Steve Ballmer has revealed that his fallout with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was exacerbated by his decision to push the company into the hardware business. Ballmer, who was CEO of Microsoft for 14 years, told Bloomberg Television his only regret was not doing it sooner.
Ballmer said he and Gates had drifted apart, partly due to a disagreement over whether Microsoft should make its own handsets and tablets. “It was definitely not a simple thing for either one of us,” he said. There was a “little bit of a difference in opinion on the strategic direction of the company.”
Ballmer said the mistake was getting into handsets and tablets too late. “I would have moved into the hardware business faster and recognised that what we had in the PC, where there was a separation of chips, systems and software, wasn’t largely gonna reproduce itself in the mobile world,” he added
