content: Ballmer was CEO when Microsoft had a guaranteed revenue stream. PC iteration rates have radically declined along with the revenue of all the licensed software on each one, the least of which not being the OS. Corporations have never been particularly fast to upgrade with many around the world still using XP - if it works, then why not? The cloud, which Microsoft was heavily banking on has not panned out anywhere near like they were banking on. Automation is probably the next big thing in computing and while Microsoft had some early major advances in computer vision, they've also been left behind there. Their recent "Hey, wait... me too!" for getting into vehicle automation AI screams of desperation. Their complete flop on delivering a social media AI presence screams of the results of a company trying to bring top tier products to a market with second, third, and lower tier employees as Microsoft is no longer seen a desirable destination top talent. There's no excusing what Nadella is doing, but he's also in a pretty shitty position. To keep afloat you need to generate tens of billions of dollars. All of your established markets are dying and you're far behind in emerging markets. Ready, set, go!