Dive summary:
- Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, announced plans to step down from his position within the next 12 months.
- The company is faced with a major shift in the market away from PCs and is planning a big transition to adapt; Ballmer saw this as an opportunity to best time his retirement.
- The company has been on rocky ground in many respects; in addition to slowing PC sales, the release of Windows 8 was underwhelming and the Surface tablet, the company's answer to Apple's iPad, failed to gain traction.
From the article;
"Ballmer's tenure has been mixed, to say the least. While the company's core Windows and enterprise businesses continues to print money (each brought in roughly $20 billion during the most recent fiscal year), the company has been criticized for being lumbering, plagued by bureaucracy (brought to light in a famous Vanity Fair piece) and slow to innovate."