“Some members of Microsoft’s board of directors feel the need to keep their chief executive under closer scrutiny,” Richard Waters reports for The Financial Times.
MacDailyNews Take: Uh oh, some of them finally woke up!
Waters continues, “That does not mean that Steve Ballmer’s job is on the line – at least, not yet. But it does show that some on the board are getting restless about the company’s performance under his 11-year watch. And there may be few catalysts that will make things look any better in the short term to make his position any more comfortable.”
“Two people who have talked to Microsoft directors recently tell us that they have heard some expressions of misgiving about Mr Ballmer’s leadership, and suggest that he is coming under greater pressure to raise the company’s game,” Waters reports. “Our sources don’t believe the chief executive is vulnerable – certainly not as long as Bill Gates remains loyal to his old associate – but it is a sign that Microsoft’s boardroom has been feeling the heat.”
MacDailyNews Take: Now hold on a second! Just because the esteemed Mr. Ballmer responds to the question, “What’s your tablet strategy?” with 10-second-long blank stares followed by clueless gobbledegook does not mean he doesn’t have a strategy. We like his strategy. We like it a lot. May Steve Balmer remain Microsoft CEO for as long as it takes!™
Waters continues, “There are two very good reasons for the anxiety: the stock price and the iPad. After a decade of underperformance, 2010 really stank for Microsoft shareholders… Devices such as the iPad are seen by some as an existential threat to the traditional PC. Mr Ballmer admitted last year that Microsoft missed a generation of mobile software, putting it well behind the iPhone. But he then went on to compound the problem by underestimating the demand for touchscreen tablets.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: While we’ve been expecting this for quite awhile, we don’t like the sound of this one bit. Godspeed, you big dumb monkey, Godspeed.
Crap! They’re on to us!
Who let those independent rational people on the board? Who do they think they are?
You don’t. Say.
(great pic, btw)
I love the pic from Dr. Strangelove. Very appropriate.
NO! NO! We like Ballmer. He does an outstanding job leading Microsoft into the abyss.
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Ballmer is the one with the Humongous Reality Distortion Field.
It has worked on his Board of Directors for a decade now.
Microstock!!! Hahaha.
That’s just ruining one of the great screen images of all time. That’s not right. Not right.
FTA: “The software company’s board has sent a very public signal that its chief could do better. Mr Ballmer was handed only part of his target bonus this year, with the rest withheld because of the failure to move faster in mobile computing.”
I say Apple should step up to the plate and pay the remainder of the bonus. Heck they could even double it as an incentive for future innovative initiatives!
The photoshopped image of Slim Pickens on the ICBM is priceless! Laughed out loud for several minutes at that.
Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!
Leave Mr Ballmer where he is board members! He is doing a sterling job!! If you replace him and the business tanks, you will be in the unenviable position that Apple Electronics board was in a few years ago!
Ballmer is doing great. All they need to do is look at the list of innovative products they have release recently. Here let me list it for you.
1…………………………………………………………………………… Hold on, I’m still looking…..
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NO! Ballmer ROCKS? You must keep him.
Those director’s investments are diversified enough. They’d be happier if the owned some Apple stock.
Still negative function on bomb bay doors.
Go check it out, Major Ballmer..
@ 84 Mac Guy – ditto – absolutely priceless. Perhaps we should start using “Major Dong” as a soubriquet for the Fool Ballmer. 😀
“…some on the board are getting restless about the company’s performance…”
Gee – d’ye think (different)?
=:~)
@ Buster
Right on!!
Sent from my iPhone
At least Bill could copy & steal well… Balmer can’t even do that right! He’s got NOTHING!
10 years of under performance… and AMD’s Chief Executive only had 1 year and they fire him….
BALLMER!
BALLMER!
BALLMER!
TEN MORE YEARS!
TEN MORE YEARS!
Okay, FIVE!
Just give him FIVE MORE YEARS!
BALLMER! BALLMER!
HE’S OUR MAN!
IF HE CAN’T DO IT
NO-ONE CAN!
YAAAAAAAAY,
BALLMER!!
Let’s just hope they recycle some other slow-witted doofus from inside the company up to the penthouse suite. Things could continue on unchanged.
Kubrick just rolled over in his pod bay doors, Hal.
no, No, NO!!!!!!
Leave him in!
It’s too late for Ballmer or anyone else.
For the last decade Apple has been pumping out insanely great and innovative products and they now have what MS has now lost, the confidence and respect of the American consumer.
They have no way of regaining it before Apple completely dominates every market. The game is over except for the very bottom end of the market where MS will probably dwell for quite a while yet.
I suspect a big lay off of astroturfers when ballmer’s gone.
Pelosi and Ballmer. Two world class dumb asses
Someone on the Board must have stopped reading the business news from CNET and actually got a clue. Quick, someone break that guy’s HP Slate!
@ x: I’d roll you right in there as you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. Unless, of course, we’re talking about shooting shit ’round the trailer park or cooking meth…
@ Chas
I think it’s Major Kong, not Dong. But, on second thought, I think Dong works too.
It was only matter of time before some of the board members would have gotten an iPhone or iPad for Christmas. After a few minutes with either they must have started looking at Ballmer and saying “What the f…”
That image really lifted my afternoon.
“But, but, they’ll see the Big Board!”
To M$BOD: Poppies, poppies, sweet poppies everywhere, lovely meadows full of poppies, sleep now, sleep, sleep, sleep.
If I was a Microsoft shareholder, I’d want him replaced as soon as possible. Microsoft is still making money, but cash cows from the last century (PC Windows and Office) won’t live forever. Microsoft has been thoroughly manipulated during THIS century by Apple.
He reacted predictably to all the taunting from Apple’s “Get a Mac” commercials… Microsoft panics and abandons the ambitious “Longhorn” project and focuses on doing a rush job on Windows XP “SP whatever” instead (aka Windows Vista), while letting Windows Mobile (which was doing well) languish. Windows Vista was the best thing to happen to Apple’s Mac business since the return of Steve Jobs. Then, Apple takes Microsoft completely off guard with the release of iPhone.
Microsoft goes into “denial mode,” but then panics and focuses for the next two+ years on revamping Windows Mobile into Windows Phone 7. Just as Windows Phone 7 is being readied for release, Apple drops the REAL bomb for this decade, iPad.
Microsoft goes into “denial mode,” but then panics and vows to focus for the next two+ years on revamping Windows into an OS that can run on mobile devices. At CES, they “show off” clumsy-looking prototype (and not very mobile) “bare circuit boards” supposedly running the next version of Windows (that looks just like Windows 7). For now, Microsoft has nothing for tablets, as redefined by iPad. The decade-long work Microsoft did on its vision of a “tablet computer” is basically worthless going forward.
Meanwhile, Apple is no doubt secretly working on the “next big thing.” Microsoft has been a predictable and malleable “competitor” for Apple during Steve Ballmer’s reign.
The best movie and the worst CEO.
“What’s your tablet strategy?”
Ballmer: “I’ll keep taking them.”
Hopefully Balmer will do SOMETHING right to lull then back to sleep. Maybe he’ll remember to put the toilet seat down before sits down to take a crap for once or something. Come on Balmer, don’t let them oust you! Please! Microsoft’s lack of a future depends on it!
General Turdigson commenting on Steve Ballmer’s style and quality of leadership @ Microsoft:
“Gee, I wish we had one of those Doomsday Machines!”
Strangelove… on of my Top 5 Favorite Movies.
How could he know that the iPad would take off. It has no keys to type on!
Clueless idiot! We are going to miss you. Bill Gates had no vision and you were just a sales guy. What will they pick next? I hear Al Gore is free. Just need him to leave Apple’s board. You know, he invented the internet!?! He would be a great fit running Microsoft.
Can’t forget the other great line from Dr. Strangelove. As the bombers are on the way General Slaughter says “I don’t think it’s fair to condemn the entire program just because of one failure!”
Hmmmmmm….
And Balmer sold a big chunk of stock in 2010…..
DAMIT!
“I can no longer sit back and allow Microsoft infiltration, Microsoft indoctrination, Microsoft subversion and the international Microsoft conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious Apple OS’s.”
Ballmer T Clown.
Google needs to stick to mapping and their search engine. Microsoft needs to stick with Windows, software and XBox. Them dabbling in Apple stuff will ruin them.
It may be profitable in the short term but the amount of energy it would take to compete with sufficient profitability would make no sense to an investor.
@Jan 24, that is a great quote to add to the discussion!
I am a MS stock holder, I own 10 shares. It is so I can vote to keep the visionary Ballmer in place until it’s done. I would urge everyone else to do the same, even at the risk of running the stock up a bit, that could keep the board quiet.
“Steve B, we like your strategy , we like it A LOT!”
Apple needs Microsoft to get its act together and attack Google.
Google dumping H.264 just shows how arrogant and hypocritical they’ve become.
Come on, Ballmer. Get it together.
がんばってバールマーさん。
@ken1w Well said
Wonder where the M$ Bigass Table has got to…
You knew monkey boy was on borrowed time when M$’s response to the iPhone was the Big Ass Table.
I’m amazed he’s survived this long.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but that one of Ballmer riding the bomb has to be worth quite a few dissertations
Uber Kubrick fanboy John Gruber at – http://daringfireball.net/ will either be apoplectic or creaming himself.
…
Major S. A. “Monkey Boy” Ballmer:
Well, boys, we got three engines out, we got more holes in us than a horse trader’s mule, the radio is gone and we’re leaking innovation and if we was flying any lower why we’d need sleigh bells on this thing… but we got one little budge on them Propellerheads. At this height why they might harpoon us but they dang sure ain’t gonna spot us on no radar screen!
– Hey, where’d Major Ballmer go?
The 2000’s were about the Battle of the Steve’s. It is round 11 and Steve J almost has the KO.
I think big screen apps will be the next knock down punch.
We need to wage a write-in campaign of support for Steve Ballmer to continue as CEO for many years to come!! Half the fun of being an Apple fan is the repartee and back-and-forth with Bill Gates, followed by Steve Ballmer. It just won’t be as fun without one of them at the helm. We love ya Steve B.! Hang tough!
As much as we all like to dump on MSFT, it is still a huge cash cow from it’s OS and Office suites, with a 90+% margin on those products. While MSFT investors have not been rewarded with any price movement in the past 10 years or so, the dividends have been regular.
I’m stalwart AAPL, but I do have a minor amount of MSFT in my portfolio, solely for the price stability – lets face it; if something happened to Ballmer, the stock would never tank 40% in seconds. Bought 200 shares of MSFT at $25.69 in July of 2005. The stock today is $28.55. A pathetic return of 0.52% per year, yes, but it has paid $472 in dividends over that time. Net return of $1,044 or 3.7% a year, which is better than a money market account. You have to think of MSFT as a low-risk, low-growth bond sort of investment rather than a tech one.
Of course, I could have bought more AAPL with the $ spent on MSFT, but then my portfolio would be even way more ridiculously unbalanced with respect to my AAPL holdings, which are up 85 times = a mere 607% annualized return over 14 years!
LOL – what karma – my “magic word” to post this is “surface”.
To the cloud!!!
You’re all so full of BS. MS has posted record earnings several times over the past few years. XBox is on fire, Windows 7 has sold a zillion copies, I think more than any other version in their history… and, Windows Phone 7 is out, and very innovative.
No, Ballmer is not perfect, but MS is as dominant as ever. After the speed improved, copy and paste infused WP7 update hits in 2 weeks, WP7 will gain more momentum.
Idiot Fanbois!
“I… love… this… company!!!”
“YEAH!!!!!!!!!”
MaWo: ‘not’. ‘Nuff said.
Ballmer (the sales guy) thinks that his primary role as CEO is to be the company cheerleader and then every thing else will take care of itself. He’s a buffoon.
Billy was clever enough to leave the boot while still floating!
Made billions cheating and misleading everyone… And one leaves to the retirement! Zooooooooooooooo(n)……….. Poor Steve Ballmer got the balls and stays there, after the tip has been past and all M$ slides desperately downwards… Oh! Doomy destiny!
To MSFT’s Board of Directors:
Please keep Ballmer-the-loser as CEO forever!! Please don’t let him go so soon!! We “love” him!!
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Maybe Apple should buy Microsoft? One way to get a huge portion of enterprise customers. I guess the FTC would have an issue with that…..
I actually liked Bill Gates when I was a Windows user. When OSX replaced the awful Mac OS9, I never looked back. Karma is a bitch! Apple is indeed getting the last laugh! “Better” DOES matter! Do u hear that short-timer Monkey Boy?!!!