You know you _say_ that, but during that timespan their annual net income rose from $5B to $22B, and global revenue for the same timespan from $28B to $86B. Eighty-six billion dollars. Can you really call them an also-ran, or Ballmer an unqualified failure?

Yes, they missed the mobile boat and were late to IaaS/PaaS, but to dismiss them for nearly two decades is perhaps unfair.

IMO their biggest failure was losing their developer base. DevDiv really seems to have fallen asleep at the wheel - or to have been neutralized by the OS group.

[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global...

Innovation is a different skillset from maximizing profits of an existing product portfolio. Ballmer was pretty good at the latter and sucked at the former. With the exception of Azure (which was a little late to the party), the business lines that Ballmer milked were all initially developed under Gates.

The biggest years of profitability for most tech companies come after their innovation heyday (when they've already established their market position and no longer reinvest large amounts of cash into new product development), but without continued innovation a tech business eventually fades away into irrelevance.

Credit to Ballmer as well - Nadella took over and pushed many products and changes that Ballmer had started, recognizing that they needed to change.

Not that I’m complaining - the surface line revitalized laptop and stylus tech for windows.