[twblalock]

Trying to compete in mobile and failing is a misstep. Microsoft missed out on smartphones, one of the fastest growing and most lucrative market segments in tech industry history.

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.

[adventured]

I agree that mobile and search were missteps, specifically putting themselves into a position of competing so poorly in those areas overall. It's also unrealistic to think that one company could own desktop, mobile, search, office, etc.

Microsoft was going to own desktop, mobile, search? $300-$400 billion in revenue? $130+ billion in profit?

No. That's absurd. Holding Ballmer to account for not conquering planet Earth is not a fair premise. Of course there were lots of 'missteps,' what's described is impossible. Their biggest mistake was attempting all of it in the first place.

[twblalock]

> Microsoft was going to own desktop, mobile, search? $300-$400 billion in revenue? $130+ billion in profit?

> No. That's absurd. Holding Ballmer to account for not conquering planet Earth is not a fair premise.

I didn't say Microsoft needed to "own" mobile and search. They just needed to be competitive, instead of trying and failing which is what they did.

[btowngar]

Online search is a natural monopoly - being simply "competitive" probably isn't possible, you either win (Google) or you don't (everybody else).

[drewrv]

Mobile was obviously a big failure on their part, though I think their only misstep was being late to market.

On the other hand bing has been good for them (and it's great for consumers). Hard to call a multi-million dollar business unit a failure.

[baybal2]

Microsoft had mobile in its pocket - original win mobile that competed with Palm had the dominant market share, and it would've had more if they didn't nuke it with revamped win mobile.