When Steve (Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft) speaks, Wall Streets listens. Yesterday in the MicroSoft analyst day Steve tried to put a more realistic picture on the Vista sales. Basically he says that the Vista sales won’t be as good as analysts thought. With his words the stock MSFT lost 2.4% today.
When did Steve start soft spoken? I remember years ago, I attended a Microsoft technical presentation by Steve. I can see the energy and passion from his talk. He even put up his email address steve at microsoft dot com for the audience who are not satisfied with Microsoft’s customer serivce. We all know the mail probablly won’t get to his desk. But Steve is the Sales person and provides energy for the Microsoft, just like Bill Gates is the heart and soul of Mr. Softee. I also remember when I visited Microsoft campus in Redmond, only Bill and Steve got designated parking spots (side by side).
Now with Bill announced the retirement in two years, and Steve started soft spoken, the software world has really become soft.