Posted on 10/01/2010 8:29:19 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Someone's paying attention at Microsoft. At least enough to only grant CEO Steve Ballmer half of his maximum bonus this year, because of Microsoft's continued failure in the mobile industry, and because tablet computers are threatening Microsoft's core Windows business.
As Reuters reports, "a discussion of Ballmer's pay in the company's annual proxy filing also referred to the 'unsuccessful launch of the Kin phone, loss of market share in the company's mobile phone business, and the need for the company to pursue innovations to take advantage of new form factors'."
You may recall that Microsoft canceled its Kin mobile phone project after just 79 days; that Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform has seen its market share decimated by Apple, RIM, and Google; and that Apple's iPad and tablets running Android are a huge threat to the Windows line, which generates a massive percentage of Microsoft's profit.
As a result, Ballmer got a cash bonus of $670,000 for last fiscal year, the same as his salary, but only half his maximum potential bonus.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Microsoft has never invented anything.
What they couldn’t steal, they bought - and subsequently ruined.
They are IT’s version of GM...and the public has finally realized that the quality of both concerns is just about equal.
Wow... a company that actually holds management accountable for failures.
They have never been successful at anything except Windows and Office. They have thrown away hundreds of billions trying to compete in other areas, all of which lost money.
Perhaps they should have spent that money improving their core products, or paying dividends to the stockholders.
Time to remember some select Ballmer quotes.
“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.” 2007
“Google doesn’t exactly bubble to the top of the list of the top competitors we’ve got going in mobile. “ 2008
“I don’t really understand their [Google’s] strategy. Maybe somebody else does.” 2008
That’s the problem. Everybody else understood and knew it would be successful, Ballmer didn’t. He got paid over a million dollars last year to miss something that obvious?
Well, since you started it, let’s once again re-visit some famous wrong predictions :
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” — Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.
“Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and weigh only 1.5 tons.” — Popular Mechanics, 1949
“I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.” — The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.
“But what...is it good for?” — Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.
“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” — Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.
“640K ought to be enough for anybody.” — Attributed to Bill Gates, 1981
“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” — Western Union internal memo, 1876.
“The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.” — Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876.
“The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” — David Sarnoff’s associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.
“While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility.” — Lee DeForest, inventor.
“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C’, the idea must be feasible.” — A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” — H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.
“A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make.” — Response to Debbi Fields’ idea of starting Mrs. Fields’ Cookies.
“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” — Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.
“Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax.” — William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899.
“So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’ And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’” — Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.
“If I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can’t do this.” — Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M “Post-It” Notepads.
“With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn’t likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market.” — Business Week, August 2, 1968.
“Ours has been the first, and doubtless to be the last, to visit this profitless locality.” — Lt. Joseph Ives, after visiting the Grand Canyon in 1861.
“Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.” — Workers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.
“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” — Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.” — Albert Einstein, 1932.
“The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives.” — Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project.
“Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” — Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.
“There will never be a bigger plane built.” — A Boeing engineer, after the first flight of the 247, a twin engine plane that holds ten people.
For about three years I used an HTC Mogul running Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 and the OS just ran like a one-legged donkey at the Kentucy Derby compared to Apple and Google phones.
MSFT mobile solutions are just horrible compared to the competition... And it's a real mismanaged shame, considering that Microsoft could have completely owned this market when they got their start with Windows CE back when I had a Casio Cassiopeia palmtop PC.
Microsoft has been fumbling on mobile solutions for over 15 years already, and now look: Their entire Windows OS is threatened because of their ignorance. A few more years of this uninspiring leadership and Microsoft will only be servicing the legacy market for businesses that still run their aging flagship market applications like MSFT SQL 200x and their 'Server software only because those businesses haven't invested in migrating to some other non-MSFT solution yet.
“The Beatles have no future in show business” - The Head of Decca Records
I ran Windows Mobile and its predecessors for years. Before that, it was Pocket PC. The one thing that kept me on the reservation was the supposedly flawless compatibility between the mobile device and the PC (they couldn’t even get ActiveSync right).
I switched to Android once I knew that it supported Microsoft Exchange. It does that better than the WM products did!
Now that programs can be moved to the SD card, there’s no downside to making the switch.
I think Ballmer needs a few on that list. There are those, plus:
“And then you take a look at Spaces, there is this great innovation that came out of nowhere. We have the number one blogging site in the world because of the innovation that’s there.” (Microsoft just ditched spaces, moving all the users to WordPress)
“Vista will be out next year. Vista has never been delayed. I mean, we had earlier conceptualizations, but the thing that is Vista is on its track.”
And of course the classic:
“I’m going to f-—ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to f-—ing kill Google.”
Did you get ‘Froyo’ 2.2 pushed to your Android yet? My device is supposed to get it on Halloween.
Yeah, I grieve for his house & buddies on Lopez Island.......
www.sjpt.org/pdf/newsletters/SJPTwinter08-4.pdf
Microsoft has become such a H1B factory, I think any chance of major innovation has been utterly destroyed. They’ve become addicted to cheap overseas labor like a crackwhore and their culture is a dysfunctional mess.
Google and Apple still seek out and hire american IT workers and it shows in their products, delivery, and support.
Microsoft is night and day different than what it was in the 1990s. Outsourcing had destroyed it. It’s a shell of it’s former self.
I got it back in August. Love, love, love it - especially full Flash support.
BFL
Only remaining trouble is that Apple still insists that it's a hardware company.
They'd know better than I, but if it were possible for an end user to fabricate an Apple clone from mail-order parts (like what was possible during that very brief period under Gil Amelio), I think that Macs would capture a lot more market share.
Either that, or allow OSX to run on Intel-based PC clones without having to do a hackjob like some geeks have accomplished. Just sell a reduced core version of OSX off the shelf at BestBuy for $99 and let the rest of the applications run in the cloud. I don't even know why people fool around with Ubuntu or SuSe when there's a supported Unix desktop OS with Apple.
... but why am I bringing up notions from a decade ago?
I'll shut up now.
Nice collection.
Yeah, I’m really counting down the days until that arrives. I’d sure like to see what ‘five times faster’ amounts to on a Samsung Epic.
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