Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer has officially announced that he will retire as soon as a new CEO is elected but no later than 12 months starting now. In any case Mr. Ballmer will quit Microsoft in 2014 if not earlier.
The news is rather surprising – Steve Ballmer has been the CEO of Microsoft since the year 2000 and has led the company through bad and good times. His decision can be explained with his own words – according to Mr. Ballmer Microsoft is transforming into a company that is oriented towards devices and services and a new CEO is needed to complete this task successfully. Some people close to Microsoft say, however, that the change has been forced by the difficult times Microsoft is going through – in the 2006-2007 time period the US software giant suffered a fiasco with Windows Vista and although the company enjoyed success with Windows 7, the current Windows 8 OS is widely disliked and may suffer the fate of Vista; furthermore Microsoft has failed to gain a large market share on the mobile OS market where Google’s Android reigns unchallenged.
A special committee has been set up and will start working on finding a new CEO for Microsoft. The US company will also look for people who have not worked for Microsoft before so it may end up with a new interesting leader from somewhere else.
Source: Microsoft