Did Steve Ballmer's Last Decision as CEO Cost Microsoft Billions?

Photo: Steve Ballmer

As recent events have indicated, Steve Ballmer is ruthless in his business endeavours - let's not forget his acquisition of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team. The former CEO of Microsoft, Ballmer even effectively banned the usage of iPads from the NBA team.

His loyalty to Microsoft may cost the company, however, as the tech giant may now lose billions of dollars in revenue. Ballmer’s last executive decision as CEO of Microsoft was to acquire Nokia’s handset division, which cost Microsoft $7.2 billion.

Ballmer expected this endeavor to take off, however, the idea backfired, and now may be detrimental to Microsoft’s sales.

As BGR notes, a number of analysts told The New York Times that they predicted there would be a write-down of the value of the Nokia handset division. This write-down could cost the company billions of dollars.

In addition to these astronomical losses, Microsoft is also scheduled to conduct a massive amount of layoffs, specifically within the corporation’s hardware division and the phone business.

Microsoft’s current CEO, Satya Nadella, stated that the company will now begin to focus on a broader “ecosystem” of products. Nadella claims to not have supported the Nokia deal from its birth, despite having endorsed it upon becoming CEO.

Now, Nadella has some new ideas in mind in order to revitalize Microsoft’s business model – ones that do not focus so much on the smartphone.

“I am committed to our first party devices, including phones,” said Nadella in am email to Microsoft employees. “However, we need to focus our phone efforts in the near term while driving reinvention.”

It is evident that Microsoft needs to revamp their business strategy, however only time will tell what their next step will be.