Tag archive: Steve Ballmer

Try to imagine you are Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer. You’re weary of Apple’s perennial coolness, and of the fact that Mac sales have been growing at a startling clip. Your company basically invented the tablet 10 years ago, but didn’t have the chutzpah to take it mainstream, and now Apple has built the most valuable company in the world on the popularity of mobile devices. You’re still essentially minting money, Windows 8 is just over the… Read More

Nokia is mounting its triumphant return to the US market, or so it hopes. Today, the struggling phone maker unveiled its second Windows Phone bound for the North American market. The Nokia Lumia 900 will launch on AT&T within the next few months. The device, which appears to be an upgraded version of the Lumia 800 (which was itself an upgraded Nokia N9), will be one of the first 4G LTE devices to launch on the carrier. Nokia CEO Stephen… Read More

According to Microsoft's head of corporate communications Frank Shaw, the software giant plans to discontinue the relationship with the Consumer Electronics Show after the upcoming show during January 2012. In previous years, Microsoft has taken up a significant portion of space in the Central Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The reason behind pulling out of the event is attributed to different timing on software and hardware… Read More

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has announced through an internal email that the current president of the Windows Phone Division, Andy Lees, will be moving to a new position in the company. He'll be replaced by Terry Myerson, who will take over his responsibilities in the department, but according to AllThingsD, not his title as president of the division. Mr. Lees new role hasn't been given a title, but is described by Steve Ballmer as… Read More

Nokia and Microsoft might be getting a little too close. It seems that the Finnish phone maker is picking up Microsoft's bad habit of trashing the competition. During an interview with Pocket-Lint, a Nokia executive claimed that kids no longer like the iPhone and that Android is too confusing for the youth. This is despite piles of sales charts that say the exact opposite.  “What we see is that youth are pretty much fed up with… Read More

Steve Ballmer is not known for holding back and at the Web 2.0 Summit on Tuesday, the Microsoft CEO tossed out some decent one-liners. Attacking Google search, Android, Yahoo, and touting the company's recent purchase of Skype, Ballmer let loose, as he often does. Below are some select quotes.  On Android: “You don't need to be a computer scientist to use a Windows Phone. I think you do to use an Android Phone…It is hard… Read More

Steve Ballmer just spits out numbers. He can't seem to help himself. Earlier this year, he claimed that Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) would have 500 new features and said Windows 8 would be available in mid 2012. Yesterday, in an appearance at Microsoft's BUILD conference he revealed that the Windows 8 developer preview, a running copy of Windows 8 that anyone can download and install, was downloaded more than 500,000 times in its first… Read More

Windows 8 is a major release of Microsoft’s signature operating system. It not only represents Microsoft’s best chance of being seen as a market leader again, it will likely be the product that either assures or damns Steve Ballmer as CEO. I doubt even he could survive its failure. It is being underfunded (as has been consistent with products under his leadership), but given the team leading the effort, it probably won’t be incomplete. In many… Read More

Did a little birdie tell you that Microsoft purchased Nokia's phone division for $19 billion? Well somebody told the stock market, because shares of Nokia rose in response to these rumors, which have been circulating the net for a week or two now. While it probably likes the positive attention, Nokia has responded definitively to the rumor. “These rumors are 100 percent baseless,” Nokia spokesman Doug Dawson told Reuters. While… Read More

Greenlight Capital's president David Einhorn has called for an end to Steve Ballmer's tenure as Microsoft's CEO. The influential hedge fund investor, who in 2008 predicted the downfall of Lehman Brothers, said of Ballmer: “We've seen what you can do.” In a speech at the Ira Sohn investment conference in New York on Wednesday, Einhorn went on to say, “His continued presence is the biggest overhang on Microsoft stock.”… Read More

Speaking at the Microsoft Developer Forum in Tokyo on Monday, the company's CEO, Steve Ballmer, uttered together the words “Windows” and “Eight” for the first time, seemingly confirming what most people seemed to know already – that the next version of the Windows operating system (that'll be the one after Windows 7), will be called Windows 8. Furthermore, it looks set to be released in 2012. Executives at Microsoft had been careful,… Read More

500 is a big number, but it's exactly what Steve Ballmer promised developers at the Japanese Microsoft Developer Forum today. WMPoweruser has posted video of the Microsoft's CEO calmly claiming that the new version of Windows Phone, codenamed “Mango,” will have more than 500 new features. He also said that more info will be revealed at Microsoft's Mango event in New York and seemed to hint at possible carrier and… Read More

When it was announced last week that Microsoft had bought Internet phone company Skype for a whacking $8.5 billion, it caused many in the tech industry to carefully place their cup of coffee on their desk, furrow their brow slightly and say, “Eh?” The news media was filled with stories trying to work out precisely why Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer was so excited about the takeover of a company that lost $7 million last year and charges nothing for… Read More

Rumors may have pointed toward a Google or Facebook buyout, but Microsoft announced today that it has definitively agreed to purchase Skype for $8.5 billion in cash (we learned about this last night). The buyout has been approved by both companies. The Redmond software giant claims that it will continue to support Skype on non-Microsoft platforms, but is quick to point out that “Microsoft devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone, and a… Read More

In a joint Webcast today, Toyota President Akio Toyoda and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced a strategic partnership between the two companies to build “a global platform for Toyota's next-generation telematics services using the Windows Azure cloud computing platform. Telematics, by the way, is a new buzzword for the integration of information technology into vehicles including GPS, multimedia, and energy management. The two… Read More