Score: 1

      No matter what the application, if you are using it to further some objective that is important to you, then it as tool.
      Like you.

    79. Re:Let's be clear by RespekMyAthorati · · Score: 1

      The new Haswell Surface Pro, and Bay Trail tablets, are good examples of this.

      And nobody is buying them. Windows on a portable device will never work.

    80. Re:Let's be clear by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      So your Fleshlight is a tool. Grand.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    81. Re:Let's be clear by LinuxLuver · · Score: 1

      I agree. Any sales guy who does well at the top probably wasn't a very good sales guy. It's a completely different mindset.

      --
      Only boring people are ever bored.
    82. Re:Let's be clear by perles · · Score: 1

      The very same thing happened to IBM in early 90's as John F. Akers, a sales person, destroyed the company that was once one of the top 5 most profitable companies.

    83. Re:Let's be clear by nine-times · · Score: 1

      There are a few major differences, the largest being that people generally don't have to worry about cross-car compatibility. If each car manufacturer had different driving controls and required a different kind of gasoline, I would bet that you would only have a couple of brands of cars. Still, as Tesla picks up steam, assuming it gets to be fairly commonplace, I think you'll start to see a dichotomy emerge between traditional gas stations and Tesla-style charging, and though there could be billions of different variations of powering vehicles, you won't see many of them being used.

      And even so, if you listen to people talking about buying cars, they tend to bring it down to a very selective choice at the end. An individual will commonly come to the point of saying something like, "I either want an Audi or a BMW," and Toyota and Ford are out of the picture. The reason we can support so many different brands is not that people deal well with having lots of choices, but because you have many different semi-overlapping car markets, each having developed their own dichotomies. So there's an "Audi or BMW" guy and there's a "Toyota or Ford" guy and a "Volkswagon or Smart Car" guy and a "Volkswagon or Toyota" guy, each narrowing down their choices to some kind of dichotomy.

      Either way, I'm not positing an absolute. I'm suggesting a tendency that's very normal, and is working in favor of Microsoft on the desktop, but working against them in mobile devices. People don't really consider the infinite number of choices that we're presented with. When possible, we like to narrow things down into nice clean dichotomies and then choose between two things.

    84. Re:Let's be clear by robsku · · Score: 1

      IBM fucked up big time by being so stupidly greedy with OS/2 to kill it at birth by overcharging for it, rather than going in dirt cheap.

      Yeah, I dunno if it that much about greed rather than not understanding markets (like I at age 17 when I bough my own computer + OS/2 WARP 4 thinking it's technologically superior so they *will* win - and it wasn't *that* expensive if I bought it with my summer job money) - after all in comparison to other desktop OS's the price/quality ratio was great. But that's not winning on the markets - I don't know if they were greedy, but I think the prices were justified (there are things where XP never got to same level that WARP 4 was in 97), but if they had better grasp about marketing and competing against another giant they would have used cheap price as weapon instead.
      So basically I agree with you that IBM fscked the comptetition with pricing - among other marketing related shortcomings.

      --
      In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
    85. Re:Let's be clear by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      At that time I bought a computer that came with windows and when OS/2 came out it was just too damn expensive to "cross grade", that was IBM's singular greatest failure, even greater than going with Gates in the first place.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  2. Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gates chose a big, fat, retarded individual to run the company after he retired. And Gates got a lost decade in return.

    1. Re:Ballmer by realmolo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Absolutely.

      Ballmer is the one that put the "Every department MUST rate their employees, and MUST fire the employees that have the lowest ratings. Every year." system in place, which is...insane. And stupid. In fact, it's so insane and stupid it's almost unbelievable. This guy is the CEO of one of the richest companies in the world? And he put a system in place to ENSURE that EVERYONE spends most of their workday sabotaging the other employees in order to save their own job?

      Ballmer only got/kept the job because he's buddies with Gates, and buddies with the Board. That's how it works in EVERY corporation these days, but generally the CEO is somebody that, at worst, is harmless. Ballmer was actively incompetent, and his idiocy damaged the company. He should be sued by the shareholders.

    2. Re:Ballmer by alen · · Score: 3, Informative

      what do you expect? ballmer got his MBA at harvard at the same time the current GE CEO was there. and that's where the ranking system was born, at GE

    3. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some of the biggest and most successful companies around use this very system to retain the best people and get rid of the dead weight.

      Efficiency and productivity are what keep people employed. The guy in TFA is a serious bum and should not be portrayed like some role model who managed to "beat the system."

      Sorry if you left-wingers believe that having a job is a right, not a priviledge.

    4. Re:Ballmer by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What happens if all the members of that team are above average in terms of company wide productivity? Or you have a weak team where all of them are below average? You lose one of the better employees and one of the worst employees. But, it's not even a break even situation as stress and burn out will affect the stronger team more than the weak team.

      Normally, I'd assume that you're trolling, but there's a lot of morons on here that view humans as replaceable machinery to be used and discarded on a whim because having a job is a "privilege" and not a right. But, without a decent job, you can't afford an apartment, food or anything beyond the most meager of necessities, because ZOMG we can't actually set up a system that will care for people that aren't already hugely wealthy.

      The right wing's complete and utter incompetence on economic matters is threatening to render the US back to the 3rd world.

    5. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good business practice is left-wing? I love it!

      You do realize that every list by definition will have people at the bottom. If you consider them "dead weight" then welcome to employee churn. I hope you don't run a business because you'd run it like a McDonald's franchise.

    6. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      except when your "dead weight" is actually still highly talented for the industry, you are actually firing good talent for the sake of a stupid rating system. Now your talent has to waste time worrying about their job and how to keep it instead of innovating.

    7. Re:Ballmer by Entropius · · Score: 2

      It's not left-wing; if anything, it's right-wing. (I'm a centrist.)

      Left-wing economics in the US seems predicated on the assumption that there is X amount of stuff to go around, and the 1% are using more than their share of stuff, and ought to give more to everyone else. The left-wing narrative sets the wealthy against the poor.

      Right-wing economics (at least the sane, non-theological version of it) says that wealth isn't a zero-sum game, and that wealth is created for both parties (whether rich or poor) whenever there's a voluntary exchange of labor, goods, land, whatever. The right-wing narrative says that we are all in a quest to improve the overall wealth of society, and "a rising tide floats all boats".

      Ballmer pits employees against each other; "good business practice" pits them all against the bottom line. If even the worst fellow in the shop creates more value for the company than his salary, he's worth keeping around. That's more like the right-wing narrative.

    8. Re:Ballmer by jbolden · · Score: 1

      Actually stack ranking was born in the legal profession (Cravath System) and from there the US military. GE then implemented it and Welch proposed it across the board for CEOs.

    9. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      privilege*

    10. Re:Ballmer by jbolden · · Score: 2

      I agree with you Republicans are nuts... but in all fairness. Microsoft is a Democrat company. Ballmer is a Democrat. Stack ranking has been popular with Democrats and Republican like Welch. This one isn't partisan.

    11. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Absolutely.

      Ballmer is the one that put the "Every department MUST rate their employees, and MUST fire the employees that have the lowest ratings. Every year." system in place, which is...insane. And stupid. In fact, it's so insane and stupid it's almost unbelievable. This guy is the CEO of one of the richest companies in the world? And he put a system in place to ENSURE that EVERYONE spends most of their workday sabotaging the other employees in order to save their own job?

      (as an ex-Microsoftie) the negative impact of the review system wasn't just about saving yourself from landing in the bottom 10% and being managed out, it was all through the scale also for the top performers. There was a forced distribution curve, across often quite small and visible groups of employees. Only so many % in a certain pay level band and role type could get the best rating, only so many % could get the next level etc. This had significant impact on your yearly bonus, and on your career opportunities.

      Problem was: 1) You often knew who your internal competition for getting a good rating was (and you were often asked to provide 360* feedback on them...). 2) The people who decided on your final rating (moving people up and down to fit the curve) was usually skip-level execs that had no direct visibility on your performance unless you played politics - which this obviously became a very strong incentive to do. Getting a good rating was about focusing on internal success factors and self-marketing (making sure you were perceived better than your internal competition) much more than external (customer/market) focus, performance and results. I still believe the senior leadership team grossly underestimate the toxic effect this have on the org, and how much focus and resources are wasted on these internally driven motivations.

      This was one of the main reasons for me leaving. I'm now very glad to be working somewhere were we can succeed together. It makes such a difference. And for friends still there, I really hope the new CEO can put an end to this madness.

    12. Re:Ballmer by hedwards · · Score: 3, Informative

      Which party is it that's in favor of cutting food stamps to give tax breaks to the rich?

      Ballmer's rich, he may be a Democrat, but he has a vested interest in seeing that conservative policies are followed. As those policies are how he was able to accumulate so much wealth without contributing anything of value. Under a more liberal economic policy and regulatory set up, MS would never have been allowed to grow as big as it has, without earning that size. They would have been broken up in the late '90s when they used their size to stifle innovation across the industry.

      Bottom line here is that it's the conservatives that are always trumpeting this sort of maladaptive business practice so that they can easily scare voters.

    13. Re:Ballmer by EzInKy · · Score: 1

      This is an authoriatarian versus libertarian issue, not right versus left.

      --
      Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
    14. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'll try to be neutral, but I think there's a more correct version of the left-wing economics in the US (what you've described is a more "theological" version of it, so to speak).

      It's that below a certain amount of wealth, your ability to create wealth is arbitrarily curtailed, while above a certain wealth, your ability to create wealth has diminishing returns. So we have an inefficient allocation of wealth that is self-reinforcing. The rising tide will benefit all on average, but especially the poor, if we work to counteract the inequalities.

      Basically, personal wealth is used as both an incentive to create more societal wealth, and a means to create more personal wealth. Ideally the incentive and the means aspects should be decoupled so you don't get locked in by circumstance.

    15. Re:Ballmer by dunezone · · Score: 5, Interesting

      > what do you expect? ballmer got his MBA at harvard at the same time the current GE CEO was there. and that's where the ranking system was born, at GE

      What you are referring to is the Jack Welch approach. Its a strategy that was developed to eliminate excess employees. It works. Its biggest pro is that once implemented it shows the main result of excess employee elimination in a short period of time. It has two major flaws one that appears in the short term and one that appears in the long term if you continue to the use the strategy. The major flaw in the short term is that you can have a department full of amazing employees but you're forced to eliminate someone, this is probably something most companies are willing to accept when deploying the strategy. The other major flaw which Microsoft is now seeing is what happens when you keep this strategy around for too long. It creates a hostile environment where no one wants to help each other. No department wants to see the other succeed nor do they want to see their co-workers succeed because you're in constant competition for your own job.

      Its a strategy that can work and it did for General Electric, but Jack Welch had other strategies he mixed with this strategy that made it work with GE.

    16. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Been watching MSNBC again eh?

      All that cool-aid you are spewing about republicans is simply NOT TRUE. if you listen to what they *actually* trying to do and not what some folks are saying they are trying to do, I think your opinion of republicans might be a bit different.

      Rush calls folks like you "Low information voters" which means you are largely misinformed about what is actually going on.

    17. Re:Ballmer by thoth · · Score: 1

      What happens if all the members of that team are above average in terms of company wide productivity?

      If that honestly happens, then the manager would be expected to defend this situation in ranking meetings by showing numbers - features implemented, bugs fixed, on time delivery, etc.

      Or you have a weak team where all of them are below average?

      Easier situation - the lowest goes and the manager doesn't have to feel too bad.

      I served my time there ;) but never was a manager.

    18. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As a completely different AC (and not the same poster at all) who modded this up, I am also a former MS employee and I endorse this message.

    19. Re:Ballmer by jbolden · · Score: 1

      Which party is it that's in favor of cutting food stamps to give tax breaks to the rich?

      The Republicans but we were discussing stat ranking not food stamps. As for Microsoft not being broken up.... that was the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

    20. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're dreaming if you think that competency at the management level is the problem. Workers in todays market, at least in the technical market, generally have no company loyalty. They also have no illusions. If you are the weakest worker in a group you have two choices. Do what is necessary not to be the weakest worker or move on yourself before you are forced to move on.
      You have a right to be paid for your labor, you have no right to be paid for substandard labor.
      Want a decent job? Get a salable skill. Work hard. Be more productive than others at your job. No need to sabotage or back-stab anyone. If you think that's how most companies work you either need to change jobs, cause the place you work sucks, or you need to look at why your perceptions are such. Its not back stabbing if I put in more hours than you and I'm rewarded fro my efforts, or I chose to pursue additional education while you decide you'd rather hang around the bars or watch the telly.

    21. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yup. It's a system that works incredibly well if you implement it one year out of every five or so. Healthy organisms need pruning occasionally, not constantly.

    22. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You do realize that every list by definition will have people at the bottom.

      Yes, and replacing the worst employees with random new employees will almost always improve the work force. And that's a good thing.

      The problem with Microsoft's ranking process is that they aren't removing the worst of the employees. They're removing employees for being the worst of small groups in the company, which almost certainly means that they are keeping some of the worst while letting go better employees, solely because they happen to be in a high-performing group.

    23. Re:Ballmer by dkleinsc · · Score: 1

      Left-wing economics in the US seems predicated on the assumption that there is X amount of stuff to go around, and the 1% are using more than their share of stuff, and ought to give more to everyone else. The left-wing narrative sets the wealthy against the poor.

      Actually, left-wing economics is predicated on the assumption that people with more wealth have more power to make economic decisions, and use that power to exploit those without wealth. Consider, for example, two candidates negotiating salary for identical positions at the same firm: Bob has 3 years of living expenses in the bank and a house owned free and clear, while Mike is broke and has a landlord breathing down his neck. And the potential employer can probably figure this out, because their address is usually somewhere on the application. Chances are good that Bob will get a much better offer than Mike.

      And that even works when both parties are relatively wealthy. Consider a owner of a mid-sized business, who gets an offer to buy his business for $100 million. How much negotiation do you think that CEO will do, really, given that he stands to retire on a $100 million rather than run his business for the next 4 decades? Even if the business is worth more than that $100 million.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    24. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're dreaming if you think that competency at the management level is the problem. Workers in todays market, at least in the technical market, generally have no company loyalty.

      And why is that, if not for management policies that treat workers are disposable/replaceable parts?

      You have a right to be paid for your labor, you have no right to be paid for substandard labor.
      Want a decent job? Get a salable skill. Work hard. Be more productive than others at your job. No need to sabotage or back-stab anyone..

      I spent 10 years at Microsoft (have been gone for a while) and I can assure you that if you want to keep your job or at least get some career advancement, backstabbing is a REQUIREMENT. The curve mandates that 10% of people be rated underperform. Doing a good job is not enough. If everybody does a good job, or even if everybody does a stellar job, 10% of employees still have to be given a bad rating. What behavior do you think spontaneously emerges out of that?

      The worst part at Microsoft is that managers have only partial control over the ratings their employees are given. You'll meet in a room with other managers and you will rank all the employees at lower levels. Then the rankingprocess is repeated at every higher level except you don't get to participate (because of course your own personal case is now being discussed along all the others). Say you're a first line manager (like a dev lead). You go to the stack ranking meeting and manage to get all participants to agree that your best dev deserves a rating of 1 (out of 5). Then when the process moves up, and you're not there to argue for your guy anymore, there is no guarantee that your star developer won't get taken down a notch or two. By the time the final ranking comes you might have to deliver a 3 rating to a guy you actually believe deserves a 1. And it's your job to justify it in the manager feedback, even if the decision was made by others, because as MS HR puts it you must "own the decision". So you'll make up stuff, often relying on intangibles like "visibility" to make a case for a 3 when a 1 is clearly what the guy deserves.

      Your star dev is pissed off, You're pissed off because now you're worried he's going to look somewhere else for the recognition he deserved but didn't get at MS. It's a messed up system all around.

    25. Re:Ballmer by Kjella · · Score: 2

      It creates a hostile environment where no one wants to help each other. No department wants to see the other succeed nor do they want to see their co-workers succeed because you're in constant competition for your own job.

      People are already a bit like that because they chase promotions and raises, but there it's more everyone for themselves. What's worse about a firing policy is that it creates scheming to find a fall guy, it's like one of those reality shows where one person has to leave every week. Usually it's not the "best" person who wins, it's the one who creates the most alliances then backstabs people at the right time and subtly enough the group doesn't turn on him/her. Exactly the kind of workers you want, yeah.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    26. Re:Ballmer by SeattleGameboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      To be fair, it worked at Microsoft for a long time as well. This system works well as long as there is certain upward mobility for all involved, specifically the stock price. When the Microsoft stock was doubling every few years, this reward system really did not ruffle much feathers as everyone still took part in the stock price rising. Sure, you may have not gotten as much stock as the "top performer", but you got enough that you really didn't think about it much.

      This all changed once Microsoft stock started stagnating. This took all these safety nets away. Now, your performance review/rating took even GREATER effect as you were not getting rewarded for "free" with stock price rising. Now, you had to fight hand and tooth against your co-workers to make sure that you got yours.

      THIS is why MS started tanking. The infighting that happened because rewards were true zero-sum game. If you win, someone else loses. It took all motivation to cooperate and build something together.

    27. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What happens if all the members of that team are above average in terms of company wide productivity?

      If that honestly happens, then the manager would be expected to defend this situation in ranking meetings by showing numbers - features implemented, bugs fixed, on time delivery, etc.

      As a former Ms employee, I call BS. The manger can defend all he wants but he only has control while the review process is at his level. Once the process moves up (i.e. the next hierarchical level meets to rank), your people's ratings can be changed and you have absolutely no control over that. In the end the numbers have to fit the model. There is no way around this.

      Say the dev leads (first line managers) meet and produce a ranking that doesn't fully meet the model. When the dev managers (the leads' managers) meet, they'll straighten things out by changing some of the employees' ratings.

      In the end though, the dev leads must "own the message". So it's their job to write feedback that justifies the ratings their employees got, even if they disagree with that rating. That's why Microsoft reviews are often filled with intangible considerations such as visibility. If you have a great dev who you wanted to rate 1 but who got taken down to three by the higher ups, what are you going to say to justify the mediocre grade? If the guy truly deserves a 1, you can't base your feedback on the actual quality of his work. So you'll tell him he's not "visible" enough.

      Now your best dev is pissed off. If you have any integrity you're pissed off as well because you had to basically lie to the guy. And worst of all you're worried that he'll leave. Everybody loses. That's the magic of stack ranking.

    28. Re:Ballmer by coinreturn · · Score: 1

      ...That's how it works in EVERY corporation these days, but generally the CEO is somebody that, at best, is harmless.

      FTFY

    29. Re:Ballmer by coinreturn · · Score: 2

      Been watching MSNBC again eh?

      All that cool-aid you are spewing about republicans is simply NOT TRUE. if you listen to what they *actually* trying to do and not what some folks are saying they are trying to do, I think your opinion of republicans might be a bit different.

      Rush calls folks like you "Low information voters" which means you are largely misinformed about what is actually going on.

      I think you're the low information voter. Did you miss where the Republican House just passed a bill to cut $39B from food stamps, just like the OP said?

    30. Re:Ballmer by symbolset · · Score: 1

      I am told the successful management strategy is to recruit sacrificial lambs.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    31. Re:Ballmer by coinreturn · · Score: 1

      Your characterization of the left-wing economic view indicates that you are not a centrist. And your characterization of right-wing economics verifies that.

    32. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good insights from the inside - I would have expected the biggest weakness in this system was that technical ability and performance would not be the main factor, and it would quickly degenerate into snake-pit style politics and favoritism that poisoned the entire company from the inside out and drove out the real talent - sounds like that's what happened. This stuff might work in GE, but in a company like MS which needs the exact kind of people who don't play politics well, the technical experts who can create innovation with software, it's not going to achieve good results. Ballmer is not a technical person and never caught on, I guess?

    33. Re:Ballmer by TemporalBeing · · Score: 1

      Gates chose a big, fat, retarded individual to run the company after he retired. And Gates got a lost decade in return.

      That individual also happens to be one of the founders/early employees of the company, one of the few remaining from that era. So it's not like Gates had much choice.

      It's also not like Gates had much choice but to step aside.

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
    34. Re:Ballmer by organgtool · · Score: 1

      Right-wing economics (at least the sane, non-theological version of it) says that wealth isn't a zero-sum game, and that wealth is created for both parties

      Are there any right-wingers in here that would like to comment on whether or not this is accurate? I'm curious because the fact that there is a limited supply of currency in circulation at any given point in time means that wealth is absolutely a zero-sum game.

    35. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What do food stamps have to do with stack ranking?

      You realize more rich people are Democrats than Republicans, right? You seem to be making this about rich vs. poor, but labelling the rich as Republicans and the poor as Democrats. Resist that urge. I would agree that Democrat policies tend to disproportionately benefit the poor, especially in terms of direct effects, but in one of the great ironies of life everybody seems to vote against their own self-interest in these respects (it's not an overwhelming effect, though).

      Please learn to distinguish things you dislike. You make left-wing people look bad when you conflate food stamps and job performance reviews. They aren't even remotely similar. I strongly suspect this just strengthens the views and closes the minds of people who are on the fence about some very important issues.

    36. Re:Ballmer by Your.Master · · Score: 1

      I'm definitely not right-wing, but I don't see how a limit to currency means there's a limit to wealth. Currency is only a medium of exchange, it is not the same thing as wealth.

      Furthermore, the amount of currency in the economy actually does fluctuate because of things like fractional-reserve banking and lines of credit.

    37. Re:Ballmer by organgtool · · Score: 1

      I'm definitely not right-wing, but I don't see how a limit to currency means there's a limit to wealth. Currency is only a medium of exchange, it is not the same thing as wealth.

      Good point, currency is not the same as wealth but it's pretty hard to acquire wealth without first acquiring a large amount of currency.

      Furthermore, the amount of currency in the economy actually does fluctuate because of things like fractional-reserve banking and lines of credit.

      True, but notice my original quote stated "at any given point in time". My point is that it is not an infinite resource, even if the Fed prints it like there's no tomorrow.

    38. Re:Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Trust me... he isn't trolling.

      The average stack ranking review meeting makes the Red Wedding looking like a bottle of spilled ketchup.

      I'm frequently explaining Windows Admin 101 to people and have performed miracles.

      Not being cocky and can't name any specifics without compromising my identity... but honest to god "How the fuck did you do that?!?" stuff.

      Got a 4 on my review.

      Not a team player and poor communications skills... when I'm teaching the team about basic things like Sites and Services.

      Can't close on projects? Kind of tough when the universe's laws of physics (the rules of the lab management org - MLS) change daily and depending on rack and stack vendors who can't read. (really...)

      I know my value and skill set and that of others. I've seen this toxic system force out some of the best engineers I've ever seen and reward the most useless.

      Bonus: The CAPTCHA was: hideous

  3. Its friday... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let the trash talk begins... Microsoft is evil and Ballmer flying chairs jokes incoming!

    1. Re:Its friday... by Naosuke · · Score: 2

      Let's not forget the monkey dance

    2. Re:Its friday... by LordThyGod · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Let's not forget the monkey dance

      Really, the stupidest thing the man ever did was laugh out loud in public at the iphone. That pretty much says it all. He doesn't understand technology. That would seem to be a nice quality to have for his role. The entire strategy there is wait for someone else to do something nice, get some traction, use your own market share to muscle your way into the market, and then start pushing everybody else out. That worked for Gates, but Ballmer was too slow to react. Constantly. Could not see it coming, and then laughs at the biggest shift in technology in the last decade. Dweeb.

  4. Poor Windows CE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > Microsoft tried to come up with its own mobile strategy.

    Microsoft dropped there existing mobile strategy (of providing fantastic PDAs with mobile phone apps) and pissed off all existing clients by releasing a crappy Android clone.

    PDA/Phones then died until Samsung recreated the market with the Note.

    1. Re:Poor Windows CE by unixisc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      CE was barely a good PDA OS, much less a phone OS. At that time, the mistake Microsoft made was putting a PC UI on PDAs. They corrected that w/ Windows Phone 8, albeit late to market, but the real mistake they did there was going overboard and putting that same UI on the PC version of Windows 8.

      Otherwise, my Lumia has a fine interface, and is actually the best handheld for typing that I've had.

    2. Re:Poor Windows CE by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      dude. the thing that is wrong with windows phone is that it IS NOT AN ANDROID CLONE.

      some aspects of it are androidish, but then you realize that it's in functionality a clone of a j2me featurephone from 2004.

      they went from a fully featured mobile os with bad ui to a fully neutered mobile os with an ui fit for a mp3 player concept demo(zune).

      were it a full android clone I wouldn't have problems with wp, since then it would be so much more programmable.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  5. Misread Market Badly by TrollstonButterbeans · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microsoft misread several markets really badly in the early 2000s and present. They had an attitude that they had "won" the entire PC and computing market for now and forever.

    This caused them to grow really complacent and unimaginative and slow to react to market changes.

    But possibly the worst factor was the narrow Microsoft-centric nerdism amongst a good share of the Microsoft faithful that kept eyes closed to very obvious shortcomings in Microsoft's various bungled attempts in the last decade.

    --
    Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
    1. Re:Misread Market Badly by BitwizeGHC · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I've said before that Gates stepping down as CEO was exactly like Ernst Stavro Blofeld stepping down as head of SPECTRE and letting Number Two take the reins. There's a reason why he's called Number Two, and a reason why Blofeld is considered the evil genius.

      --
      N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
    2. Re:Misread Market Badly by ilguido · · Score: 1

      This caused them to grow really complacent and unimaginative and slow to react to market changes.

      Were they ever imaginative and fast to react?

      They inherited a monopoly from IBM, they leveraged that monopoly, but outside of the warm, reassuring PC world, that IBM created, they seem to be astray.

    3. Re:Misread Market Badly by marcello_dl · · Score: 1

      I agree 100%, but the issue might be bigger than that: the PC, due to saturation and the advent of FOSS, was beginning to be too mature (read it "too good for the consumer"), so the manufacturers and the software giants have to find something new. If it means saying goodbye to microsoft, fucking up the PC with drm and pushing always connected mobile and a new OS, so be it.

      Microsoft as a company is not yet in trouble, as much as I wish they had never existed. They can reinvent themselves and make money again, not by technical merits but by marketing skills.

      --
      ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
    4. Re:Misread Market Badly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But possibly the worst factor was the narrow Microsoft-centric nerdism amongst a good share of the Microsoft faithful that kept eyes closed to very obvious shortcomings in Microsoft's various bungled attempts in the last decade.

      Boy, you nailed it. I spent the first 10 years of my career in Microsoft shops, and it is easy to forget there is anything else out there. In reality, in a Microsoft shop you are very much like being in the town in The Village, totally unaware of the larger and more progressive world outside your tiny borders.

    5. Re:Misread Market Badly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gates made a bunch of mistakes as well.
      I guess your analogy still works. The bad guy never wins.

    6. Re:Misread Market Badly by steelfood · · Score: 1

      No, Gates dropped the ball on the internet. Then he tried to make up for it by pushing IE in everyone's face. Which, while it worked for a time, earned him a big anti-trust case for his company too.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
    7. Re:Misread Market Badly by Nyder · · Score: 1

      I've said before that Gates stepping down as CEO was exactly like Ernst Stavro Blofeld stepping down as head of SPECTRE and letting Number Two take the reins. There's a reason why he's called Number Two, and a reason why Blofeld is considered the evil genius.

      Nice, a James Bond reference.

      --
      Be seeing you...
    8. Re:Misread Market Badly by TrollstonButterbeans · · Score: 1

      Microsoft, of course as you pointed out, vigorously hated FOSS. A mistake. If you are a virtual monopoly, why not reach out to your developers via FOSS like they have started to warm up to more in recent times.

      FOSS allows your best and youngest (and poorest) developers to get excited and play with your source code and develop a loyalty bond.

      Instead, Microsoft started attacking FOSS --- stupid considering FOSS is and will be the future --- maybe not quite today, but it is clear that given enough time that WILL be the future. Stupidest PR move ever --- and Google/Android/ started whacking away at Microsoft and doing damage expressly due to this.

      And for what? To define themselves as the new crusty IBM and be a company of yesterday? The TFA itself says their consumer marketshare sucks really, really bad now (19%-20%) ...

      --
      Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
  6. "We"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    On one hand, I was surprised Ballmer admitted fault. On the other, that is a suspicious plural. If the CEO isn't directly responsible for strategic missteps taken by the entire corporation, then who is?

    1. Re:"We"? by hedwards · · Score: 2

      The workers, and they must be punished with layoffs and having their bonuses suspended until they fix the problem of leadership.

    2. Re:"We"? by 0123456 · · Score: 1

      To be fair, anyone smart should have seen the writing on the wall years ago and left.

  7. What I dont get... by jonwil · · Score: 1

    Is why it makes business sense for Microsoft to be in a market where they have single digit market share and zero prospects of ever being more than a blip compared to Android and iOS.

    Microsoft should focus on the things where it is successful including XBOX and Windows and Office.

    1. Re:What I dont get... by DogDude · · Score: 2

      It makes sense because their offering is excellent (most who have used it say "superior", and it's just a matter of time, now. It would be silly for them to walk away at this point.

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
    2. Re:What I dont get... by alen · · Score: 2

      because for most people smartphones are taking over the job of windows PC's and more. you can buy a cheapo PC and keep it for many years now where as before you had to upgrade every few years.

      same with ipads. you can do almost everything on an ipad that a PC does short of some games and programming.

      and they are a threat to the MS Office cash cow.

    3. Re:What I dont get... by somersault · · Score: 1

      Well, I'm not usually one to defend Microsoft, but let's play devil's advocate. If that department is profitable (doubtful right now), then that's a reason to keep it. Even if they're not profitable, MS forced themselves into the games console market, and eventually it started being profitable. I wouldn't say they have zero prospects in the phone business if they actually made a product that stood out as being good. Things can change very quickly in the gadget/tech world. I do kind of wish they'd just become irrelevant and disappear already, but at the same time, competition helps to stop things becoming stale.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    4. Re:What I dont get... by hedwards · · Score: 1

      It makes sense because they previously had a fairly good mobile OS. I had it on my PDA about 10 years back, and it wasn't bad. The problem is that they failed to see the iPhone and Android coming and get a piece of the action.

      Also, realize that they had 0% marketshare before the XBox was released, and now they're doing OK. They just missed one of those crucial moments in time with the mobile market and now they might never catch up.

    5. Re:What I dont get... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is why it makes business sense for Microsoft to be in a market where they have single digit market share and zero prospects of ever being more than a blip compared to Android and iOS.

      Microsoft should focus on the things where it is successful including XBOX and Windows and Office.

      Because mobile devices are eating the PC market from the bottom up.

      And the PC market is the only place Microsoft makes money.

      In other words, without the PC market Microsoft becomes just like whoever the hell it was that made WorkPerfect and Lotus. Roadkill.

    6. Re:What I dont get... by dunezone · · Score: 2

      > Microsoft should focus on the things where it is successful including XBOX and Windows and Office.

      Microsoft still focuses on those markets, but it has the resources to step out of the box and try to capitalize in other markets. The problem is that they have failed more than succeeded when trying to enter a new market. They were successful with the Xbox but failed with the Zune and on course to fail with the Windows Phone, and Microsoft Surface.

      Now you can enter markets and lose as long as your cash cows (Windows/Office) maintain control and continue to sell. The problem and in my opinion the reason why Ballmer is on his way out is not because of his failure with the Zune/Windows Phone/Microsoft Surface but the failure of Windows Vista and Windows 8. Microsoft has flopped on two of the last three releases of their biggest cash cow.

    7. Re:What I dont get... by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Precisely!!! I've never gotten why they need to be in this market in the first place. And now, to compound things, they're acquiring Nokia, and have more to lose when Windows Phone tanks.

      If anything, they could have built a new model around Windows & Office based services - it would seem that there's a lot of cash to be made there.

    8. Re:What I dont get... by Valdrax · · Score: 1

      It makes sense because their offering is excellent (most who have used it say "superior"[).]

      This is the first I've heard of that since I don't know anyone with a Windows phone. While I'm unlikely to switch, I'd like to know more. Why is their offering superior?

      --
      If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
    9. Re:What I dont get... by ragefan · · Score: 1

      It makes sense because their offering is excellent (most who have used it say "superior", and it's just a matter of time, now. It would be silly for them to walk away at this point.

      You know who else thought that... Sony with their BetaMAX product line.

    10. Re:What I dont get... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except that they don't need their own Phone OS to do just this. They could port apps which are the bread and butter profit makers and never touch the OS.

    11. Re:What I dont get... by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It makes sense if that market is at least partially responsible for eroding one of their key markets. While iOS and Android are not completely responsible for the substantial drop in PC sales, the rise of the smart device has played a substantial role. If Microsoft cannot find a way to insert itself into this market, then its long term outlook on the consumer end of the business is cast in substantial doubt.

      It's clear by the introduction of a (heavily crippled) Office variant for Android and iOS that they are ultimately willing to surrender to the temptation to once again put a version of Office on a platform it does not control. It did so with Mac, but Macs have always been bit players so I don't think that represents the kind of shift MS is prepared to pursue now. It's the first sign that the company is prepared to cede market dominance to Android and iOS, and get its piece of the pie by releasing some variant of Office, which is the company's backbone.

      It's still just dipping its toe in the water, but I suspect over the next couple of years you're going to see major shifts in how MS views its consumer offerings. From what I can tell, there is a growing ill sentiment among shareholders to Microsoft just endlessly throwing money at consumer markets and not getting any kind of return. Even the XBox, while it has been in the black on a quarterly basis for the last few quarters, still is years away from paying back the vast investment in capital and R&D that Redmond threw at it.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    12. Re:What I dont get... by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      You're not serious, right? The overwhelming majority of the market has completely ignored it, and from what I can tell, most of its alleged users are paid shills.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    13. Re:What I dont get... by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      The XBox division is only profitable in the sense that it no longer needs massive cash injections to keep it alive. It is a long ways from paying off the huge outlay of cash that Microsoft made to push it into the market.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    14. Re:What I dont get... by Karlt1 · · Score: 1

      The XBox division is only profitable in the sense that it no longer needs massive cash injections to keep it alive. It is a long ways from paying off the huge outlay of cash that Microsoft made to push it into the market.

      And the Entertainment & Devices division includes the Mac Business Unit which is profitable and helps props up the E&D.

    15. Re:What I dont get... by spire3661 · · Score: 1
      --
      Good-bye
    16. Re:What I dont get... by spire3661 · · Score: 1

      The actual XBOX business(disregarding its division affiliates) is DEEP into the red.

      --
      Good-bye
    17. Re:What I dont get... by occasional_dabbler · · Score: 2

      I agree. I have a Lumia 925 and it is a joy to look at, hold and use. The only place WP8 is not catching on is the USA. It's number 2 in India, Latin America and Russia and growing in Europe. 77% year on year growth. Ask yourself "Why a coloured plastic iPhone and why an iOS with flat graphics? Where have I seen those ideas used before?"

      --
      "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
    18. Re:What I dont get... by occasional_dabbler · · Score: 2

      The overwhelming majority of the US market has completely ignored it... FTFY

      Seriously, there is a pretty strong 'fanboi' base in the rest of the world. Why not try it for yourself? The phone that is really helping the sales figures for MS/Nokia is the Lumia 520, which you can get for GBP140 SIM-free in the UK and for GBP90 on PAYG deals. In the US I've seen reports it can be bought for $60 with a mail-in rebate. That's my monthly coffee budget. It has pretty decent specs (dual-core 1GHz, 512MB RAM 480p screen) and it has some nice high-end features like the screen you can use with gloves on, a micro SD slot and you can even 3D print new covers using files from Nokia. In most of the world, a Nokia/Microsoft phone has a lot more kudos than a Chinese landfill Android. And because WP8 doesn't need massive power/resources to run smoothly it offers 90% of iPhone functionality at 10% cost.

      I've had several Windows Phones (Bought, I'm not a shill) and without the Nokia Apps they're ...meh, ok... the Nokia apps make all the difference. 3D Maps, full turn by turn satnav, 'DLSR-like' camera control, DNLA server, free streaming music, etc. etc...

      Go figure...

      --
      "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
    19. Re:What I dont get... by davester666 · · Score: 1

      And isn't that petty...putting the Mac BUSINESS Unit in Entertainment & Devices, instead of say, the same group as the Windows Office guys...

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    20. Re:What I dont get... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      480p. Snicker. My next phone will have 1080p.

    21. Re:What I dont get... by occasional_dabbler · · Score: 1

      As mine is already, but it won't cost $60...

      --
      "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
    22. Re:What I dont get... by occasional_dabbler · · Score: 1

      I liked CE, I still use an iPaq with CE 2003SE. Nothing is supported anymore, of course, but it runs Python 2.5 and the HP48 emulator.

      --
      "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
    23. Re:What I dont get... by occasional_dabbler · · Score: 1

      For me there are two features of WP8 that differentiate it from iOS and Android. The first is the live tiles, much hated in Windows 8 but actually work very well on a phone. My weather app shows hourly forecasts on the lockscreen and then daily on the live tile. My 'me' tile shows me all social interactions, finance tile my stock values etc. etc. The second feature is the ability to pin almost anything to the start screen: A song; a contact, which works as a live tile showing interactions with that person, a boarding pass, a website, a weather forecast for a city, Best public transport connection to a location.

      Android 'widgets' give you something of the live tiles function but nothing like so elegantly. iOS gives you nothing.

      --
      "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
    24. Re:What I dont get... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      77% year over year growth means very little when you go from 1 million devices to 1.7 million devices...and the competition is selling 20 times that in the same period!

      This reminds me of has-been, never-been artists..."hey, I am really big in Japan!"

    25. Re:What I dont get... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your graph shows that since 2008 it has been a profit centre.

      The earlier costs are sunk. You don't get that money back by quitting xbox now. If you had a time machine and could go back to 2002 (or really earlier during the console's development), then you'd have a point. Now, they might as well reap the rewards. Especially if they have a good chance of repeating that FY11 thing.

    26. Re:What I dont get... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have friends who work at various AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint stores, and the return rates for Windows 7/8 phones speaks for itself: it has been an abysmal failure. I think you are a shill being paid to provide illusions, while objective reality is in stark contrast. Even most Windows fanboys have panned Windows phone!

    27. Re:What I dont get... by DogDude · · Score: 1

      The overwhelming majority of people shop at Wal-Mart and eat at McDonald's. What's your point?

      --
      I don't respond to AC's.
  8. Don't care by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Irrelevant and on his way out.

  9. The first step is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    to admit you have a problem.

  10. Early 2000s by kingduct · · Score: 3, Interesting

    'I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused on what we had to do around Windows that we weren't able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone."

    He referring to the early 2000s when there wasn't a new version of Windows for 6 years?

    1. Re:Early 2000s by jbolden · · Score: 1

      Yes. They were focused on their huge push into the server space extending their OS / Office products way up the value chain.

    2. Re:Early 2000s by asmkm22 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that struck me as odd as well. He's trying to make it sound like he's actually owning up to his mistakes by acting like all of their woes stem from decisions made a decade ago. The truth is that his poor decisions were basically made non-stop the entire time.

    3. Re:Early 2000s by jones_supa · · Score: 1

      The modern Windows 6.x core was a big change and improvement over XP. I wouldn't be surprised if it actually took a lot of development resources to build that foundation.

    4. Re:Early 2000s by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You seem to assume there wasn't a new version of Windows because Microsoft was doing nothing, rather than the actual reason that the Vista project was a complete disaster that went years over-schedule.

      That's what he's referring to, no doubt. "What we had to do around Windows" was "getting Vista into shippable state".

    5. Re:Early 2000s by sootman · · Score: 1, Insightful

      No, he means the early 2000s when they were working on... uh... Windows Mobile. That's how the missed the, uh, mobile thing.

      In all seriousness, MS whiffed on mobile the same way they ignored the WWW in the early days. Even though they somewhat saw it coming, they badly guessed on the direction. They only did as well as they did because they were in the position to put that little blue 'E' on every desktop out-of-the-box. (Remember when you used to sign up for an ISP and they'd send you a CD with TCP/IP software and some browsers on it? Imagine if that remained the only way people got their first browser.) In mobile, it doesn't look like they're going to get a second chance. Apple's iPhone business became bigger than all of MS in just five short years.

      --
      Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
    6. Re:Early 2000s by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That wasn't a mistake, that was brilliant. Microsoft gets most of it's money from confusing business licenses. He can't even identify the good stuff he did.

    7. Re:Early 2000s by colinrichardday · · Score: 1

      Before XP, Win 98 was three years old, and Win XP wasn't six years old until 2007. Hardly early 2000s.

    8. Re:Early 2000s by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, they were so starved of cash in the early 2000s that they only had a few tens of billions to spare, there is no way they could have spared some of it to hire more developers to work on mobile.

      It doesn't matter that it may have taken a lot of resources to build the new 6.x Windows core. They had money to spare to hire more developers to work on a separate project if that was what was needed, the failure was certainly at the management level.

  11. I am just tired of Microsoft... by bogaboga · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...that's what is keeping me from buying into their [eco]system. The cash Microsoft have collected from me over the years should be enough, I believe. The name Microsoft just makes me yawn.

    Anyone feel the same?

    1. Re:I am just tired of Microsoft... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If "Microsoft" is making you yawn, what is "IBM" or "Apple" doing to you then?

    2. Re:I am just tired of Microsoft... by asmkm22 · · Score: 1

      I couldn't care less about the name or brand. I just want products that work well. In the IT industry, Microsoft's ecosystem fits that bill, even if they are quite expensive. I'd love for someone else to come along and actually offer competitive products, but that has less to do with not liking Microsoft and more to do with simply wanting competition in the market. I'm really excited about a few Linux options but those are years away from being viable for my clients, based on my testing.

    3. Re:I am just tired of Microsoft... by binarylarry · · Score: 1

      IBM and Apple have both built really important, quality products at some point.

      Microsoft, not so much. They've succeeded despite how crappy their product line is.

      --
      Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
    4. Re:I am just tired of Microsoft... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Active Directory? Crap.
      SCCM? Crap.
      Exchange/ActiveSync? Crap.
      Windows 7? Crap.
      Office Suite? Crap.

      You can't show me a IBM or Apple line that does everything the above does, as easily as it does.

    5. Re:I am just tired of Microsoft... by colinrichardday · · Score: 1

      IBM doesn't sell to individual consumers, and Apple doesn't make me yawn.

    6. Re:I am just tired of Microsoft... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Translation: "I'm a one-trick pony and incapable of learning anything new, so I eat the same garbage and keep pooping it out on my customers."

    7. Re:I am just tired of Microsoft... by Minwee · · Score: 4, Funny

      Lotus Notes can out-crap all of those put together.

    8. Re:I am just tired of Microsoft... by StormReaver · · Score: 1

      The name Microsoft just makes me yawn. Anyone feel the same?

      Yes. Since 1993.

    9. Re:I am just tired of Microsoft... by occasional_dabbler · · Score: 1

      Dear fucking Christ!! Lotus Notes!! I've turned down work specifically because I'd have to use that abhorrent POS. What the hell are you thinking?

      --
      "Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
    10. Re:I am just tired of Microsoft... by SebNukem · · Score: 1

      Not at all!

      The name Microsoft makes me run in the other direction as fast as I can. Avoiding MS products correlates with good mental health.

    11. Re:I am just tired of Microsoft... by Yunzil · · Score: 1

      So you don't think Windows was/is really important?

  12. Fundamental differences by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microsoft simply failed to recognize that people use phones differently than they use desktop computers. MS started by trying to make a desktop Windows run on a smartphone. That cratered because a UI that works on a desktop is awkward and hard to use on the small screen of a phone. Lack of touchscreen support didn't help one bit. And even after they got that concept, they've continued to try to force people into the Windows ecosystem rather than attempting to fit their phones into the existing ecosystems. People don't care much about Office on their phones beyond e-mail and for personal use Exchange integration is almost irrelevant because most people's e-mail accounts aren't Exchange, they're generic POP3/IMAP4 accounts or GMail. Now Microsoft is left with a minority position and an unwillingness to play in anyone else's sandbox, not to mention having actively torqued off the owner of one of the two biggest sandboxes out there (Google). Is it any wonder they're having a hard time gaining traction?

    1. Re:Fundamental differences by unique_parrot · · Score: 1

      Exactly.
      Apple said we make a new os for a phone, lightwight, battery saving and touch oriented, google said we make something new, lightwight and for slow devices, etc. and finally microsoft says we want to be in the market aswell. but we don't make something new, we use our old base and make it somehow useable on a phone. AND we force our loyal desktop users to use the same s**t."

      Anybody ever enjoyed windows8 updates on telephones? no?? let me explain: downloading update (a few minutes, even over wlan), preparing for update (some minutes), restarting and installing (again a few minutes), restarting and making "after updates cleanups"! argh, i am so glad it wasn't my phone! the best thing was: after the hole proccess there was another update, but then i left the tragedy.

    2. Re:Fundamental differences by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I suspect they thought the selling feature would be native PC app integration, however all this did was poison both wells (see Win 8)

    3. Re:Fundamental differences by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      I suspect they thought the selling feature would be native PC app integration, however all this did was poison both wells (see Win 8)

      huh? windows phone does no such thing.

      in fact, you could port+compile putty over to windows mobile quite easily. but not for windows phone!

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    4. Re:Fundamental differences by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 2

      That's their latest attempt to dig themselves out of the hole. But it's the same mistake they made at the beginning, only reversed: instead of making a phone that works like a desktop, they're trying to make desktops work like phones. At this point they can't fail to get the idea that people don't use phones the same way they use desktops, so I can't write this one off to just them being clueless.

    5. Re:Fundamental differences by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Microsoft simply failed to recognize that people use phones differently than they use desktop computers. MS started by trying to make a desktop Windows run on a smartphone. That cratered because a UI that works on a desktop is awkward and hard to use on the small screen of a phone. Lack of touchscreen support didn't help one bit. And even after they got that concept, they've continued to try to force people into the Windows ecosystem rather than attempting to fit their phones into the existing ecosystems. People don't care much about Office on their phones beyond e-mail and for personal use Exchange integration is almost irrelevant because most people's e-mail accounts aren't Exchange, they're generic POP3/IMAP4 accounts or GMail. Now Microsoft is left with a minority position and an unwillingness to play in anyone else's sandbox, not to mention having actively torqued off the owner of one of the two biggest sandboxes out there (Google). Is it any wonder they're having a hard time gaining traction?

      And they made the reverse mistake with Windows 8, where they failed to recognize that people use desktops differently than phones.

  13. The big whiff is another 25 million for Elop by dbIII · · Score: 0

    Smells like corruption.

    1. Re:The big whiff is another 25 million for Elop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity!

  14. Even the great ones whiff by themushroom · · Score: 2

    There's a long history of businesses saying "nah, not going that way" then finding out they made the wrong choice and missed the boat. Good that Ballmer admits what everyone has known for a long time regarding being late to the smartphone party, how can he not?

    Funny he should take a poke at Google since Bing is... uh, Bing... but to MSFT's credit they took up the mantle to challenge Google at search engine technology. They could have very well said "nah, it's been done, look Yahoo and Alta Vista, ad infinitum, there's no meat on the bone" and left it alone. Which, in many opinions, wouldn't have been that bad a thing to pass on since, well, Bing -- but it's still a revenue stream despite quality. MSFT can't always buy a winner when they can't make a winner.

    1. Re:Even the great ones whiff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As much as it pains me to say this: Bing is a pretty good search engine when it comes to porn. After Google "improved" their non-disable safe search, Bing's the best bet.

    2. Re:Even the great ones whiff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'd mod you up but my mouse is all sticky

  15. He who smelt it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Instead of the pot calling the kettle black, maybe it is "takes one to know one"?

  16. Regrets? He's had a few by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But then again, too numerous to mention.

    1. Re:Regrets? He's had a few by colinrichardday · · Score: 1

      Are you implying that Ballmer failed his way?

  17. wrooooong by slashmydots · · Score: 1

    Stay the **** off my phone, it's Windows 8 that should be his biggest regret. As for Windows on my phone, didn't want it, don't need it.

  18. The iPhone has never had majority market share by tuppe666 · · Score: 1

    Memories fade, but the comments Steve made about the iPhone, where about his misunderstanding that the iPhone as a "consumer product" at stupidly high prices. The iPhone only flourished through the high subsidy model in America (to maintain lock-in to carriers) and some parts of Europe. Leaving them with a model that gives them 40% in America, a third of Europe and no sales anywhere else (A kind description).

    He also overestimated the importance of a keyboard...because of email (in business) on a phone, without understanding the trade-off. The trade-off against apps was something that did not exist, and was not planned by Apple, in fact looked down upon by Jobs.

    The real irony of the interview is his inability to reflect on his mistakes, decided to chase Apple in the American market with a keyboard-less tasteless clone. Rather have a every price range; optional keyboard; world phone. It was a strategy which cost Microsoft 10% market share and Nokia 40%. The sad fact is the limited success with the windows phone is on its bottom end phones, out of America.

  19. This is bullshit by TheSkepticalOptimist · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is a cop out statement if I ever heard of one.

    Just Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile#Windows_Mobile_2003

    And you will see that at one point Microsoft had 41% of the "smartphone" market at the time. Their only major competitor was RIM.

    I mean Microsoft defined "smartphone", their phones allowed you to run apps, games and multimedia and was the natural evolution of Windows Pocket PC which was also a major player in the early 2000's.

    To say that Microsoft did not invest talent into mobile devices and phones in the early 2000 is pure, unadulterated bullshit.

    Yes, iPhone was a disruptor in the market, but Ballmer simply turned over and gave up on Windows Mobile products. It was 100% his own incompetence as a CEO to maintain a product that had, at one time, a major segment of the market.

    Its like Ballmer is trying to make it sound like he just didn't see the potential for Microsoft to capitalize on phones and was too focused on desktops, and not the bigger reality that Ballmer is just incompetent as a CEO for letting a product that once defined the market at the time slip into irrelevance.

    Ballmer the Blamer, this is going to define him as he wraps up his days at Microsoft.

    --
    I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
    1. Re:This is bullshit by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      When MS was any kind of notable player in the smartphone/smart device marketplace, it was an incredibly small marketplace. Honestly, other than perhaps acting as some sort of inspiration for Apple, I don't think it had substantial influence on what came later. And frankly, I think the Blackberry was probably a much larger inspiration.

      Ultimately, Apple learned a lot of useful lessons from the monster success that was the original iPod, and then saw how those lessons could be applied to a smartphone. RIM and Microsoft released mobile offerings that were functional, could run a wide variety of software, and certainly had some penetration in the enterprise, but Apple made sure iOS wasn't just a business workhorse (in fact, I see little evidence that it gave a damn about the enterprise at all), but rather a very consumer friendly device and then marketed it with astonishing brilliance. But at the end of the day, Apple's success with iOS is down to the original iPod. It gained its killer product, and built the iPhone and the iPad on the same premise.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:This is bullshit by Christophotron · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is correct. I was a Windows Mobile user from 2006-2010. It was the best mobile platform at the time -- it did more than the competitors. Microsoft let it rot and fade away into obscurity, while the competition got better and better. By the time Microsoft "upgraded" their mobile OS (read: completely EOL'ed and threw away the previous version and replaced it with a completely new, incompatible, less-functional one), Android and IOS had completely taken over the market.

      I was a WM user for two phone-generations and I had no choice but to switch to Android. In 2010, Microsoft simply did not have a viable product anymore, even compared to their old phones, let alone the new Android and iPhones. They started completely over from scratch, breaking all compatibility with previous versions (_twice_, with both WP7 and WP8), way too late in the development cycle to compete with current offerings from competitors. Windows Phone continues to try to catch up to its former self, in features and capability, while Android has gone way beyond that, and continues to improve. Nearly all of the former Windows Mobile developers have switched to Android and will likely never return -- the mindshare loss was devastating.

      But Microsoft has a lot of money to throw at the problem -- they will eventually catch up, and then struggle to regain what they once had.

    3. Re:This is bullshit by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      I'd say there were two disruptive factors. 1) Consumer choice and 2) mobile data networks. When Windows Mobile was king, most users were business users who didn't choose Microsoft. Their companies did. Consumers on the other hand didn't want a pocket computer that worked like Windows. Also most wireless carriers had limited data networks that were expensive. Only businesses could afford the pricing. As wireless carriers started offered more affordable data rates, more consumers started buying smartphones. Even if Apple and Android offered the best consumer smartphones, consumers wouldn't have bought them without the networks being in place. MS might still have had their market share.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    4. Re:This is bullshit by QilessQi · · Score: 2

      They had a lot of money to throw at the Zune, too. They never caught up.

    5. Re:This is bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not bullshit, doublespeak. It's what keeps C-men afloat.

    6. Re:This is bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I mean Microsoft defined "smartphone", their phones allowed you to run apps, games and multimedia and was the natural evolution of Windows Pocket PC which was also a major player in the early 2000's.

      Bzzt! Handspring and then Palm defined "smartphone". MS managed to displace Palm by throwing a lot of money at the problem, but Handspring were the ones who had the first smartphone. One can point back to the Apple Newton if you want where these things first appeared (they had a pocket computer, but cellphone tech wasn't ready to be merged until after they left the market).

  20. what this really means by goffster · · Score: 1

    "and expressed regret over his company's inability to capitalize on burgeoning interest in mobile devices"

    should read

    "and expressed regret over his inability to capitalize on burgeoning interest in mobile devices"

    or perhaps even

    "and expressed regret over his inability to capitalize on burgeoning interest in anything"

    1. Re:what this really means by stenvar · · Score: 1

      Why so windy? Why not

      "and expressed regret over his own incompetence"

  21. Destroy Google+Search by tuppe666 · · Score: 1

    I have always found it astonishing about Microsofts Hard on for search, maybe that incident involving "Destroy Google"; chair throwing is understated, Maybe Ballmer never recovered. Google clearly are aware that search is just one portal on the internet, and real threats are Facebook and Amazon, and has strategies against them, and (limited?) success against them has been hard won. Yet Microsoft have *nothing* in these spaces,

  22. It's exactly where they should be by transporter_ii · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Everyone keeps coming up with suggestions to put them back on top. Everyone just shut up. I like them exactly where they are at. They still provide some competition in the marketplace, which is good. They did, however, get knocked down a few pegs...which is really where we want them at, right? I for one, don't want MS to have a killer phone/tablet. Keep them around, but in the exact spot they are in now: NOT ON TOP.

    --
    Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
    1. Re:It's exactly where they should be by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 1

      Is there any company which you'd find acceptable at the top?

    2. Re:It's exactly where they should be by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Not really. They must be in constant competition for customers, because that is the only way that we customers can win.

    3. Re:It's exactly where they should be by Yunzil · · Score: 1

      Why are you actively arguing against MS making a better product than the competition (which would be good for everyone in the long run)?

      Did Bill Gates run over your dog in 1995 or something?

  23. self-selection by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's unlikely that they'd all be above average, except maybe in a local value of average. If they have any talent, they avoid that company like the plague. Those that are attracted don't come with much of any technical skill to speak of. They come with enough to get their foot in the door, and then use their time to politic, backstab and otherwise climb the ladder. Then all that is made worse by the stack ranking system which gets rid of those that aren't best at politicking, backstabbing and ladder climbing.

  24. Flushing billions away... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The phone market is another segment where Microsoft dropped the ball. Rather than truly innovating---which they were in a position to do---they rested on their butts and watched the market take off.

    Ever since their peak in the 90s Microsoft has just been reacting to new technologies and markets---never have they been a leader or innovator even though they have the resources to be one.

    XBox, Windows Phone, Bing, Zune---all situations where Microsoft was behind the curve and ended up flushing billions away trying to catch up or simply compete...

    Something tells me there will be other projects that will meet the same fate as Zune...

    1. Re:Flushing billions away... by erroneus · · Score: 1

      Yes, they always thought they could buy their way into a market. Someone has a great idea? "Hey, be a Microsoft 'Partner!' and get cheated out of what you created." There are way too many examples of that crap happening... and I can't believe Orange is STILL working with Microsoft after getting screwed so hard.

    2. Re:Flushing billions away... by unique_parrot · · Score: 1

      orange is a phone company there in europe, could you please explain what you are referring to?

    3. Re:Flushing billions away... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've been on the rejection end of a Microsoft game pitch.
      "You guys aren't doing anything special.... just tossing a lot of buzzwords at us. Like "owning all the screens" - using the cloud to power the gaming experience."

      You could feel the hate my friends and I put out.
      Especially when EVE:514 dropped... considering we told MS to do it. "Not worth it they said."

      From that point we decided to just move away from the Titanic that is Microsoft IEB and go on Steam.

      You'll know our work when you see it. :)

  25. Branding problem by Larry_Dillon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I think a huge part of their problem is with branding. Apple and Android are seen as cool and sexy whereas Microsoft is perceived as uncool and business-oriented. XBox is the only exception I can think of. The exact same hardware, delivered by a cool, edgy start-up, could have done much better.

    To be fair, I haven't even touched a Windows phone, but my perception is that it's going to try to lock you into MS offerings (Apple does this too) and it will try and keep you from doing cool things if that doesn't somehow make money for MS.

    Is this really true, is this just my perception, or is this the general perception? Bear in mind that first-hand experience (reality) has nothing to do with the perception of those that haven't touched it.

    --
    Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
    1. Re:Branding problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have to remember that Microsoft has a bad reputation in addition to being "business oriented". Consumers think Viruses, patch problems, reloading Operating systems, random crashes and failures, etc.. when they think of Microsoft. Compared to Apple which just works all the time and very easy at a price, or Google with their "works most of the time very well" with less cost and it's an easy decision for consumers.

    2. Re:Branding problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Microsoft should've capitalized on being uncool and business-oriented. Have people buy phones they want, then make Office products available on Android/iPhone at a reasonable cost, which encourages adoption of compatible software for both the business (if the user already has that software installed) and home (since you of course need to get Outlook on your PC so you can sync everything across...)

      Business doesn't have to be cool, it has to make money, and that's the part of the equation that MS lost. They wanted to control the platform instead of just cashing in on it.

    3. Re:Branding problem by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      It's not just marketing and cool. Windows Phone offers little advantage over iOS or Android. The main differences are a matter of style and preference. Add to that MS has screwed over the first generation of WP users (almost no WP7 phones can upgrade to WP8) who may have been their loyal customers. Add to that the lack of apps. Between iOS and Android, developers have over 90% of the market. Most developers don't feel like going after the remaining few users left.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    4. Re:Branding problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Windows phone has offline maps and proper microsoft exchange integration.
      That said, I'm probably never buying one again.
      And it's almost entirely due to the whole not being able to upgrade BS.
      The other reason is that by now the samsung phones don't feel like cheap pieces of shit anymore,
      which was the case when I bought my windows phone.

    5. Re:Branding problem by grumpyman · · Score: 1

      I disagree. Back then Windows Mobile is just pure SHIT. If Windows Mobile 6 (circa 2007) was similar to WinPhone7/8 on a full touch surface, I'll argue the outlook will be very different, regardless of branding. I really don't see Android as a cool brand at all. Maybe Samsung portrait that but not Google.

    6. Re:Branding problem by a_mari_usque_ad_mare · · Score: 1

      ... almost no WP7 phones can upgrade to WP8 ...

      Its actually a little worse than that, not a single WP7 handset could be upgraded to WP8. In fact MS' requirements called for single-core processors only for WP7, and only dual-core for WP8, so any upgrade is impossible by definition.

      --
      The map is not the territory.
  26. other reasons by stenvar · · Score: 1

    Windows Mobile failed for other reasons too, reasons that are typical of Microsoft. Windows Mobile had good technology, but the user interface was iffy and software quality was spotty. APIs and strategies kept changing as different groups inside Microsoft jostled for dominance. Windows Mobile tried to tie people to the Microsoft "ecosystem" and integrate with their desktop, but that integration was poor. And third party developers could fix none of this for them because they kept large parts proprietary and closed. I think you even had to get special permission from Microsoft to sync with their devices. Even if you sacrificed your kids to Ballmer, gave up any sense of self-respect, and bought an all Microsoft solution (desktop, phone, Outlook), you still ended up with a slow and crappy solution. That's why Windows Mobile failed.

  27. whiffed? More than just smartphones... by geekprime · · Score: 1

    Mp3 players,
    Smartphones,
    tablets.

    Three strikes and you are out Balmer...

    1. Re:whiffed? More than just smartphones... by geekprime · · Score: 1

      And I totally forgot about bing, so that's 4 strikes.

    2. Re:whiffed? More than just smartphones... by unique_parrot · · Score: 1

      and the 5th strike was to announce the we are not a software company anymore, in the future we define ourselfes as selling "hardware and services" AFTER the eu warned companies in europe not to use win8 because of privacy concerns...

    3. Re:whiffed? More than just smartphones... by unique_parrot · · Score: 1

      oh, i forgot to write that i think that "selling services" only works, if people actually WANT them and not if they are forced to use them because they are industry standard.

    4. Re:whiffed? More than just smartphones... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Microsoft's entire online services division is hilarious. Their stuff isn't actually bad, at least not these days, but they've bled huge amounts of red ink every quarter for about a decade straight. Anyone else would have given up on this stuff a long time ago.

  28. Maybe they just don't know? by erroneus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The world basically hates Microsoft. There are tons of reasons for it, but when it comes to new computing devices (that is to say, non-PCs) they do NOT want Microsoft running it because of their horrible experience with Microsoft stuff. It's a discussion which would last until the end of time as to what and who is to blame if the people's experiences were caused by others people and that it's not Microsoft's fault or even if it's just perception which is no longer valid. It doesn't matter. It's like the stock market -- it is what people believe it is and that's the end of the story.

    So when given a choice, people choose "not Microsoft." Not so much that they choose Android or Apple of whatever. It's that they voted "not Microsoft." And I think that says more than enough in a completely clear and understandable way. However, has Microsoft paid any mind to this problem? Have they worked to reverse those problems at all? Once again, opinions will vary, but I'm saying NO. No visible effort at attempting to win the hearts and minds of the users. They already have dominance and all their effort was, in my opinion, coasting and doing just enough to maintain and take advantage of their dominance.

    To this day, one example of Microsoft hubris sticks in my mind the strongest and I just can't get beyond it. Microsoft one day changed their volume licenses of Windows to "upgrade only." This enabled them to sell two copies of Windows for each computer sold. A business who wanted to save money on licensing used to buy enough seats for their users and that was it. But Microsoft just changed the license terms and said "you have to have Windows in order to qualify to use your volume licensed images." When I learned about that, I was just furious. No longer can we save money by telling Dell, "no OS... we'll take care of it." Sell it twice and use it once. Come on!!!

    Not only did they lose the good will of the end users who hate Microsoft for speed, usability and stability reasons, they started taking advantage of the businesses who are their primary source of money.

    So when people have a choice, choosing "not Microsoft" seems like a rational choice.

    1. Re:Maybe they just don't know? by MouseTheLuckyDog · · Score: 3

      The world basically hates Microsoft. There are tons of reasons for it, ...

      Actually in the end there is one reason the world hates Microsoft and that is because Microsoft has shown such disdain for the world that they don't even deign to hate the world.

      Going back to their first major antitrust move, writing DOS2 so that present versions of Lotus 1-2-3 could not run on it. Thus giving current DOS and Lotus users problems: stick with the old DOS or give up 1-2-3 or wait till there was a DOS2 compatible 1-2-3.

      At every turn Microsoft has shown again and again that they were willing to push some hardship on their users if that they could benefit from it.

      There were many senior managers who used Microsoft and hated doing it for years, bordering on decades, but were stuck doing so.

      Now Microsoft expects to play Lucy to the world's Charlie Brown, and does everything they can to convince to convince the world that they will not one more time pull the football away just before he kicks it. Except the world isn't as gullible as Charlie Brown.

      Or to put it the way I did in the late 1990's when a friend asked my why I hated Microsoft. "Because Microsoft hates me."

    2. Re:Maybe they just don't know? by SebNukem · · Score: 1

      A friend of mine showed me his fancy Microsoft Phone the other day. He proceeds to show me the address book, which I thought was plain boring, and then the map. The phone froze right there. He put it back in his pocket mumbling a "ah yeah it does that sometimes". I don't know what happened next, he probably rebooted it somewhere no one was looking. Rebooting. A phone. Seriously. Some people never learn.

      So when people have a choice, choosing "not Microsoft" seems like a rational choice. Indeed.

    3. Re:Maybe they just don't know? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      MS's latest middle finger is to the hundreds of thousands of small partners they call system integrators. Windows 8.1 will not be sold in OEM packages to us little guys. Lucky us. We now get to pay $20 to $60 more for "retail" Windows 8.1. And yeah, we have to use it after Windows 7 goes away. Microsoft sucks balls in so many ways its not funny.

    4. Re:Maybe they just don't know? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When Ballmer (and later Ballmer and Elop) got up there and said they expected consumers to flock to the new "Windows Phone" I thought "Have these people ever used Windows? Why would I or anyone else want that on my phone Now my phone is going to crash, too, maybe when I need to call 911?"

      Xbox succeeded because it was "Xbox", not "Microsoft Game Box" or "Windows TV." I mean, think if the Xbox was called "Windows TV." Would anyone allow that in their living room?

      For the phone Microsoft would have been better off with some made-up name that represented a clean break. Apparently they are in some kind of mass delusion up in Redmond that everyone loves Windows.

  29. Why MS didn't make great phones or tablets by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Most companies are scared of themselves. What?

    Microsoft has and will always try to get the most out of their investments. That type of thinking stops innovation. "We must keep the look and feel of Windows for phones. Its what people know." You can't think that way, you have to be willing to gamble that the "new hotness" will kill your current business. If the phone department kills off your Windows department who cares. Its not going to kill it over night, but over many many years.

    J

  30. The new device called the phone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    'I regret that there was a period in the early 2000s when we were so focused on what we had to do around Windows that we weren't able to redeploy talent to the new device called the phone,' Ballmer told the audience of Wall Street analysts and investors

    Seriously, he thinks that a new device came out in the early 2000s called "the phone"?

    Really?

    Wait until he hears about the other new inventions such as automobiles, radios and powered flight machines!

  31. Rofl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ballmer also couldn't resist taking some swipes at Google, suggesting that the search-engine giant's practices are 'worthy of discussion with competition authority.'

    Hahahahahaha

    Anyone else parse that like I did? I read "Wah, Google is better at antitrust violations than we were! Wah!"

    I wonder if any chairs were harmed in the making of this Q&A.

  32. Revisionist history by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I used to work for Microsoft from the mid-90's to the mid-2000's and once again Ballmer engages in the worst kind of revisionist history. The problem wasn't that he didn't "redeploy talent". The problem is that the vision for phone and tablets was WRONG. He can't admit that because that would be admitting that the fault lies at the top, specifically with Gates and himself. A lot of CEO are guilty of that. In earning calls they'll blame their problems on "execution", implying that their strategy is flawless but the peons just can't do anything right.

    Things used to turn out OK at Microsoft because there was a culture that encouraged debate. You could fight for your ideas regardless of rank. It was OK to disagree with your boss, your VP, or even your CEO. Eventually, the ideas that prevailed were mostly right.

    But all that went away during the Ballmer years. The key to success at MS nowadays is to be a yes-man. Starting in 2001-2002 I started noticing that when somebody would disagree with a superior in a meeting the atmosphere would get very awkward. People would stare at their shoes. The whole place felt like soviet Russia. Reports would be embellished at every hierarchical levels (and they multiplied; I was 6 steps away from Gates when I started, 12 steps from Ballmer when i left).

    It's like a soviet factory that has a quota to produce 5000 tractors a year. The line workers would tell their manager that with the parts shortages, they didn't think they could build more than 3000. The manager would tell the plant director that they wouldn't quite hit the quota; maybe they'd build 4500. The director would tell comrade Komissar that he's think they would exceed the quota by 500. The Komissar would report to the party chairman that they'd handily beat the quota and build 6000 tractors. At the end of the year 2000 tractors were built and nobody knew how their predictions could be so off.

     

  33. Bozos by benjfowler · · Score: 1

    Microsoft's problems are bigger than continually "missing the boat" on long-term technology trends.

    Their problems are managerial, and this particular fish is rotting from the head.

    I wish them luck finding a better replacement for monkey-dance boy. They're going to need it.

  34. The Left-Wing in Congress is Dead by cervesaebraciator · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This one isn't partisan.

    Regrettably, you're correct. There really isn't a left-wing in this country when it comes to economics and an exceptionally few principled libertarians are the only real right-wing. Sure, the tea-party has made right-wing rhetoric more popular, but with the exception of those few libertarians most in the GOP are all for the corrupt corporatist 'partnership' between government and business that was the great economic project of neo-conservative "compassionate conservatism". Sure, the rule of the democratic party since 2008 which managed to pass a health-care reform might make one think the left had risen again. But when one actually looks at the bill he realizes, contrary to establishment Republican rhetoric, the ACA is another business/government partnership which was itself created by Republican think-tanks. There hasn't been a real economic left in this country since before Clinton (incidentally, the notion that Clinton was himself on the left, popular during the Bush years among Republicans, is laughable but indicative; they regard a president as leftist who supported welfare reform and further deregulated the credit market).

    What we have in the politics of this country is a broad consensus. Republicans get elected campaigning for smaller government, but their campaign is financed by a corporation which expects to receive a return on its investment. Democrats get electing campaigning for tighter regulation on business, but their campaign is financed by businesses which hope for regulations that will benefit them and harm competition. Both campaign on social issues which people care deeply about--and rightly so--but neither means to do anything significant about them unless forced. Both exploit divisions in Congress they create to ensure angry voters will come to the polls.

    The center is the problem. I'm pretty far on the right, having great sympathy with the agrarians and distributists and reckoning modern industrial capitalism as destructive toward traditional values, but I'd sooner have more real socialists elected by the Democratic party with this lot. Compromise is possible between two people who are principled. The socialist may wish to raise the minimum wage and reduce working hours to increase employment and justice toward the workers. I might agree, if he can show his proposal doesn't lead to excess inflation, since such a proposal would be good for strengthening family life. I would ask in return that we increase tax credits for homeowners (single-homeowners only, of course, and for homes valued under a certain threshold) since this would at once decrease taxes and increase the independence and stability of the family. The socialist might agree, for in spite of shrinking the tax base slightly, such a proposal would help move us toward a more progressive tax policy--something which was once an ideal for the left in this country but has eroded for many reasons. Yet the socialist and I will never agree on the importance of private property. That is alright. We won't agree on everything, but we can find common ground precisely because we are both principled. Thus I wish there were a real left and a real right in this country, that we might find compromise. But the centrist D's and R's can never compromise and never agree, precisely because they stand for nothing other than victory for their tribe and the corporate sponsorship that comes with it.

    1. Re:The Left-Wing in Congress is Dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Democrats aren't socialists, despite the far right's recent tendency to denigrate them as such.

  35. How M$ screwed up, let me count the ways... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How M$ screwed up the smart phone market, let me count the ways...
    First, they discounted the iPhone. ...They were late to the game.
    They tried to make the smart phone a miniature computer just like windows on the desktop. No one wanted it.
    They tried to tie the phone to the computer and charge the hell out of people for the software when the others give it away for free. Imagine how that went over.
    They couldn't re-formulate their desktop operating system to work on phones, so they can't transfer apps, and they aren't making many, so the phone has few.
    The new operating system for the phone has too much cruft related to their desktop, so its slow and klunky.

    To sum up: late to the game, too expensive, no apps, and the user experience is shit, coupled to a licensing model worse than any other in the game. When they bought Nokia, that's the final price to take the Nokia corporation out of the wireless telephone manufacturing business, pay off all pensions, and pay for retraining of electrical engineers to either move and get a job somewhere else, or re-train to do something else. Nokia won't ever sell another phone.

  36. History repeats and repeats ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    MS stole DOS
    MS lifted Windows from Apple
    MS missed the Internet thing
    MS missed Cloud Computing thing
    MS missed the smart phone thing
    MS cannot innovate its way out of a wet paper bag so why are they so big and "valued"?
    My bet: there is going to be a "moment of clarity" on MS and that house(stock) will fall to show what MS- a two bit software company that peddles office productivity applications
       

  37. New Device Called the Phone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I believe the phone was first patented in 1876.

  38. The continuing problem by roc97007 · · Score: 1

    Anyone can miss a market the first time. That Ballmer failed to recognize the market when it emerged isn't the issue. That can happen to anyone. Microsoft had a chance for redemption, and the added advantage that they could see what people wanted and adjust their offering accordingly. Listen -> Design -> Build -> $$ Profit!

    They also had an advantage (if you want to call it that) in that they already had a phone product out there (WinCE based) and (I imagine) a lot of feedback in the many various ways that product sucked. So they could see what worked, and they had direct experience in what didn't work. And they had a lot of cash on hand from their mainstream products. The market was theirs to lose.

    And then they blew it again with Windows Phone 7. And then, instead of going back to the drawing board and trying to figure out what people would actually buy, they doubled down with Windows Phone 8, which is rapidly going, well, nowhere in particular. And then doubled down again by trying to force PC users to use the same touch-based interface as the phone. (Somewhere along the line, Nokia's cell division switched from a world leader to an also-ran. Congratulations.)

    Point is, it wasn't the original miss that was significant, it was all the arrogance and missteps that happened afterwards. And Ballmer still doesn't understand this.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    1. Re:The continuing problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have you used wp8? I have a wp8 handset and having used android and ios, can say that MS have come out trumps with wp8..
      its another matter that they aren't winning (yet and possibly never will) but that's to be seen.
      android has so many issues, it is no fun to use. Once you lay your hands on a wp8 device, you can tell how much a copy android is of ios.

    2. Re:The continuing problem by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      Have you used wp8? I have a wp8 handset and having used android and ios, can say that MS have come out trumps with wp8..
      its another matter that they aren't winning (yet and possibly never will) but that's to be seen.
      android has so many issues, it is no fun to use. Once you lay your hands on a wp8 device, you can tell how much a copy android is of ios.

      No, I haven't owned a Windows Phone 8 phone. I have a Windows 8 slate. I got frustrated with it and stopped using it. I'm thinking of installing Android/x86 on it. If wp8 works great for you, then... great. That's why they make different kinds of products, because there are different kinds of people. Not enough, apparently, to make a Windows phone a substantial success...

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  39. Google took a page off the MS playbook... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Some of us older folks would remember when MS released MS Access. It was lagging behind other products like dBase etc. So what did MS do? Give it away for free, just like Google has done with Android. Once MS got a stronghold on the market MS Access was no longer free!! Apple are you listening?

  40. I believe I read recently... by Lendrick · · Score: 2

    ...that more people are running CyanogenMod on their Android phones than are using Windows phones. And CyanogenMod isn't a picnic to set up if you're a layperson, either.

    1. Re:I believe I read recently... by rusty0101 · · Score: 1

      I ask for a citation, not because I don't believe you, but because I want to quote it a few places without having to say 'Someone named Lendrick on Slashdot says...' :-)

      --
      You never know...
    2. Re:I believe I read recently... by Lendrick · · Score: 1

      Couldn't find it. Also, when I tried to dig up actual numbers, they seem to indicate that the article was wrong, so definitely don't quote me on that unless you can find some way to confirm it.

  41. No apps = no customers by VernorVinge · · Score: 2

    Android took a while to catch up to Apple's market share because of a smaller apps store, but they managed to do so because they already achieved a critical mass of apps. Blackberry failed because they never had enough apps to attract customers. Barnes and Noble tried to sell Nook tablets with their own tiny app store, and had to give up because customers were rooting the devices to access Google Play. Microsoft will never catch up to Apple or Android without a massive infusion of cash and labor. Developers have a hard enough time building apps for two platforms, let alone three.

    --
    Stay skeptical, my friends.
  42. Samsung is the new Sony by Larry_Dillon · · Score: 1

    I agree that Samsung is "cooler" than Android. There are a lot of total crap Android devices. I can remember when Google was cool. Sometime before they want public....

    --
    Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
  43. Missed the boat by NeedMyFix · · Score: 1

    As a programmer I think Microsoft missed the boat in a totally different way. A long time ago before Windows 2000 there was an announcement that Microsoft was going to release an OS with a replaceable UI so that the server could have a lite weight UI and the desktop a more substantial one. They never delivered. I think this would have made all the difference in the world. There there could have been the same OS on all platforms and a replaceable UI to meet the needs of each platform. With different OSes for each platform it was the most frustrating thing to develop an app for the desktop and then when porting it to Windows CE finding out that half the library/systems calls didn't even exist in that OS. I was excited again when I read that they were finally going to put the same OS on every platform with Windows 8 but then when they forced the same UI on everyone I was again greatly disappointed. I am a Windows developer, have been for 25 years. I have an Android phone and tablet and love them.

  44. Real underdogs by TenLeftFingers · · Score: 1

    It annoys me to no end when I hear MS called 'the underdog'. There are some great products out there like Ubuntu Touch, or Firefox OS when it launches. There are many others too. MS are valued at 220 Billion so stop calling them underdogs, it suggests a charm or forgivability they don't really have.

  45. Steve Ballmer's quotes by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://allthingsd.com/20130824/beyond-monkey-boy-its-a-steve-ballmer-quote-tacular/

    On iPods (2006): "No, I do not [have an iPod]. Nor do my children. My children - in many dimensions theyâ(TM)re as poorly behaved as many other children, but at least on this dimension I've got my kids brainwashed - you don't use Google and you don't use an iPod"

    On Android (2011): "You don't need to be a computer scientist to use a Windows Phone. I think you do to use an Android phone ... It is hard for me to be excited about the Android phones"

    On the iPhone (2007): "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item"

    On Linux (2001): "Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches"

    On the iPhone once again (2007): "$500, fully subsidized, with a plan! That is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn't appeal to business customers, because it doesn't have a keyboard, which makes it not a very good email machine"

    And, a vid, for all to enjoy ---
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
  46. I'm sorta with you, but sorta not. by sgtrock · · Score: 2

    Personally, I think we'd be far, FAR better off if had a much more pluralistic, parliamentary structure instead of the false right-left dichomoty that has dominated American politics since the country was founded. We need flexibility in our governmental system, not some ossified, static monolith.

  47. Dropped the ball al ot earlier than 2000. by rusty0101 · · Score: 1

    Back in the late 1990's I stopped by my ISP and the frontdesk person was using his windows computer as a phone. This was a trivial solution using a voice capable modem, and off the shelf software. Capabilities included sending and receiving faxes, a voice mail system, and the early possibilities of setting up voice response system at the desktop.

    There was nothing at all at the time, or even in the early 90s when I was working with similar hardware and software, that would have prevented microsoft from adding voice capabilities to windows server systems, as well as building connectivity between those servers and standard telco systems to build a platform that would extend to the business network (what there was of one at the time) and could be integrated into systems they were developing like Exchange and user software like Outlook (though other solutions may have been workable.)

    If they had developed something like that, then it is far mroe likely that we would have seen workable solutions, for corporate users initially, to turn various PDA platforms into corporate managed mobile phones. I don't know if they would have gone with a VoIP solution for moving the voice over the network, though I don't recall there being a NetBUI opton for moving something like voice, so it may have ended up being VoIP.

    At some level they can get onto this path now with Skype, and I think they have tried, but they have the problem now that they completely missed the integration with the POTS variety phone system that is now almost completely monopolized by Astrisk and Cisco.

    --
    You never know...
  48. lolol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lol, I remember how these dorks tweeted "Windows phone is looking great" and how I laughed at their pitiful sight.

  49. Ballmer's pyrrhic victory by splatterboy · · Score: 1

    Seems like MS was stack ranked by the mobile computing market and was put at the bottom of the pile. Ballmer is a classic American management type - a salesman in charge of things he didn't understand. And now he exits with a heartfelt confession of failure that will supposedly make him more human - more likeable. No.

    --
    "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." ~The Honorable Daniel Patrick Moynihan
  50. MS OS is the problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I am a windows guy, but I can't stand the direction Microsoft has taken on all fronts. I love windows 7, but hate 8. The system is unstable, ugly, and difficult to find things. It's not user friendly. Look at the phones and windows 8. It's ugly! Tiles are boring and completely uninspiring and indistinguishable. It's not pleasing to look at or nice to use. Why not a picture of some sort to give the user a visual cue of what they are about to click on. And lastly, I DO NOT want 1 platform to share on devices. My computer should be far more powerful and capable than my phone. I want the capacity to communicate and share information, but not a platform. Go back to windows 7 and start over.

  51. Why do people think the IPhone started it all? by BroadbandBradley · · Score: 1

    There were PDAs, There were PDA enabled phones, then there were Smartphones. I don't see where IPhone "Created the market". Didn't everyone see it coming? What about the IPaq? the Palm Pilot? We've had Linux on smartphones sine 2003- the A780.

    it was just about smaller, more powerful, better battery life, better touch screens, such that we could have the smartphones we have today, but to jump in and say the IPhone started a smart phone revolution is ridiculous.

  52. Device Tracker for iPhone & iPad. by mustafawi · · Score: 1

    Device Tracker for iPhone & iPad ( Track and Locate your device on the Web ). Keep a track of your device's location history and check it on the web anytime! If the phone is lost you can track it. If it is out of battery or turned off, you will still have its last known location before the phone lost power. https://itunes.apple.com/pk/app/device-tracker-for-iphone/id499696486?mt=8