“Chief Executive Steve Ballmer is betting on one of Microsoft Corp.’s busiest years ever to keep the company relevant in a new age of mobile technology,” Shira Ovide reports for The Wall Street Journal. “On Monday, Microsoft formally introduced new smartphones that will use a revamped version of the company’s mobile-phone operating software.”
MacDailyNews Take: You know, the phones that nobody outside of Microsoft or Microsoft’s Nokia buys.
“Microsoft was once king of the technology market, with its personal-computer software, but as computing has shifted to mobile devices, the Redmond, Wash., company has struggled to adapt,” Ovide reports. “Microsoft currently has less than a 3% share of the world-wide smartphone market, according to research firm Gartner Inc. In recent years, its share price hasn’t kept pace with the stock market’s gains, and rivals like Apple Inc. have overtaken it in market value.”
MacDailyNews Take: “Overtaken” in market value. As in: Doubled.
WSJ: Would you prefer Apple’s business model, in which it controls the hardware and the software?
Ballmer: We like our model, as we are evolving it. In every category Apple competes, it’s the low-volume player, except in tablets. In the PC market, obviously the advantage of diversity has mattered since 90-something percent of PCs that get sold are Windows PCs. We’ll see what winds up mattering in tablets.
MacDailyNews Take: Maybe dummy means Apple sells 5 million Macs every 90 days, hundreds of millions of iOS devices and billions iTunes tracks and App Store apps very quietly?
And, oh, BTW: Would you rather have “high volume” and low profits or “low volume” and high profits? Quick, somebody ask Mikey Dell, Meg Whitman, and Stephen Elop before they’re due in bankruptcy court.
• Apple rakes in 71% of the world’s smartphone profits – September 8, 2012
• Apple’s App Store hits 25 billion downloads milestone – March 3, 2012
• Apple Mac owns 90% market share for ‘premium’ PCs costing over $1,000 – February 1, 2010
WSJ: You’ve said before that you want to stay CEO until your youngest child graduates from high school in a few years. Is that still the plan?
Ballmer: [Laughs] I said that many years ago. I’m excited to be able to lead Microsoft at this fantastic time. I love my job. I’m happy doing what I’m doing, I’m energized. I will serve as long and no longer as both the board wants me, and I feel like I’m adding value and/or until somebody better should come in and take over.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Mr. Self-Delusion gets increasingly ludicrous with each passing day.
Steve Ballmer became Microsoft CEO in January 2000. Here’s the “value” he’s “added” since then:
May Microsoft’s board remain somnambulant for as long as it takes!
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The Verge reviews Microsoft Surface RT tablet: ‘The whole thing is honestly perplexing; who is this for?’ – October 24, 2012
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If Microsoft keeps putting out crap I think he will eat his words.
He appears to have eaten everything else…
He can definitely claim some high volume there.
hahahaha
badda bing, badda boom.
If Apple a ‘low-volume player’ in phones, what the hell does that make Microsoft in phones?
The girls NEVER have and NEVER will, call Ballmer a Player.
You forgot to add iPods to you comment about iPhones.
Did Balmy forget those devices? Please, someone tell me who another “player” is in the iPod/MP3 market.
That makes M$ a “Rounding Error” ;d
A real monkey would do the job better than this monkey-boy. But I love him, he’s making us laugh.
Pregnant with doubt.
Balmer has no doubt. Jobs created a reality distortion field in those around him. Balmer lives in his.
Hey maybe I could take over Microsoft when he leaves. Shouldn’t be too hard right? All I have to do is shave my head and lose a few million brain cells…
I like Ballmer’s model. I like it a lot.
Monkey Boy is so full of shit his Zune is brown
Microsoft is a sewage plant that processes and sells high volumes of turd every day. Ballmer is the sewage plant manager that sees high volumes of sewage pass through his sales channel – a gazillion gallons a day.
When you’re immersed in sewage all day long, you begin to think that sewage and cockroaches in high volumes is the order of the day.
With so much turnover in the tech world, how does this ignoramus stay employed?
Bill Gates is the Chairman of the BOD and a huge shareholder.
I love how Ballmer describes Microsoft’s PC market share as “90-something.” It’s hard for him to know exactly, because it is changing so quickly!
I thought he was thinking about the market share back in 1990’s
He might have just made a rounding error.
I fear Ballmer’s reign of error will soon be over
Please, please Mr Balmer stay… we need more Microsoftian comedy of errors to humor our miserable existence.
Laughter is the best medicine, and after you get past the appalling parts, and after a few drinks, the man is positively charming, like a ludicrous James Bond villain.
Ballmer is like a guy standing on a New Jersey beach yesterday morning saying:
Don’t worry, it’s only a couple drops of rain.
Ballmer is like the best pitcher in baseball, Justin Verlander, of the overwhelming favorite Detroit Tigers, fresh off their punchout of the vaunted New York Yankees, smirking as his pitching coach visits him on the mound in inning 3 of the World Series, as if to say, “Just because I gave up a home run to this guy in the first inning, you think I can’t get him out? Trust me, we’ll do these chumps the same way we did the Yankees.” Then he gives up a second home run to the same guy. They lose the game, then lose the next three games in a sweep, and the pundits are left with egg on their faces.
The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
I never knew that Steve Ballmer is Egyptian. Because he’s certainly living in denial.
(The extent of Monkeyboy’s vision: “Windows! Windows! Windows! Windows!!”)
I want some of what he is smoking..
Careful there Tex! Do you really want to see windows everywhere? The inhumanity!
He’s smoking his own crack…
“Day after” monkey boy entertainment.
Delusional and irrelavant. That is all. Dumba@@
“I will serve as long and no longer as both the board wants me, and I feel like I’m adding value and/or until somebody better should come in and take over.” — Steve Ballmer
As long as it takes, baby!!! Woohoo!!!
This is a very reassuring statement! Very Reassuring indeed! I hope he is King of Microsoft for at least 5 more years.
He FEELS like he is adding value???
Can’t he tell? Guess not.
He is not adding value. He’s just a salesman…
msft SP chart would look even worse if they used a straight dollar metric instead of the logarithmic one. You don’t buy and sell with logarithmic dollars.
That could also be why Microsoft’s board are “somnambulant”…they don’t understand logarithms, and they nod off during depressing PowerPoint presentations. Hell, they can’t put two and two together—otherwise Ballmer would be long gone by now.
I read this on another site and came to MDN just for the outtakes! What a buffoon! I really hope the board continues to be completely dumb, deaf and blind to his leadership.
He’s the pinhead wizard, that has to be a twist…
..a twit. 😉
There is nothing inexplicable of calling Apple a love volume player. In the context that he puts it in probably 99% of PCs are Windows PCs, including Macs of course which can run Windows. Certainly PCs that can run Linux can run Windows as well and those are Windows capable PCs as well. Ironically Microsoft does not make P butt I’m sure Dell, HP, Asus and others don’t mind being called Windows PCs following the trip to Anustralia’s great computer company Optima.
Microsoft is all about high volume, be it bloatware, FUD or delusional behaviour worthy of the CEO of a convicted monopolist who certainly have not learned it’s lesson if you follow the latest European judicial pursuits.
Butt weight there’s more, I mean just look at the guy, has he slimmed down.
I like his model, I like it a lot.
Slim, like the good ol’ Nash Rambler
There you go again with Optima. There is more to Australia than Optima.
By the way, you’re so keen on flaming Australia/Australians, why don’t you tell us where you’re from?
Five will get you ten the Road Warrior is from Australia.
Goodness no, although if you convinced me that you could wipe that country off the face of the planet I’d be more than happy to become a citizen. It would be a small price to pay to further humanity.
It seemed natural to assume the connection with Mad Max, but I admit that was a cinematic stretch.
As a stupid aside, inquiring minds wish to know…does bath water really swirl the other way down under?
Yes, I went through that whole Mad Max thing a while ago at MDN. My usage of Road Warrior is from the technical aspect, i.e. have laptop will travel.
To answer your question, yes it does really swirl the other way. It’s pretty neat to actually see it. I’ll also point out that the direction of rotation for storm systems (hurricanes vs. cyclones/typhoons) are also opposite depending on the hemisphere. All courtesy of the Coriolis force.
Well I go on about Optima because this is a technology site, but you are right there is so much more about Anustralians hatred. Since you asked I’ll tell you that after consistently being asked to leave stores or refused service (quite often with the added “LOUD MOUTH YANK” comment) I decided to carry my passport so that the next time it happened I could show it to the vendor and thus have him (or her) realize that I was not an American.
Sure enough it happened and I politely told the vendor that I was not an American and showed him my passport as proof. He simply turned his back to me and refused to talk to me any further. I’ve had so many similar experiences, once they turn on that bloody yank hatred there is nothing that will convince them otherwise, except having another Australian telling them that, and even then they will no longer acknowledge your existence.
I am so keen, as you put it, on flaming Anustralians because of all the countries and places I have been I have never ever seen such a culture full of hate.
I see the value of your statement about going on again about Optima. I’ll make a note to diversify my replies next time. Oh, and it should be pretty obvious where I am from, I mean who else sounds like an American, accent wise.
Ok Road Warrior. I understand your frustration, but really, I’ve never felt Australians had/have a hatred for Americans or Canadians for that matter.
I’m sincerely embarrassed for the treatment you received in Australia. Yes, I am Australian and would like to think the experience you had was an exception rather than the rule.
We are not all bad you know, but I guess you wouldn’t believe me.
By the way, Canada is a beautiful country.
Thank you for your well written post. I’ve met some of your fellow citizens that, like you, were totally unaware of this hatred and I have to admit I was quite taken aback by it. I was actually looking forward to living in Australia and for a long time I could not believe it myself.
I have stated before on MDN that I’ve had no issues with migrants or those that have traveled. I was totally impressed when someone who had been to Canada told me “You must find Aussies to be pretty much in your face”. He was one of the few that got it.
I do hope my experience is the exception, but talking to fellow Canadians who have lived or are living in Australia it isn’t.
I do believe you, I know you are not all this way, but there is a substantial proportion of the people that I have met that are. Frankly I see no reason to tear into a person, and that includes physical assault, when you simply are trying to make introductory conversation.
Apart from the people, I did find Australia to be a beautiful country and rest assured when I do meet any of your fellow citizens here I will go out of my way to be polite and courteous to them, not only because I am like that normally but because I also know they are the ones that will go back and change things.
Once again thank you for your thoughts. I will certainly consider them as I may have to venture down under once again in the future.
Did they sell out of Surface yet – What did they make 250,000 of them?
Farcical talk from a CEO that now has had his bonus cut three years in a row.
Ref: http://wp.me/p2sPFm-IOB
This is what happens to a brain doing meth. Kids, don’t try this at home.
Balmier is a joke and the best person for running Microsoft.
The more delusional he becomes the more money Microsoft lose.
Sound like the ideal guy for the job!
Ballmer inexplicably calls Apple a ‘low-volume player’
I explicably call Ballmer a big fatso.
So what?
Big fatso is redundant.
in fact, it’s overly redundant.
As in the occasional game where you chose a positional continuation that retained a firm grip without undue risk of tactical complications. Pragmatic of you.
god, I love it when you talk that way.
“In every category Apple competes, it’s the low-volume player, except in tablets.”
Mr. Ballmer ought to come read MDN: http://macdailynews.com/2012/10/30/apples-iphone-5-slows-android-growth-in-u-s-and-u-k/
Windows Phone: 2.9% in the US & 4.2% in the UK
I think Ballmer should invoke his right to be silent.
As Ron White said: “I had the right to remain silent, but I did not have the ability.”
MDN, I love your sarcastic wit!!!! LMAO!