Speaking at Microsoft's financial analyst meeting on Thursday, CEO Steve Ballmer touched on various ideas, from growing consumer-product and search market shares to Apple's gadget edge and the need
for Windows-based tablet computers.
"Microsoft's chief executive has come very close to telling investors he screwed up after years of writing off, belittling and underestimat[ing]
Apple's potential success in touch-based computing,"
writes The Register. "Ballmer told Wall Street he's under no illusion
about Apple's success with the iPad and iPhone, and Microsoft's number-one priority is now to deliver touch-based computing pads running Windows 7... that people want."
"They'll be
shipping as soon as they are ready," Ballmer said regarding the tablets. "It is job one urgency. No one is sleeping at the switch." (And, no, Microsoft isn't designing the tablets itself.)
"We're working with our hardware partners, we're tuning Windows 7 to work on slates," Ballmer added. "We've got the user base, we've got the user familiarity. We've got everything on our side if
we do things really right."
"Of course that's often the case with Microsoft,"
notes Digital Daily. "The problem is, it doesn't always manage to do things really
right. Certainly, it didn't manage it with Windows Vista. Or Windows Mobile. Or Zune. Or, more recently, Kin. Who's to say this time will be any different?"
"As it stands now,
Microsoft's lack of details on the upcoming Windows tablets is not encouraging, despite Ballmer's promises,"
concludes PCWorld.
Seemingly overwhelmed by the rapid innovation and successes of rivals like Apple, Google, and even Facebook,
Fortune calls Ballmer "a train wreck," and "a salesman whose only answer to technological change seems to be
the operating system he inherited from Bill Gates."
Thinking of Microsoft as an "innovator," however, will leave you disappointed every time, Jefferies analyst Katherine Egbert wrote in
a note Friday morning. "If you stop thinking of Microsoft as an innovator and start thinking of them as a fast, low cost, mass market follower, you'll stop being disappointed in their inability to
divine new markets and realize they are staring at some of their largest growth opportunities ever."
Meanwhile, "Ballmer made the case Thursday that Microsoft not only gets the consumer
market, but is set to grow its business there,"
writes CNet's Beyond Binary blog.
Read the whole story at The Register (UK) et al. »