On the desktop do not move! Microsoft bid farewell to Ballmer, stock price rose Day

Microsoft CEO Ballmer 23rd announced that he has decided to retire within 12 months. The controversial Mr Ballmer eventually failed to withstand the pressure and sadly announced he would resign as CEO of Microsoft within a year. The news was shocking and predictable.

Mr. Ballmer said that Microsoft needed a chief executive who would be able to implement the new strategy over time and lead Microsoft to a new direction. At present, Microsoft has set up a special committee to deal with Ballmer's succession work. In fact, Mr. Ballmer has been under a lot of pressure since 2000 as chief executive of Microsoft. Some investors and analysts believe that while Ballmer was in charge of Microsoft, Microsoft still had a big advantage in traditional businesses such as desktop operating systems and enterprise-level markets, but Ballmer failed to lead the company to seize the important opportunity of the market, the mobile market.

Microsoft's shares rose 7.29% per cent on the day after Mr. Ballmer announced he would retire within 12 months, at $34.75.

Personal character and management style are one of the reasons for Mr. Ballmer's criticism. This sturdy bald head is definitely a clown in the American tech circle. As Microsoft's leader in software giants, Mr. Ballmer never had the charisma of Steve Jobs and Google's former CEO Schmidt, nor did Apple and Google's incumbent CEO, Cook and Page, in their respective companies. His comic talent, grumpy personality and the management of an iron fist constitute a huge contradiction.

With Ballmer's occasion, there would be no shortage of jokes. He can bounce off like a urchin at Microsoft's conference, shout his love for Microsoft in a row, and spit out his tongue in media interviews, laughing loudly at rival products such as Apple's IPhone. These "embarrassing things" have become the reason Ballmer himself suffered ridicule.

Mr Ballmer also has a violent, grim side. When executives switch to Google, Ballmer threatens to slam chairs directly in his office, and when he sees employees using the IPhone, he takes his cell phone and slams it on the ground, and when executives threaten his power, he will relentlessly push away the potential rivals.

Mr Ballmer's critics include not just investors and analysts, but even Microsoft's many executives and employees. Former Microsoft COO Jakoshin Kempin (Joachim Kempin), who worked for Microsoft in 20, once left the book directly attacking his former direct boss, Ballmer, as a good COO, but definitely not an excellent CEO. Kempin also accuses Mr. Ballmer of only taking his own interests and driving away the many outstanding executives inside Microsoft that might threaten him.

Mr Ballmer's "drive away" of Microsoft's top executives included Richard Beruzzo, Richard Belluzzo, and former Windows chief Steve Sinnowski, who brought Microsoft the biggest growth spotlight in the past decade. Sinofsky's abrupt departure is seen as a huge loss to Microsoft, and is viewed as a direct consequence of his "forced Palace" of Steve Ballmer, who peeked at Microsoft's CEO.

Although Mr Ballmer's style of management has been controversial, there is only one root cause of his forced resignation: the mobile market. Mr. Ballmer has always been considered a good manager, not a forward-looking leader. Kempin that Mr Ballmer has been completely disconnected from the market and that Microsoft needs a 35-40-year-old commander-in-chief to truly understand the current age of mobility and social intercourse.

Indeed, Mr. Ballmer has been under a lot of pressure since 2000, after replacing Microsoft's legendary founder, Gates, as Microsoft's CEO. In recent years, he has been called upon to dismiss Mr Ballmer, who is 57 years old, as an impediment to Microsoft's March. Even more embarrassing for Mr Ballmer, the market reacted unusually excitedly after he announced his resignation, with Microsoft's share price soaring nearly 10% per cent ahead of the Sell-off.

Mr Ballmer's controversy was not due to weak Microsoft's performance. On the contrary, Microsoft, under Ballmer's rule, has grown in revenue and profits for years as a gold-sucking behemoth. Microsoft's sales soared from $25.3 billion trillion to $74.3 billion, operating profit from 11.7 billion dollars to 25.3 billion dollars, accumulating up to 63 billion dollars in cash. Microsoft has also brought in more than 180 billion dollars in investment returns (dividend payments and repo shares) to shareholders. In stark contrast, however, the software giant's share price has stalled for more than 10 years, watching Apple and Google's market capitalisation close to and even overtake.

The main reason for Mr Ballmer's criticism is that investors have cooled Microsoft mainly because of future growth and missed mobile opportunities. During Mr Ballmer's presidency, Microsoft, while still occupying a huge advantage in desktop operating systems and enterprise-level markets, lost the most important development opportunity in the past five years-the mobile market. At the same time, Apple, under Jobs ' management, has a huge advantage in mobile with the IPhone and IPad, and Google has won more than 70% of the smartphone sector's market share through its free and open Android system.

Although Microsoft has long been in the mobile field, but in the mobile internet era after the slow movement, the future of the market almost entirely to Google and Apple. Even after catching up with Nokia in the past two years, Microsoft's WP platform has just overtaken the BlackBerry, making it a dismal third-largest mobile platform with a 5% share. Microsoft's biggest bet on Windows 8 in the past decade, released last year, did not bring the expected results. These were seen as a failure of Mr Ballmer's leadership.

It is easy and unfair to push the blame to Ballmer. Microsoft's huge success in the field has hampered its struggle to move into the mobile world as quickly as Google and Apple. But as CEO, Mr Ballmer's responsibilities are certainly not to be taken. Compared with Apple, Google in the past five years of rapid rise, Microsoft's sense of the drop is particularly obvious. However, Ballmer was able to sit on Microsoft's CEO seat for years in the controversy, largely because of the full support of gates and Microsoft's Board of directors.

Ballmer and Gates have known each other for 40 years, and he has been in Microsoft for 33 years. In terms of business talent, Ballmer didn't have much to criticize. He was the core contributor to Microsoft's success, and Mr. Ballmer, who was in charge of partnering with IBM in 1981 to launch a PC operating system, laid out Microsoft's dominance of the desktop system. He also received the trust of gates, entered Microsoft's core management, and eventually replaced gates in charge of the company's heyday.

In Mr Ballmer's resignation message to employees, it was more of an unlimited attachment to Microsoft than the crucial period when Microsoft was in transition to a device and service company. Ballmer used 7 "Love" in the mail, believing it was all about his feelings for Microsoft. Microsoft's sales rose from $7.5 million to $78 billion in the 33-year period he worked for Microsoft, and the total number of employees expanded from 30 to nearly 100,000, much of it from Mr Ballmer's contribution.

But this time, Mr Ballmer seems to be really under pressure. According to Mr Ballmer's fiery character, he will never give up Microsoft's CEO position lightly, nor will he announce his resignation after the Microsoft management restructuring has just been completed. Although the story of his departure has not been dug up by the media, but from all indications, the Secretary of the Gates and Microsoft has been supporting Ballmer finally decided to let him class, hoping to change the handsome to achieve Microsoft's Road again.

In an interview earlier this year, Mr. Gates, while still supporting Mr Ballmer, has been vague about not being satisfied with Microsoft's current status. "[Microsoft's progress over the past year] is that enough?" No! Neither I nor he is satisfied. "Perhaps Mr Gates already thinks his old friend may no longer be fit to lead Microsoft into a new era of mobility, and it has laid the groundwork for Mr Ballmer's dismal resignation today."

The transition to a device and service company is a future strategy that Ballmer has developed for software giant Microsoft. But the strategy has also suffered unanimous criticism from outside. Transformational equipment companies could jeopardize the long-term partnership between Microsoft and PC makers and push these partners into Google's Android camp. When the launch of its own-branded tablet computer Surface, Microsoft has suffered a lot of criticism from OEM manufacturers such as Acer. And the sales fiasco of RT platform equipment made Ballmer feel embarrassed.

At the beginning of the Surface RT tablet, Microsoft was full of blind optimism about the future of the RT platform and was unaware of the difficulty of building a new platform under Google's monopolistic dominance with Apple, according to Microsoft employees. In the last quarter, Microsoft was forced to count the $900 million trillion in asset impairment associated with SURFAC RT, a huge reduction (and nearly 1 billion dollars in marketing costs) far exceeding the Surface RT sales.

In Microsoft's traditional site desktop system, the launch of Win 8 did not effectively prevent the decline in PC sales. At least for now, Microsoft's Win 8 gamble has yet to yield the desired results. Global PC sales shrank by 14% in the first quarter of this year, the most dismal performance in decades, according to IDC. IDC bluntly criticized Microsoft, that the combination of desktop and flat two interface of Win 8 not to give the PC market a positive boost, but slowed the market development.

Of course, the final results of Win 8 are far from the conclusion of the coffin. Microsoft's tablet road is only just beginning, and many manufacturers are publishing win 8 tablet new products. But Microsoft's board and Gates seem to have lost patience. In his farewell message, Ballmer said he wanted to retire in the middle of Microsoft's transition, but now Microsoft needs a new CEO to lead Microsoft in a longer period of transition, and its resignation is in the best interest of Microsoft.

Mr Ballmer was not the only tech giant to miss out on mobile market opportunities, and Otellini, the former chief executive of Intel, abruptly announced his departure at the end of last year. Similar to Microsoft, Microsoft's old ally, Intel, is also obsessed with the success of the desktop, while watching ARM and Qualcomm occupy the lead in the mobile chip market until the tide is set. While Intel was back in the mobile arena last year, it is still hard to reach the dominance of Qualcomm in the short term, and they are under a low price shock from MediaTek's chips.

Google's market capitalisation overtook Microsoft, and Qualcomm eventually overtook Intel. These two symbolic changes seem to imply that the desktop era is officially placed in the mobile market. The tide of technology is surging ahead, Ballmer succeeded in mastering the growth opportunities in the PC field and eventually headed the technology giant, Microsoft, and eventually left the company because of missed opportunities in the mobile sector. The desktop, not moving, is perhaps the best portrayal of Ballmer.

After 13 years of Ballmer's time, Microsoft needs a forward-looking new CEO to regain its impact in the mobile arena, where Google and Apple have already dominated smartphones and tablet markets. The new CEO will face the toughest challenges in the tech world. Can Microsoft write a new pioneering legend?