14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft officially announced on Friday that CEO Steve Ballmer would be retiring in the follwing 12 months and since then, analysts and experts around the world have started a new wave of criticism aimed at the man who led the tech giant for the past 13 years.
Now Frank Shaw, corporate vice president of Corporate Communications at Microsoft, explains that media publications out there are simply too harsh with the company’s outgoing CEO and in some cases, they are ignoring the successes he recorded in some other areas.
“There have been a few common themes in some of the coverage I’ve seen since Friday that are worth taking a moment to dissect and discuss,” Shaw said today.
“One approach has been to focus exclusively on some of our consumer businesses, and then judge us harshly while ignoring the successes we’ve had elsewhere.”
Truth is, only a few have actually praised Ballmer for the things he managed to do while at Microsoft, so most people have been quick to point to the rather disappointing performance of some new products, including Windows 8 and the Surface tablet.
“Another approach has been to go a step further, criticize our lack of ‘focus’ and suggest that those other successes are actually a distraction from what they believe should be our single priority,” Shaw continued.
“What these themes reveal is a single narrow frame through which the writers and pundits view the industry itself that leads them to reach these conclusions. Since we have a different perspective that drives our strategy, we naturally see things differently.”
Ballmer, on the other hand, hasn’t commented too much on his departure, saying only that his decision to retire had nothing in common with ValueAct Capital’s intentions of getting a seat in the company’s board.
Rumor has it that ValueAct was one of the investors that tried to get rid of Steve Ballmer, as some point of his long-term strategy have been considered rather ineffective.