14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft continues the search for a new CEO, with pundits claiming that Stephen Elop, the former Nokia boss who joined the company quite recently, is now in pole-position for the role.
Analysts believe that the name of Ballmer's successor isn't so important as long as he reiterates the reorganization that the outgoing CEO started a couple of months ago.
Analyst Heather Bellini believes that Microsoft must focus on all its businesses, including enterprise and consumer, as the tech giant needs to boost its share in both sides of the market. She doesn't rule out, however, the possibility of more drastic measures at Microsoft.
"We believe a backing of the current reorg affirms that MSFT is going to put all its effort into turning around its declining market share in total compute, which would mean focusing on both its enterprise and consumer related businesses," said Bellini.
"If ultimately MSFT is not successful in executing a turn-around, we would then expect the company to consider more drastic measures which could lead to a narrowing of focus."
While the concept of drastic measures is pretty vague right now, it could actually mean that Microsoft might go all-in on Windows, its key product that's still in the leading spot on the OS market, and focus less on mobile.
Statements from other analysts indicated that Microsoft might even try to get rid of the Xbox division, again in an attempt to boost the profit of some other unit. Nevertheless, such a scenario is highly unlikely, as the company still struggles to embrace the devices and services approach.
"We believe the key to the stock's performance near-term is most likely to hinge on whether a true outsider or an insider (including those that have worked at MSFT in the past) gets put into the CEO slot as it will likely take this for its current path (both from a segment focus and opex perspective) to be materially altered," the analyst concluded.