Poor Windows Phone 7 Performance Costs Ballmer Bigger Bonus
Poor Windows Phone 7 Performance Costs Ballmer Bigger Bonus
Posted 10/04/2011 at 10:17am
| by Paul Lilly
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As outlined in Microsoft's 2011 Proxy Statement, company CEO Steve Ballmer will collect $682,500 in bonus pay, the same as his annual salary and equal to half of the maximum bonus pay he could have received. A variety of factors played a role in Ballmer not receiving the full bonus amount, including lower than expected sales of Windows Phone 7, a 2 percent dip in Windows and Windows Live Division, and the need for further progress in new form factors.
Despite the need for improvement, the tone was mostly positive. Microsoft's board praised Ballmer for his overall performance, pointing out "successful product launches including Kinect for Xbox and Office 365, enhancements to Windows Azure and Bing, continued progress positioning the company as a leader in the cloud and cloud-based infrastructure, key partnerships with Facebook and Nokia, and significant progress in development of the next generation of Windows."
This is the second year in a row Ballmer left a large portion of potential bonus pay on the table, with mobile performance a recurring theme. This time around it was Windows Phone 7, and last year he was criticized for the short lived Kin phone.
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avenger48
October 04, 2011 at 6:18pm
Yeah, he and his $14.5 Billion are really hurting from not having that extra $682K
Deviate
October 04, 2011 at 10:56am
Oh no! Steve is broke! He'll be living on the F'ing streets!
Who cares. He's a horrible CEO.
Gates needs to return and bring back the no-BS management style and realistic directive. None of this flavor of the month decision making that goes on now.
Neufeldt2002
October 04, 2011 at 10:45am
In my mind, consumers have said that they really don't like the Windows Phone 7 GUI, otherwise it would be selling better. Which still baffles me on why Microsoft thinks it is such a good idea for Windows. Yes, there are those that love the interface, but not as many that hate it.
nadako
October 04, 2011 at 11:02am
Their has been a study that most untech savy people will buy anything the tech savy person tells them. This also includes phones. Remember the android smart phone was dead last until the droid was launched for verizon.
avenger48
October 04, 2011 at 12:56pm
I also seem to remember that Android only had 2 handsets in the U.S before the original Droid, and both of them were for T-Mobile, who is always the third or fourth largest carrier. Not exactly a strong selection.
Windows Phone 7 has strong handsets on every carrier, priced similarly to equivalently featured Android handsets, yet they are still last. That's a problem.
JCGPZ9
October 04, 2011 at 2:05pm
Not really, there's a lack of WP7 handsets on Verizon. Every time I walk into a store to look at the pitiful Trophy the internet function doesn't work or the phone itself is neglected and doesn't power on.
There are quite a few buying WP7 phones, the problem is that most of the consumers are set on Apple products and the notion that anything from MS is bad, regardless of how good the hardware is or how well it functions (which it does very well, even on low end configs).
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