14 DAY TRIAL // Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer named the company’s investments in hardware as the one thing that he regrets not doing faster, explaining in an interview with recode that the software giant lacked the capability to expand beyond software with him at the helm of the firm.
In a very detailed answer when asked what he thinks he did wrong at Microsoft, Ballmer explains that the company was late to the hardware party, pointing to this as one of the reasons it also failed to become a more important player in the mobile world.
“Companies get successful with an idea, with talent around the idea, and with capability as a company to execute on the idea,” Ballmer explained. “Turns out that if you have a second idea that is different from the first, you may need new talent, but you also need new capability and you don’t get new capability overnight.”
“I think I was too slow in cases to recognize the need for new capability and particularly in hardware. I wish we built the capability to be a world-class hardware company because one of the new expressions of software is essentially the hardware,” he continued. “And I think we came to that later than I think the company under my leadership should have built that capability earlier than we did.”
Microsoft wants to reboot Windows Phone
Ballmer then talked about the current transition that Microsoft is doing from the devices and services approach that himself embraced as CEO to a cloud-based strategy, which seems to be going very well at this point.
“[Capability is a word for] hardware. The thing I would say we missed with phone is that we tried to use the old techniques: software licensing, blah, blah, blah, we tried to use the same techniques and the same techniques were never going to get us there. We had the wrong monetization model, we had the wrong delivery model, all of that because we didn’t build new capability.”
With Satya Nadella at the helm of the company, Microsoft looks ready to give mobile another chance, as the firm is reportedly working on a reboot of the smartphone platform, not only with new software but also with a new device.
The new phone, whose name is not known just yet, could be the highly-anticipated Surface Phone, which could run the overhauled version of Windows 10 for phones, but at the same time also provide new capabilities, as Microsoft is trying to do with every new device that’s part of the Surface lineup.
