SAN FRANCISCO -- Microsoft on Tuesday said its executive search committee expects to pick CEO Steve Ballmer's successor by early next year, a decision that could determine two strikingly different paths for the software giant's future.
Microsoft's search committee said it has identified more than 100 possible candidates to fill the role. Board member John Thompson says the committee, which includes Chairman Bill Gates, has talked with "several dozen" and focused its energy on a group of "about 20 individuals" as candidates.
Facing a battered PC market, the company has been reported considered former Microsoft executives, current insiders as well as marquee business executives to map its next course in a new mobile frontier.
"We're moving ahead well, and I expect we'll complete our work in the early part of 2014," Thompson said on Microsoft's blog.
Ford Motor CEO Alan Mulally and Qualcomm's recently named CEO, Steve Mollenkopf, were at one point -- and no longer -- among the high-profile contenders reported in the running to replace CEO Steve Ballmer.
Yet in the four months since the search began following Microsoft's announcement in August that Ballmer would retire, two divergent company directions have emerged for the software giant's choice in leadership. The decisions, say analysts, amount to whether the company wants to bet on mobile and cloud services in a long-term vision versus cut costs to please Wall Street short term.
"Microsoft has two paths it can take: it can hire a product visionary or a professional manager," says Rocky Agrawal, analyst at reDesign mobile and a former Microsoft employee. "It seems from all the talk to date, Microsoft is headed in the direction of hiring a professional manager."
Others cautioned Microsoft may have become too much of a behemoth to change its stripes into that of a nimble player. "Microsoft is corporate in mind and body –- in danger of kidding itself like a late middle-aged man who buys a red Porsche to show he's a stud at heart but will still look fat behind the wheel," says Nigel Nicholson, a professor at the London School of Business.
A series of missteps over the past decade have revealed Microsoft lacking a trendsetting chief capable of big bets on the next computing revolution, a void some expected to be filled by its new CEO.
Ballmer may have blown it one too many times. The launch of Windows 8 was troubled. Ditto for its mobile versions. But Ballmer's latest foray into tablets, its Surface line, resulted in a $900 million write down and may have been the last straw for the embattled CEO.
"Ballmer's biggest failure is his lack of vision. He showed a lot of fear and derision of any new, emerging product categories," says Mark Rolston, chief creative officer at Frog Design. "That fear rubs on an organization."
Things also took a turn for the worse for Ballmer when activist investor Jeff Ubben took a stake in Microsoft in April and began exerting pressure on the company to change. Microsoft in August announced Ballmer would retire within a year.
He told The Wall Street Journal he couldn't change Microsoft quickly enough. ""Maybe I'm an emblem of an old era, and I have to move on," the 57-year-old Ballmer told the paper as his eyes reportedly welled up.
Or maybe the task of software soothsayer was too much for Ballmer. With the announcement of a search for his replacement, investors have bid up Microsoft's stock on the prospects for change. "The opportunity for a new CEO to implement strategic changes at Microsoft represents a decent portion of the >40% YTD return in the shares," says Morgan Stanley analyst Keith Weiss.
With Ballmer better known as a take-no-prisoners, hard-charging salesman, the company was widely expected to search for a leader to shore up his deficiency in predicting technology hits of the future.
To date, Microsoft has been reported considering at least two boomerang employees in the likes of Paul Maritz and Stephen Elop as well as current company insiders Tony Bates and Satya Nadella, among others.
But analyst and former Microsoft employee Agrawal says the software juggernaut needs someone more along the lines of Yammer's CEO and founder to right its direction. "(David) Sacks is still my top pick," Agrawal says. "I've spent some time with him. Having worked at Microsoft, I know they need someone like him."
Shares of Microsoft fell 0.9% to $36.54 in trading Tuesday.
