A picture is worth a thousand words and sometimes a chart is worth even more. Microsoft’s announcement late last week that Steve Ballmer would step down from his role as chief executive within the next year rocked the tech world, though it was hardly a real surprise. While Microsoft is still the largest software company on the planet, Ballmer has been widely criticized for the past few years due to Microsoft’s failure to address the exploding smartphone and tablet markets. While Microsoft’s future likely isn’t quite as bleak as some make it out to be, there is no question that its mobile efforts in recent years have failed — after three years, Windows Phone’s global market share is now just 3.7% and in the tablet space, Windows RT has hardly been well received. The following chart from mobile analyst Benedict Evans shows exactly why Microsoft’s minuscule smartphone presence and late, ill-received move into the tablet market is, as Evans puts it, a failure:
Steve Ballmer’s ‘failure’ illustrated in a single chart
Updated Dec 19th, 2018 8:42PM EST
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Zach Epstein has been the Executive Editor at BGR for more than 15 years. He manages BGR’s editorial team and ensures that best practices are adhered to. He also oversees the Ecommerce team and directs the daily flow of all content. Zach first joined BGR in 2007 as a Staff Writer covering business, technology, and entertainment.
His work has been quoted by countless top news organizations, and he was recently named one of the world's top 10 “power mobile influencers” by Forbes. Prior to BGR, Zach worked as an executive in marketing and business development with two private telcos.
