“No one can accuse Bill Gates of acting rashly. On Thursday, Microsoft’s co-founder and chairman announced that he will transition out of the company in July 2008 to spend more time working for his charitable foundation,” Hannah Clark writes for Forbes. “Microsoft’s stock barely budged, perhaps because the firm prudently planned the job change two years in advance.”
“With all this methodical planning, it seems unlikely that Gates will return to an operational role at the computer giant. After all, he relinquished the CEO title to Steve Ballmer six years ago. But other technology firm founders have been unable to resist the pull,” Clark writes.
“Perhaps the most famous is Apple founder Steve Jobs, one of the few CEOs with Gates-level star power. Jobs was forced out of his firm in 1985. He returned 11 years later, when Apple bought NeXT Computer, another Jobs creation. Though he erroneously declared ‘the desktop computer is dead’ in a Wired magazine article in 1996, Jobs soon redeemed himself with the iMac and, of course, the ubiquitous iPod. Apple’s shares reached an all-time high earlier this year,” Clark writes.
“Ted Waitt, another member of the tech billionaire club, also made a U-turn,” Clark writes. “When the economy faltered a year later, [Gateway’s] sales started to slow, and Waitt took the job back. Unlike Jobs, however, Waitt didn’t spur a miraculous turnaround at his company. He relinquished the CEO title again in 2004 and left the board last year… Will Gates be able to stay away? ‘Probably not,’ says John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a consulting and job placement firm for executives. ‘The people who have the hardest time staying away are the ones who own large shares in the company.'”
Full article here.
Apple should be so lucky. Take a look at how Windows Vista is faring under the watchful eye of Gates the “Chief Software Architect.” Or Origami. Or employee morale. Anyway, back to Jobs: Gates wasn’t forced out of the company he founded for eleven years only to create what became the foundation of the company upon his return. Yeah, yeah, Apple bought NeXT. In reality, Apple paid Jobs’ NeXT to take over Apple. Which they did and did well, thankfully.
By the way, Steve Jobs never declared “the desktop computer is dead.” That kind of crap is never going to fly in 2006, Ms. Clark. No way. Not here, at least. Jobs’ full quote was very different than Clark’s mangled and out-of-context concoction:
The desktop computer industry is dead. Innovation has virtually ceased. Microsoft dominates with very little innovation. That’s over. Apple lost. The desktop market has entered the dark ages, and it’s going to be in the dark ages for the next 10 years, or certainly for the rest of this decade. It’s like when IBM drove a lot of innovation out of the computer industry before the microprocessor came along. Eventually, Microsoft will crumble because of complacency, and maybe some new things will grow. But until that happens, until there’s some fundamental technology shift, it’s just over. – Steve Jobs, Wired Magazine, Issue 4.02 – Feb 1996 (source)
“10 years,” Mr. Jobs said. Or 2006. You know, the year Apple began shipping Intel-powered Macs. The year Apple launched Boot Camp Public Beta. The year Apple will show the world Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The year that Steve Jobs’ Apple leads the computer industry out of the Gates-induced dark ages in which it’s been mired for so long.
Yes, that’s simply another perfect prediction from Mr. Jobs. We’ve long ago come to expect nothing less from the one real, true visionary of personal computing.
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Related article:
Bill Gates to transition out of a day-to-day role in Microsoft – June 15, 2006
And yet Apple has the worst market share it has ever had in its history.
And Apple stock has dropped over 30% since January.
Oh, Steve is so smart!
You all whine about how bad Microsoft is, but never a critique about why Stever jobs cannot move Apple out of its doldrums. Apple is a tiny, niche player that has sold to basically the same number of customers every five years.
NEWSFLASH
Microsoft have just announced that Bill Gates’ transition out of the company has been put back to December 2008 and the long-awaited release will be without some major components. A press release from Redmond stated “Microsoft is committed to bringing its millions of customers the best possible solutions to their computing needs and in order to achieve this we have decided to withhold some vital parts of Bill Gates for further development. A public beta of the unfinished Chairman will leave the company in March 2009 and the remaining bits will be released as service packs from September 2010 through April 2035. A fully bootable version of Bill Gates is expected sometime around summer 2036.
re: Get real.
You have no idea what Apple is about do you??
It’s so bloody obvious.
Computer global market share means fsck all.
If it did, how on earth do you think Apple has survived all these 20+ years on 3% market share???
M$ has 95% of the desktop market (sooo blooody what – big deal) BUT they are LOSING MONEY.
The only product M$ sells that makes any profit is it’s Windows OS licencing programme.
– X-box: No profit
– Origami: No profit
– Hardware (Keyboards etc): No profit
– VISTA: 3 years late and does not work, over budget by $100s millions, shareholders so pisse doff with it that they just want M$ to ship anything as long as it gets out to the idiots (customers) who will by the final betaware.
And let’s not forget that M$ is so large a corporation that it is weighed down in beaurocracy and in-effeciency. They can’t compate with Apple, Sony, Google, Adobe and many others because bill’s leviathan cannot bring products to market fast enough or in high enough quality that the modern consumer wants (flaming x-box anyone???).
I know which company I would back for long term survival; and believe me it aint M$ thats gonna be around in 20 years with a business model currently working like it is today.
M$ is a company on borrowed time… and bill knows this, so he’s getting out before it goes down the pan (where all shit belongs).
“Apple is a tiny, niche player that has sold to basically the same number of customers every five years.“
That is just not true. The percentage maybe but definitely NOT the same number of people. Apple sells a TON of hardware. Regardless of what has been happening at Apple the last few years I still believe they are a hardware company. They are very interested in software but only to sell hardware. So sure the OS holds a very small percent but compared to other hardware companies Apple does well.
Stock is down because of the Intel transition and I think the iPod is not getting it done for them anymore. I am sure they planned on a set back like this or even worse. I actually thought stock would be much lower. Once software catches up with the new Intel Macs, that 30% will disappear. It might even disappear after we get a preview of Leopard.
I wouldn’t want to work for him but what SJ has done with Apple, as a company and it’s products, is remarkable. Whatever perspective you try to take, you cannot deny this.
Under the mis-guidance of Ballamer, I give MS 10≠ years until it hits the atmosphere breaks into a hundred pieces and vaporizes before it hits the ground.
Ballamer is a sales guy. I’ve never met a sales guy that had ANY product vision. Sure, they may have a some marketing ideas, but you’ve got to have something to market in the long run to keep the company alive.
I agree with MDB – under Bill Gates leadership the company isn’t doing so well either. Go or stay it won’t matter.
“The wreck is going down – get out before you drowned”
We can only hope:
Ballmer Should Leave M$ too
No, Bill Gates will not be able to keep his hands off. I’ve seen this happen so many times in corporate America. When a company is run by its founder there are only two ways to get rid of them, fire them or death. Kind of like death and taxes – that principle.
Just ask Steve Jobs.
microsoft isn’t going anywhere…they almost always get paid when a pc a sold…they’re like an energy/utility company will be around forever.
The issue is whether or not they will be doing any newsworthy innovation and this i doubt. It’s Google, Apple, Yahoo and Ebay from here on out.
Microsoft is the new IBM, an invisible cash machine
Two great possible events are comming:
1.- Bill gates saw that microsoft can not keep with competition and he will left the company before it gets worse and shares goes to the floor. Bill Gates want us to believe that microsoft sunk because he left the company.
2.- May be, he has a recomendation to leave the company in order to get a real software designer that can fix all the problems (o most of all) in microsoft’s software.
I hope once for all microsoft disapear, it has couse tooo much stress in the users…
The real reason I left was because I didn’t want to be there when Apple shamed my company. Now I can blame everything on Balmer, and I will be immortalised.
I believe Steve Jobs to be a visionary in that he sees HUGE potential in small details that others don’t notice, or takes a concept that nobody else believes in and brings it into reality – right or wrong. He’s driven. He’s had many failures, but he keeps getting back into the ring.
“We’ve long ago come to expect nothing less from the one real, true visionary of personal computing.
—> If we could only crown the one real, true visonary of personal computing it would WITHOUT QUESTION be ALAN KAY. PERIOD. This guy literally saw the future, I swear. The concepts he came up with in the early to mid 70’s are only now being acheived. He is also an Apple Fellow (in the academic sense of the word). The man is a visonary genius.
^^^ thats visionary…………..