Microsoft’s new boss must fight to turn the tech giant around. Here’s why
While many commentators are excited by the appointment of Satya Nadella as Microsoft CEO – he's from the company's freshest and most forward looking division – the new chief will have his work cut out for him.
Ishaq Siddiqi, market strategist at ETX Capital, suggests that while the candidate has a strong track record from leading the cloud and entreprise business, he'll need to do more to see the company survive.
Nadella will now need "to get ahead of the curve by tuning the company’s strategy toward innovation in consumer technology rather than reliance on current products", says Siddiqi.
Microsoft established its dominance on desktop. Now sales of that platform are declining, and the action is in tablets and mobile. Despite the recent acquisition of Nokia's handset business, the tech monolith still lags its rivals.
Siddiqi says that "Xbox sales have been the bright spot, together with Skype but that’s not enough for shareholders who need reassurance over Microsoft’s product pipeline in consumer technology."
In some areas, it's probably best that Microsoft accepts defeats. Nowhere is that more true than in the battle for search.
"In online services, search engine Bing remains unpopular versus Google – It’s difficult to see how Microsoft’s Bing search engine could ever pose a serious enough threat to Google’s search engine."