Satya Nadella hits 2 years, but is Steve Ballmer the unsung hero of Microsoft's resurgence?

Microsoft’s comeback is presented as a shared result of two CEOs rather than a clean break between failure and success. The article says Ballmer made serious mistakes, but also left behind a profitable, large business and several strategic bets that Nadella later expanded.

Reading notes

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• Ballmer is described as having made major mistakes, including a slow response to the iPhone, which left Microsoft late in mobile.
• The article says Windows Phone 7 arrived nearly four years after the iPhone, and that the delay reflected arrogance, a lack of urgency, and weak vision.
• It says Microsoft under Ballmer had an internal culture where Windows and Office groups could block projects that threatened them.
• It points to cancelled or weakened efforts such as Courier, the departure of J Allard, and Skype missing the messaging wave.
• It also mentions Windows 8, Vista, the aQuantive write-down, and the Nokia acquisition and write-down as part of Ballmer’s record.
• At the same time, the article says Ballmer grew revenue from $25 billion in 2001 to $87 billion in 2014 and raised annual operating profit from $11.7 billion to $27.7 billion.
• It argues that Ballmer supported or did not kill major bets such as Surface, Xbox, Cortana, Bing, Band, Office 365, Microsoft retail stores, Windows 10, Continuum, and Azure.
• The article says Microsoft’s current hardware and services direction still reflects Ballmer’s “devices and services” idea.
• Nadella is credited with recalibrating Microsoft internally and externally, speeding up Office on iOS and Android, and pushing cross-platform acquisitions like Acompli, Wunderlist, Sunrise, and Echo Notification.
• It also highlights Nadella’s moves in AI and openness, including SwiftKey, Xiaoice, open sourcing machine-learning work, and partnerships with Dropbox, Box, Salesforce, and Apple.
• The article says Nadella still has a weakness in Windows Mobile, because Microsoft’s own mobile app development remains incomplete.
• It concludes that Nadella has built on Ballmer’s bets while making Microsoft seem friendlier and more open.