- Lead Microsoft (MSFT +7.7%) board member John Thompson, during an interview with ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley: "We've had a [CEO succession] process underway for quite some time ... We are well down the path in the search, and hopefully in some reasonable amount of time we'll have a new leader."
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Foley also managed to interview Steve Ballmer, who says he began talking with potential replacement CEOs 3-4 years ago. Ballmer also insists Bill Gates didn't play a role in his retirement decision.
- Ballmer and Thompson both assert Microsoft will stay committed to its consumer ops, even though enterprise sales are now responsible for the vast majority of its profits, and that the "consumerization of IT" makes the two areas increasingly joined at the hip. Ballmer: " If you're going to be in e-mail, you're going to be in e-mail. You can't say, okay, I only want to be in enterprise e-mail."
- Meanwhile, Time has put together a YouTube collection of Ballmer's "greatest hits." Among them is an '07 interview in which he stated "there's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share."
- More on Microsoft