14 DAY TRIAL // Steve Ballmer will leave Microsoft in the coming months, as soon as a successor is found, so the man who spent more than 13 years at the helm of the Redmond-based software giant now has a bit more time to talk about his job at the company.
Ballmer has already admitted that Windows Vista is his biggest regret for the time he spent at Microsoft, but the CEO now explained in an interview with ZDNet that this is actually his “single biggest mistake.”
“When I look at it and I say, okay, what's the thing that I did that I feel -- that I regret the most, not just in my CEOship but my whole time here, it's absolutely 'Longhorn becomes Vista.' That was the single biggest mistake I made,” Ballmer was quoted as saying.
“Why? Not only because the product wasn't a great product, but remember it took us five or six years to ship it. Then we had to sort of fix it. That was what I might call Windows 7.”
Ballmer claims that he was aware that Windows Vista was actually going to fail, but he and the other executives in charge with the operating system unit tried to address all issues as quickly as possible.
“The mistake wasn't just an executional mistake. It was a technical strategy mistake. We tried to fight it off,” he said.
“The big things are the important things to get right in this industry, but then you've got to execute with cadence. People think it's about changing strategy every three seconds, because that's what people say. ‘Oh, the industry changes so fast.’”
Steve Ballmer announced in August that he would step down as Microsoft CEO, but the name of his successor is still unknown. At this point, sources familiar with the matter claim that Ford's CEO Alan Mulally and former Nokia boss Stephen Elop are front-runners for the position. Cloud chief Satya Nadella is also said to be a leading candidate for the role.