Steve Ballmer's Microsoft
<i>"Microsoft's execution in mobile has been excellent".</i><p>This could not be farther from reality. Microsoft has consistently lost money in the mobile market, to a point they are ashamed of it, and don't even give sale figures for the Windows Phone OS anymore. Profits from this business unit is reported in the "Entertainment and Devices" unit, which has turned a loss this quarter, again, of $229M.<p>The only argument the author makes for claiming Microsoft's execution has been excellent is that <i>"Windows Phone 7 is really good"</i>. Well, guess what? It may or may not be true that Windows Phone 7 is good, but it takes a whole lot more than a good OS to make a profit. You need to establish a community of developers who will write apps for your platform, you need to create an easy-to-use market place for end-users, you need to talk to phone manufacturers to make plenty of phones running your OS, you need to make deals with carriers to sell your phones, etc.<p>Microsoft has failed at most of this, hence their financial losses. Microsoft's execution in the mobile market is, so far, a failure, and Ballmer is partly responsible.