Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) have had an intense rivalry and it’s interesting to hear someone who has watched it up close, talk about it. During his tenure at Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), the last 15 years of which involved him being first the President and then the CEO of the company, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) went from having just 30 employees to 100,000, and pulling in $80 billion in revenue and $30 billion in profit. Despite that, former CEO Steve Ballmer does still admit to kicking himself over some of the tech giant’s missed opportunities, as he told CNBC in an interview.
“Are there a couple things I would do different if I could do them again? Of course, there’s always a couple things you’d do different. And you know, I kick myself on those things because I’m a guy who pushes to be his best. But when you look at it as a sort of body of work we went from nothing (to what they are today)[…],” Ballmer said.
As Ballmer recounts, the company created the PC as we know it, revolutionizing the world and paving the way for mass adoption of the internet. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) products and services also led a revolution in workplace productivity, through their Office suite of programs.
Ballmer brushed aside some of the common criticism levied against him, which is that he missed out on some of the key trends of the last five years, namely social, mobile, and cloud computing; the latter two of which his replacement Satya Nadella has placed a strong emphasis on improving early in his tenure. While Ballmer did express particular regret at how their mobile efforts turned out, he pointed out that no company can be in on everything, and companies like Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) aren’t criticized for missing out on things like social in the same way Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is.
Ballmer believes Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is on the right track when it comes to mobile, and that Satya Nadella has done a good job and made some key bold moves since taking over from him. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is up over 25% since Nadella took over in early February.
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