Steve Ballmer retires as CEO of Microsoft

After thirty three years of service to the technology giant, CEO Steve Ballmer announced on August 23, 2013 that he is retiring within a year.

In an article titled "Defenestrated" and published today by The Economist it is claimed that Ballmer "is a casualty of the personal computer's rapid decline". Although it is true that sales of personal computers have been falling at double-digit rates, and people seem to prefer Google Android and Apple mobile products instead of PC's, that is simply not a real reason for someone to decide to end his career, and to possibly even risk going into obscurity after having achieved numerous wins with a company the size of Microsoft. A process like this one must certainly be more elaborate than that.

Thinking about the possible motivations for him to reach the point of making such a decision, it is arguably something that was going to happen sooner or later. Some indications point directly to the fact that under his leadership the loss of market share by the company in some important sectors has been critical, and equally noticeable have been the missed opportunities to do substantially better in technologies such as mobile or search. Microsoft, nonetheless, has other areas of software that substantially make up for those losses.

The mobile and search areas could very well be some of the most critical issues at discussion in this story since Microsoft was just not able to catch up with the competition in this aspect. However, it is also