Lisa Fleisher for WSJ:
Speaking at the Saïd Business School in Oxford, U.K., Steve Ballmer, who stepped down from Microsoft one month ago, admitted that he would re-do the last ten years if he could.
“We would have a stronger position in the phone market today if I could re-do the last 10 years,” he said. The answer, he said, is to pick up and try to catch the next wave.
It’s good that he admitted something we all knew for a while now.
Even if he could go back in time knowing everything he knows now, he’d probably still find a way to screw it up.
He probably believes that if he’d just said “developers” one more time, they would’ve had a chance.
Maybe he wouldn’t haven’t laughed at the first iPhone release.
He did it more than once. He’d need more than ten years to fix that.
Why he failed (and will continue to fail) is written right there in the last quote: “pick up an try to catch the next wave”. Apple (and truly forward thinking companies) create the wave, not try to catch it…
only thing he could do is buy all
the companies and patents that Apple and Google
would buy in the future.
but then he would be destroying half of the economy.
he could never get Bill to allow him to build
their own tablet or phone or even separate OS.
There is no way he could get Microsoft
to dump their legacy crap.