New York Times: Microsoft is too bloated to split

Lead: The Internet edition of the New York Times published a commentary in Monday entitled "Outside concern about the growing size and unmanageable management of Microsoft" (worries that Microsoft are growing Too tricky to Manage), saying that Microsoft's acquisition of the Nokia handset business Has also sparked new worries outside the world. Some market watchers believe that with the company's growing size and expanding business scope, Microsoft may become too bloated to adapt to the latest technology trends, and eventually into a sluggish and innovative predicament. The following is the full text of the article: missed a lot of opportunities when many industry observers think that Microsoft's products should be less and fewer, they become more and more. Microsoft recently announced the acquisition of Nokia's mobile phone and services business at a price of 7.2 billion dollars, the deal is expected to be completed early next year, when the total number of Microsoft employees will grow by 30%, while adding a large new hardware business unit--in an industry where the importance of concentration is often higher than coverage This is a rare situation. Everyone is concerned about the situation, from academics to people inside Microsoft. Over the past decade, Microsoft has been in smartphones, the many missed opportunities in areas such as tablets and Internet search, and the disappointing investment decisions, have led to the perception that if Microsoft becomes increasingly focused, flexible and smaller, it can respond more effectively to the threat of emerging disruptive technologies. David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School, said: "If you want to be a David Yoffi technology giant, you will face great challenges." "13 years ago, it was because of Microsoft's market dominance that rivals and a U.S. Federal court judge asked Microsoft to split up." But the problem for Microsoft now is to try to expand its coverage rather than take advantage of its strong market dominance. Microsoft has video game consoles, the world's second largest Internet search engine, important portals, a large enterprise software business, PC operating systems, cloud computing services, applications and other services, covering Google (888.05,8.47,0.96%), Yahoo ( 29.24,1.07,3.80%), Oracle (32.75,0.55,1.71%), Apple (506.17,7.95,1.60%) and Nintendo and other competitors are good at all the business, but also to Microsoft CEO Stephen Bolmer (Steven A. Ballmer) has brought enormous pressure, and he has announced that he will retire in 12 months. Looking for a new head the complexity of Microsoft's business will make it more challenging to search for a successor, because Microsoft's CEO's throne requires candidates to have extraordinary management skills, such as good business and consumer markets, hardware, software and Internet services. Ballmer has announced a massive restructuring of Microsoft to boost the company's flexibility, but Microsoft's vast portfolio remains unchanged. "This will make the situation more difficult to control, and it poses a serious challenge to Microsoft, whoever the successor is," says Yoffie. "In fact, before Mr. Ballmer announced his retirement plan, he and Microsoft's board chairman and co-founder Bill Gates acknowledged that it would be very difficult to find an ideal new boss for the company," he said. A person who had communicated with Gates a few years ago about Mr Ballmer's successor, Gates said he would support a decision to change the CEO if he thought anyone could do better than Mr. Ballmer. Other people familiar with the matter said Mr. Ballmer himself had said many years ago that if Microsoft could find a better boss, he would aside the initiative. Larry Cohen, a spokesman for the gates, declined to comment, and Microsoft spokesman Frank Show Frank Shaw Larry Cohn. In 2000, U.S. Federal Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson (Thomas Penfield Jackson) ruled that Microsoft should split into two companies, one focused on windows and the other focused on applications, in violation of U.S. antitrust laws. At the time, Microsoft's business coverage was not as broad as it is now. Microsoft filed an appeal, and the Court of Appeal found that Judge Jackson in the case to the media, not in line with U.S. judicial procedures, and overturned the Microsoft split order. The pros and cons of spin-off in recent years, industry watchers, business-school professors and Microsoft insiders have been thinking about a problem that if Microsoft were to split up, perhaps because of more flexible operations, Microsoft's market competitiveness would have improved a lot. Microsoft has a number of operations, such as the Windows business, in the last fiscal year ended June, the business revenue reached 19.2 billion U.S. dollars, while the Office-oriented business unit, the same period of revenue reached 24.7 billion U.S. dollars Microsoft Server and tool business revenues were 20.3 billion dollars in the same period. At the end of May, Oracle's software business was operating at $27.5 billion trillion. In the view of Microsoft insiders, the company has a so-called "strategic tax" (strategy tax), that is, Microsoft's product sector will often make decisions in favor of its own products, whether this is the best decision. A frequently cited example is the reluctance of Office applications to publish full versions of Word, Excel, and other software for ipad and Android tablets. In theory, the decision will benefit Microsoft's own flat-panel products using Windows, but in the end this has not been the result. Vivic Vadva Vivek Wadhwa, of Stanford University's Law school, proposed a break-up of Microsoft because he believed that Microsoft's consumption and business could not "coexist harmoniously". "Microsoft's market strategy for consumer and corporate business must be very different," he said. As an attempt to protect itsIn the business market, Microsoft is unable to kick in the consumer market. "It's recommended to peel off the Xbox. Despite the numerous successes of big conglomerates, such as GE and Berkshire Hathaway (Berkshire Hathaway), such examples are rare in the tech industry. IBM is often considered a typical case for technology conglomerates to adapt to the trends of the times, but that is partly because the company split its PC business nearly a decade ago. Wadhwa points out that while there are many products and services, IBM is always focused on the enterprise market, so the company, although large, but easier to manage. Another technology conglomerate with a wider product coverage is Samsung Electronics, a Korean electronics giant that deals with electronic equipment, life insurance and petrochemical products. The problem is that each of these operations is highly independent and does not tie in with each other. While Apple is Samsung's main competitor in the mobile market, Samsung is still providing its display and semiconductor products to Apple. Investors have been calling on Microsoft to divest its losses or lower-margin business units, which they regard as a "burden" on Microsoft's share price performance. Richard Sherlund, Nomura's longtime Nomura analyst, Richard Schoellender that Microsoft should split the Xbox console business and Bing's search engine business. Schoellender previously speculated that Microsoft might let Facebook control the Bing search engine and then split the extra traffic from Bing's Facebook site. He estimates that Microsoft's losses in search and Internet operations have accumulated more than $17 billion trillion. Create synergies Although Microsoft also has a record of selling or splitting smaller businesses, such as the company's the late 1990s-run travel website, Expedia, it has never had any intention of stripping out major products. Microsoft argues that many of its products bring synergies. For example, the Xbox uses a windows-based operating system, and Bing provides search services that are deeply integrated with products such as Windows, Xbox, and Windows Phone mobile operating systems. But there is also a view that competitors are becoming aware that if they want to grow, they have to develop a product category that they are not good at, like Microsoft. Google, for example, has moved into the hardware market through Motorola Mobility, and Apple has been targeting startups to improve its online map services. In addition, Amazon, once fully focused on the consumer market, has now become an important provider of the enterprise-class cloud computing services Market (299.71,3.85,1.30%). Professor Yoffie concludes that while adjustments are being made, Microsoft's main competitor is still more focused than it is. "I think one of the fundamental questions facing Microsoft's new CEO is what he is proposing to Microsoft," he said. "(Qing Chen)