Recent pictures of Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, showed a seemingly very worried man.  However, you have to ask yourself, why is a man worth ~13 Billion dollars worried?  I have a clue – he’s at the helm of Microsoft, a dying breed.

Why a dying breed???  Because Microsoft, the once household name for anything computer related has lost its luster.  They have been slow to several booming markets: mobile, search, media, gaming, and tablets.  Even the market it once ruled, Web Browsing, has been taken over by others.

Microsoft employs over 90,000 people.  Although, they were the first to move on Courier tablets, Hailstorm/Passport (digital identity), and the windows media center, they either failed to bring these objects forward or just didn’t execute.

• Microsoft has had the idea of the Windows Phone 7 on the design board for some time, but the subpar Windows Mobile platform has been holding it back until recently.
• The Media platform Zune was dead on arrival.
• Bing has been growing but that is attributed to its business partner, Yahoo.
• Microsoft has a social network platform – Windows Live.  However, it pails in comparison to   Facebook.

6 months after the iPad, Microsoft still has no competitor on the market.  Outside consulting confirmed that the Microsoft OS is designed to have a mouse and keyboard, therefore, Windows 7 on a tablet is not hitting your local store anytime soon.

The Xbox was a grand step, and had it not been for the Nintendo Wii and the infamous “Red Death Ring”, it would have done much better.

But Microsoft now has the Kinect, the controller-less interactive game which is already sold out on Amazon and Best Buy.  Windows 7, the fastest selling OS in history, new Windows phone reviews are very positive, and  Internet Explorer 9 promises to introduce some new features.

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