14 DAY TRIAL // Remember Joachim Kempin, the former Microsoft employee who said that Steve Ballmer used to bring a baseball bat into meetings? He’s back, this time with some new thoughts on the Redmond-based software giant.
In an interview with ReadWriteWeb, Kempin says that Microsoft is no longer a cool company and the recently-released products don’t seem to help at all. Windows 8 does no good, he explained, and the company has barely innovated since Windows 95.
“The company has lost its coolness. I compare today with the launch of Windows 95, when people were lining up around the block at midnight. This didn’t happen with Windows 7 or Vista. It hardly even happened with Windows 8. But it happens every time when Apple launches a new product,” he said.
While everybody continues to criticize Microsoft for the way Windows 8 performs in its first days on the market, the software company says that everything goes according to plan, with early uptake in line with the one recorded by Windows 7.
Microsoft said that it sold a total of 60 million Windows 8 copies in just two months after launch, but sources close to the matter suggested that the new operating system actually missed internal sales projections.
There’s something wrong with Microsoft, Kempin said, because the company is basically malfunctioning.
“I think it’s that Steve hasn’t assembled the right team to propel the company forward. I don’t see any technical visionary in there. They have great ideas in their research groups, but those ideas don’t see the light of day,” he added.
In the meantime, Microsoft continues to focus on its hardware efforts, as the company plans to release even more tablets beside the two Surfaces already on the market.
That doesn’t sit well with the rest of hardware manufacturers, but Microsoft seems really keen on releasing more products in the upcoming months. And a new tablet is very likely to see daylight this summer.