Hedge fund star calls for Microsoft CEO to go

[*LTD*]

I agree with you, and that's kinda the point. MS could be in those areas if they chose to, and they could go out and pioneer new areas if they chose to. However, as mentioned earlier, they are hedgehogging; Holding on to their core with dear life, and their markets are slowly eroding away, while new markets take off and they are absent or are/were in somewhat of a laughable position (i.e. Kin handsets).

MS could do great things, but it appears to me as if there is no real strategic vision for the company. This goes directly to the top dog there...

This is why Apple has MS in rear-view now. This is why their share value has plunged 57% under Ballmer. With that kind of R&D budget, that kind of employee base, and that kind of blustery talk by your CEO, you should be the absolute star of consumer tech. Period.

Consumer tech used to be about "computers" - boxes running Windows and an Office suite. And videogames running on boxes you attach to your TV.

We're way beyond all that now. MS has shown they're unable to *evolve* with the pace of change - a pace that is being set by others.

If MS shareholders are fine with that, all the more power to them. It would be the first I've heard when underperformance, lousy share value, and product stagnation was just fine and dandy.

MS' universal licensing racket is, ironically, killing MS. They still make enough money from that to allow the lazy at MS to continue being lazy. Until the old paradigm they're still clinging to dries up completely.

No easy solutions, but nothing worth having is really ever easy.

Completely overhaul the management team. Re-evaluate the way the company works from top to bottom. Run it like a start-up. Cut out the dead wood.

Get rid of Windows. Get rid of the *entire* Windows brand. It's bad. It represents the past. It's an anchor.

Write a new OS from the ground up and cut all ties with the past. Get the marketing and branding right. Focus on the user and tighten up licensing.

Then they stand a chance.

 

[flopticalcube]

The market has been telling Balmer to go for some time now. He always seems to have an Ace up his sleeve, the problem is when he pulls it out it turns out to be the Joker.

 

[thatisme]

well, with the windows brand, they really need to get back to optimizing the core, and doing away with the fluff. Ditch the naming of everything Windows, and look to do a re-brand. Same with the logos.

The issue is not that the software is really that bad or outdated, it's more to the point that they took some major egg on their face with the vista debacle and their failures with Windows CE (versions). Same will be true, in my opinion, if they try to shoehorn Win7 or Win8 into a touch-tablet form.

The other issue I see with MS is having their Windows brand and name attached to some really bad hardware tossed out there by different companies. There's some great stuff out there, however, it's bad when you are essentially co-branding crappy products. For example: some people love their netbooks. However, when it takes 10 minutes to load up Windows on a severely underpowered and underspec'd machine, does it reflect on the machine's mfgr, or on Microsoft Windows? If the hardware makes the software look bad, than that is not a good partnership (licensing or not) for Microsoft. (the reverse can be true too!)

Ballmer has the power to bring about change, but hasn't. He's been there a long time to be able to influence the roadmap and strategy, but hasn't. I guess this could be said of a lot of their management, too.

 

[rdowns]

Ballmer isn't going anywhere until he loses Gates' support. Microsoft's board is weak in that most are company insiders.

 

[KingCrimson]

I agree with you, and that's kinda the point. MS could be in those areas if they chose to, and they could go out and pioneer new areas if they chose to. However, as mentioned earlier, they are hedgehogging; Holding on to their core with dear life, and their markets are slowly eroding away, while new markets take off and they are absent or are/were in somewhat of a laughable position (i.e. Kin handsets).

MS could do great things, but it appears to me as if there is no real strategic vision for the company. This goes directly to the top dog there...

The thing is you can't be a visionary in both consumer & enterprise. It's too much for one man. MSFT needs to split into 2 companies - consumer & enterprise software. Ballmer can head the enterprise company and get some Jobs-like visionary for the consumer stuff.

 

[Koodauw]

This man also wants to buy 200 Million worth of the Mets. which makes him a bigger fool than Balmer.

edit: Actually the deal he struck with the Mets has the potential to be highly lucrative, and he got a good discount as well.

 

[rhett7660]

This man also wants to buy 200 Million worth of the Mets. which makes him a bigger fool than Balmer.

edit: Actually the deal he struck with the Mets has the potential to be highly lucrative, and he got a good discount as well.

The Mets? The OTHER team in New York? Hahaha. Let's see what he can do with them.

 

[Melrose]

I might be way off, but my view of Ballmer is a corporate stuffed shirt who has very little knowledge of how real people use the things his company makes, and someone who doesn't have the best grasp of technology.

...not to mention half the time he comes across as just plain nuts.

Microsoft has had some very promising, successful, and very well-intentioned products lately, but I hardly attribute all of those things to Ballmer's careful hand.

 

[*LTD*]

I might be way off, but my view of Ballmer is a corporate stuffed shirt who has very little knowledge of how real people use the things his company makes, and someone who doesn't have the best grasp of technology.

...not to mention half the time he comes across as just plain nuts.

You pretty much nailed it.

Kinda reminds me of Mitt Romney trying to be "street." Enjoy . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDwwAaVmnf4

 

[KingCrimson]

I might be way off, but my view of Ballmer is a corporate stuffed shirt who has very little knowledge of how real people use the things his company makes, and someone who doesn't have the best grasp of technology.

...not to mention half the time he comes across as just plain nuts.

Microsoft has had some very promising, successful, and very well-intentioned products lately, but I hardly attribute all of those things to Ballmer's careful hand.

Maybe he's learned to delegate properly and that's why some good things are happening to MSFT...

 

[JoeG4]

LTD you're pretty delirious man. OS X is a great operating system but it's not anywhere near as widely used as Windows is. I know you're convinced in a year or two everything will be iPhones and iPads and computers will be these giant dinosaurs, but there are still lots of places where Windows and Office are a mainstay and won't be going away anytime soon.

Lots of those places use site licensing, and it's not as if MS makes a ton on OEM resale anyway. They still have a pretty strong grab on corporate and embedded environments I don't expect to dissipate in the next few years anyway.

 

[*LTD*]

LTD you're pretty delirious man. OS X is a great operating system but it's not anywhere near as widely used as Windows is.

Of course it isn't. It's not licensed universally and the cost of entry is higher. We know this already.

 

[vvswarup]

LTD you're pretty delirious man. OS X is a great operating system but it's not anywhere near as widely used as Windows is. I know you're convinced in a year or two everything will be iPhones and iPads and computers will be these giant dinosaurs, but there are still lots of places where Windows and Office are a mainstay and won't be going away anytime soon.

Lots of those places use site licensing, and it's not as if MS makes a ton on OEM resale anyway. They still have a pretty strong grab on corporate and embedded environments I don't expect to dissipate in the next few years anyway.

I'm not denying that Windows and Office are here to stay. They're not going anywhere. But that's not the point. The market for desktop productivity (Office) and computing (Windows) has practically no more room left to grow. If that's the case, Microsoft should move on. I'm not saying Microsoft shouldn't continue to invest in Windows. Microsoft should aim to make Windows better. But Microsoft should focus on the "next big thing" which may have more opportunities for growth.

Also, I agree that OS X is not as widely used as Windows. But it makes no difference. I doubt that Apple even cares about the Mac vs. Windows thing. If this "war" exists, Apple has no intention of showing up to the battlefield. If Steve Jobs is entertaining the thought of unseating Windows, he should fire himself on the spot.

The problem with Ballmer is that he is not a visionary. Now one could argue that he doesn't need vision while Microsoft makes mountains of money off of Windows and Office. No one denies that. Microsoft will be whatever Ballmer wants it to be. If he is content in Microsoft being a stable but slow-growing company, then it's true that he doesn't need vision. But everyone knows, including myself, that Microsoft can do better than that.

 

[steve2112]

I think Ballmer probably does need to go, but at this point, I don't know that anyone can right the Microsoft ship. The problem is that MS has gotten like the federal government. It's so huge and has so many different departments, that it is difficult to control. I've heard it said that Apple is still run like a small startup, whereas MS is a huge, bloated bureaucracy. Given that MS has almost twice as many employees as Apple, I don't find this hard to believe. (46k for Apple, 89k for MS.)

Microsoft has tons of internal departments, and they are all fighting each other for funding, people, and other resources. Paul Thurrott has often talked about the Office team fighting the web team over Office 365, the Xbox team fighting the Zune team over multimedia stuff, etc. With Apple, the buck stops with Steve Jobs. He has final say over everything. Microsoft reminds me of what I have seen so many times working for the US government. Good ideas pop up, are researched and proposed, and then...death by committee.

With WP7, for example: MS originally said carriers were not going to be able to block OS updates, which is exactly what happened. Not that they got the updates out on a reasonable schedule, anyway. And, with WP7, they decided focus on the consumer market, and alienated their core business users. And then dragged their feet getting it to market, so that iOS and Android have huge leads. They have Skydrive, a free cloud hosting service offering 25GB of storage that nobody has ever head of. They could have beaten Amazon and Google to the punch with a cloud-based music service, especially if they integrated it with Windows 7. But they didn't. Xbox has been pretty successful, but they Red Ring of Death issue gave them a huge black eye. Also, they sunk so much money into R&D, it will take years to get it back, if ever. (It depends on what you read). The Zune software is actually pretty good, and the Zune Pass was a great idea, just several years too late. The Zune HD is a good device, just years too late. It happens again and again with them.

All I have to say is good luck to whomever is CEO of Microsoft. Turning that business around is like trying to turn an oil supertanker. It isn't going to happen quickly.