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Ballmer: Microsoft needs better sales pitch

Posted by bstadil on · 2 comments
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Hard to fathom this is Balmer's true belief. "Quote" Microsoft needs to do a better job of convincing customers that the latest versions of its products are worth having, CEO Steve Ballmer said in a companywide e-mail on Tuesday. Ballmer said that one way to make Microsoft products more useful is to offer more tailored versions of its main products. The company has already expanded the number of versions of Office and is also working to offer more specialized versions of Windows Server, such as a forthcoming version for high-end computing."unquote"

In the memo, Ballmer also addressed employee morale, competition with Linux and the long road to Longhorn, the next version of Windows that's now due in 2006.

"We have a lot of hard work yet to do on Longhorn to deliver the right capability," Ballmer wrote in the e-mail, noting that the company has pushed back Longhorn and moved forward other products "so we can take the time to get it right."

"Longhorn is a significant step forward, and between now and then we have Tablet, digital media, security innovations in Windows XP SP2, and new Office capabilities to amaze customers," Ballmer wrote.

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Comments (2)

chris ·
"With Windows Server 2003, we can compete for every commercial workload running on Linux or Unix today--even mainframes and high-performance computing--at lower cost, more efficiently and more reliably," he wrote.

This needs no comment.
number6x ·
To understand why Ballmer says this, you have to learn to emulate his thoughts. It is very slimy, but I have trained myself to emulate this way of thinking.

I'll guide you through his reasoning:

  • "we can compete for every commercial workload running on... Linux "

    Do any Linux distributors earn 83% profit every year? No, so Microsoft wins that competition.

  • "we can compete for every commercial workload running on... Unix "

    Do any Unix distributors earn 83% profit every year? No, so Microsoft wins that competition.

  • "we can compete for every commercial workload running on... mainframes "

    Does IBM earn 83% profit every year? No, so Microsoft wins that competition.

    You see you thought he meant Microsoft's products were low cost, efficient and reliable for Microsoft's customer's to use. But he meant that Microsoft's profit making machine was low cost, efficient, and reliable when compared to the competitors. They consistently make high profits at their customer's expense.

    You and I see customers paying way too much for an unreliable, inefficient, high-cost product. All Ballmer sees is profit as a 'win'.

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