| "Ballmer made several missteps:" Growing an already massive company company by 3x in revenue is the important thing, which is the 'bottom line' in which missteps have to be contextualized. Any company in tech is going to make mistakes, this should be happening, so listing them off doesn't so much help - what matters is how all of this works out in the mix. I worked in mobile during that time, it was vicious. Surely MS could have done better, but I view it more as lost opportunity than failure. Remember that 80% of acquisitions fail. Google spent $3B on Nest. Apple spent $3 Billion on Beats, it remains to be seen if they'll make that up in profit. |
Trying to compete in search and failing is also a misstep. Bing is just not as good as Google.
It's arguable that Azure would not have been successful under Ballmer either, because it's unlikely he would have embraced Linux to the extent that Nadella has.
The bottom line is that Ballmer was good at growing existing business but Microsoft was late to the game on a lot of industry trends under his watch, and when they did try to catch up they did not do a very good job -- Windows Phone is a perfect example.
It's impressive to grow existing business, but companies that do not successfully innovate eventually stagnate and that's not what investors want to see.