Microsoft’s big problem is an obsession with Windows. So say a raft of insiders and former Microsoft employees who’ve been spilling the beans to Fortune and bashing Steve Ballmer while they’re at it.

In a wide-ranging analysis of how most of Microsoft lost its way (Xbox group, we’re letting you off for that and the Kinect), Ballmer gets a battering, and the company’s continued focus on Windows is highlighted as its biggest problem. Microsoft insiders told Fortune that if you threw Microsoft onto the analyst’s couch you’d find it’s stuck in an unhealthy co-dependent relationship with Windows…

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James Whittaker, a former senior Microsoftie who jumped ship for Google in 2009, told Fortune: “All their internal machinery is pointed towards Windows. Windows always has to be first and the web is second. So the entire company is pointed at a platform becoming increasingly irrelevant.” The Microsoft alumni and current insiders say projects are scuppered if they’re not Windows-centric. Developers continue to write applications for Windows then think about making them works on Windows Phone 7 or tablets.

While plenty of the Microsoft insiders who spoke to Fortune were down on Steve Ballmer (one says: “There’s this sense that under his direction, the company has really lost its way.”), the piece also concludes that there aren’t really any brilliant internal candidates who could take his place.

Let’s play fantasy Microsoft CEO. If you stepped into Ballmer’s big shoes right now, how would you change Microsoft?

Out now | £NA | Microsoft (via Fortune)

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  • Siley

    Microsoft’s Ballmer and Nokia’s CEO Elop are two of the most inept CEOs there ever were.

    Ballmer has destroyed may mobile platforms, including PlaysForSure, Sidekick, Windows Mobile, Zune, Kin, Windows Phone 7.

    Ballmer’s next crazy move is so stuff Microsoft’s next desktop OS, Windows 8, into small ARM-processor devices, including tablets and phones. The plan will fail, just like all the others.

  • http://twitter.com/borax99 Alain Chappaz

    I like Windows XP, and I think Windows 7 was a very nice (if desperate) rescue operation. That said, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that MS has managed to botch one of the most promising technology leads in recent memory. If they keep going, they will be the Xerox of 21st-century desktop computing ! Just as Xerox had a significant lead with WIMP software (windows-icon-mouse-program, youngsters), MS had a kick-ass lead in pen-oriented computing after Apple took its marbles and went home for a few years (Newton vs Tablet PC). Somehow it all got dribbled away, and look where we are now, MS’s lunch is being absolutely devoured by all these other platforms. Survival of the fittest. I believe Mr. Gates himself in his earlier years was quite merciless when it came to taking over someone else’s space. Or am I just imagining the name “Gary Kildall?”

    Oh, btw and for the record, Microsoft, making boxy nice-coloured “window panes” doesn’t cut it when it comes to redesigning a UX.

  • http://www.edmartechguide.com EdmarTech

    Windows gave them the money they have today. So getting obsessed with it is quite understandable. They’re just protecting their investment.

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