Like a lot of business people, he did a great job of converting reputation into cold hard cash. The issue is that at some point bad reputation comes back to bite, Nadella has basically had to reinvent the company to get it back to a fraction of its former glory. Nobody lines up at night waiting to buy the latest version of Windows or Office anymore.
Why would they line up for them, though? The only time I can remember that was for Windows XP. Most companies use O365, which keeps the office desktop clients up to date, and when people buy a laptop it has Windows 10 on it.
The hype around the release of Windows 95 was really something. It was broadcast TV news segment worthy, back when the 6pm news was the news. Even new iPhone models get less hype than that. It’s hard to see Microsoft returning to those days. Windows is now just a platform for them to push enterprise software.
Microsoft cites expensive cloud integration in their quarterly reports as the reason for increasing profits. Almost $7 billion in revenue last quarter.
