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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."
MS whiffed when they put balless in charge of anything. He can stop blaming others...
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
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.
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.
'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?
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
...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?
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?
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.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
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.
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.
The workers, and they must be punished with layoffs and having their bonuses suspended until they fix the problem of leadership.
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.
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.
Let's not forget the monkey dance
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.
"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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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
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.
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.
This is an authoriatarian versus libertarian issue, not right versus left.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Mp3 players,
Smartphones,
tablets.
Three strikes and you are out Balmer...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
To be fair, anyone smart should have seen the writing on the wall years ago and left.
orange is a phone company there in europe, could you please explain what you are referring to?
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.
Are you implying that Ballmer failed his way?
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
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
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.
...That's how it works in EVERY corporation these days, but generally the CEO is somebody that, at best, is harmless.
FTFY
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?
I am told the successful management strategy is to recruit sacrificial lambs.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Your characterization of the left-wing economic view indicates that you are not a centrist. And your characterization of right-wing economics verifies that.
...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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 !
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.
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.
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.
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...
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
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.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
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