Tagged : CES 2011

in Microsoft, Strategy

CES 2011">Why Steve Ballmer Should Not Be Opening CES 2011

Steve Ballmer Demos HP Slate

Steve Ballmer demos HP Slate dur­ing CES 2010 Keynote

Nick Eaton’s Microsoft blog for the Seat­tle PI announced yes­ter­day that Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer would once again be giv­ing the open­ing keynote at the Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics Show in Las Vegas on Jan­u­ary 5th 2011. In my opin­ion hav­ing Steve open CES is a strate­gic error on the part of the company.

Microsoft has a per­cep­tion prob­lem; It is viewed as a con­sumer com­pany when at its heart it is really an enter­prise plat­forms com­pany. For over ten years that mis­taken assump­tion has depressed the stock price, caused the com­pany to set expec­ta­tions that his has failed to deliver on and has mas­sively under­val­ued the assets of the company.

The sad thing about this “Cri­sis in Per­cep­tion” is that its largely of the company’s own mak­ing. Microsoft’s global brand mar­ket­ing and PR engines con­tinue to pro­mote the false view of Microsoft as a con­sumer com­pany. Lifestyle com­mer­cials like the “I’m a PC” cam­paign would be per­fect com­ing from a Coca Cola or Nike. Com­ing from Microsoft they very dan­ger­ously rein­force a mis­taken impres­sion of what Microsoft is. Steve Ballmer stand­ing on stage at the ‘Con­sumer’ Elec­tron­ics Show does exactly the same.

You would have thought the com­pany would have learned their les­son from the PR mess which fol­lowed Steve show­cas­ing HP’s slate com­puter dur­ing last year’s CES keynote. You need no other evi­dence to under­stand just how much Microsoft is not a con­sumer com­pany. Steve was set up to use the HP slate as a counter to Apple’s expected launch of the iPad. Within six months the HP Slate was can­celed, HP was buy­ing Palms assets and the iPad became the fastest sell­ing con­sumer device in his­tory. Where did that leave Microsoft; look­ing ridicu­lous, even less clear about its counter strat­egy to Apple and still depen­dent on part­ners who can and will change their loy­al­ties at the drop of a hat.

There’s only one sce­nario under which I would have Steve get up on stage at CES in 2011: If Microsoft is going to unveil a branded, clearly class lead­ing com­put­ing device in which they con­trol the com­plete end-to-end con­sumer expe­ri­ence. If that is not what the com­pany is ready to talk about then any­thing else is likely to be putting just one more nail in the coffin.