Hence my comment "it depends on what you measure."
Microsoft is clearly continuing to find success in an enterprise space that had its addressable market grow astronomically during Ballmer's tenure.
At the same time, they went from absolute dominance in the 90s software market to having a smaller share of a much larger enterprise market today. Is that success? Maybe. Was it due to Ballmer, or was it inevitable? Also unclear.
It's actually an interesting case study. As a consumer, I'm basically no longer a Microsoft customer at all. It's not an ideological position. It just is.
But they're obviously doing pretty well. And, if I were an exec at a large business, I'd at least be talking to them.
You and I have a shared experience of working for years at a different operating system vendor who also pivoted into the enterprise space and expanded their offerings significantly beyond the OS.
It's clearly possible to be very financially successful with this kind of a pivot, while also having a lot of previous fans and customers be quite disappointed with it. An install base can increase while the user base decreases.
Microsoft is clearly continuing to find success in an enterprise space that had its addressable market grow astronomically during Ballmer's tenure.
At the same time, they went from absolute dominance in the 90s software market to having a smaller share of a much larger enterprise market today. Is that success? Maybe. Was it due to Ballmer, or was it inevitable? Also unclear.