ballmer

Steve Ballmer, the former Microsoft CEO, is immersed in his new life as owner of the L.A Clippers, but he reflects on his tenure at the technology giant, and his relationship with his longtime friend, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, in a new interview with Bloomberg TV’s Emily Chang.

“We’ve kinda drifted apart. He’s got his life; I sorta have mine. Microsoft was the thing that really bound us,” Ballmer said.

Bill Gates bridge
Bill Gates at an online bridge tournament in Seattle this week. (Photo by GeekWire/Kevin Lisota)

But there’s more to it than that. During the interview, Ballmer talked in new detail about the differences between him, Gates and the Microsoft board in the latter stages of Ballmer’s tenure as chief executive.

“There was a fundamental disagreement about how important it was to be in the hardware business,” Ballmer said. “I had pushed Surface. The board had been a  little reluctant in supporting it. And then things came to a climax around what to do about the phone business.”

Ballmer continued, “It was definitely not a simple thing for either one of us. At the end of the day, probably two things: la little bit of a difference in opinion on the strategic direction of the company, which I think is a little bit of a challenge.

He added, “Number two, he and I always had what I would call a brotherly relationship in the good parts and the bad parts. I just think toward the end that was a bit more difficult than not, particularly with the strategic direction change and you know, the stock price isn’t going anywhere, so the rest of the board felt pressure — despite the fact that profits were going up — so I think you had kind of a combustible situation.”

In hindsight, Ballmer said he “would have moved into the hardware business faster and recognized 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.”

Satya Nadella speaks at Microsoft Ignite 2016 (Photo by GeekWire/Kevin Lisota)
Satya Nadella speaks at Microsoft Ignite 2016 (Photo by GeekWire/Kevin Lisota)

He also addressed the infamous comment in which he scoffed at the first iPhone’s high price and lack of a physical keyboard. “I wish I’d thought about the model of subsidizing phones through the operators,” he said. “You know, people like to point to this quote where I said iPhones will never sell, because the price at $600 or $700 was too high. And there was business model innovation by Apple to get it essentially built into the monthly cell phone bill.”

He added, “We should have been in the hardware business sooner in the phone case. We were still suffering some of the effects of our Vista release of Windows, which sucked up a huge amount of resources for a much longer period of time than it should have because we stumbled over it. When you have a lot of your best engineers in a sense being non-productive for a while, it really takes a toll.”

At the same time, Ballmer defended his work as CEO, referencing the significant growth in the company’s revenue during his tenure, and the push into cloud services with Bing, Office 365 and Azure.

Ballmer still has a major stake in the Redmond company, as its largest individual shareholder. “I see the stock price flying sky high, and all you can say is, the market certainly agrees with the direction Satya is taking the company, and I’m super-excited about that,” he said.

See video excerpts from the Bloomberg TV interview here, and watch Bloomberg Television at 9 a.m. Pacific Sunday for more from Ballmer on topics including the Clippers, and his philanthropic and government work.

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