[Bamafan]

> 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.

Yes, he managed to creatively squeeze revenue out of existing markets. This is what he was known for.

But as far as finding new markets or growing existing markets, he failed and that's all Wall Street cares about.

> Surely MS could have done better, but I view it more as lost opportunity than failure.

Non other than Bill Gates himself refers to MS Mobile strategy as a failure: http://fortune.com/2013/02/19/today-in-tech-why-bill-gates-c...

> 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

Ballmer's failure rate on major acquisitions may have been 100%. (I'm not even kidding)

[scarface74]

Beats was already profitable when they bought it.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2018/03/08...

Beats Music was also the foundation of Apple Music which is also gaining subscribers like crazy.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/careypurcell/2018/05/15/with-50...

[Ruxbin1986]

Where's that 80% figure?

As far as I am aware, the Beats acquisition was successful. They bought their streaming music model and put that into Apple Music.

[jpatokal]

I'd count Minecraft as a success story. (Not sure if the deal closed under Nadella, but it was certainly started during Ballmer's reign.)