Who Is Next Inline For Microsoft’s Top Job?

Microsoft set to announce new CEO early 2014

After Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced his plan to step down from the top job a couple of months ago speculation has been ripe about who would take over the top job. Many names have been names been been tossed up in the air with two of those being Ford CEO Alan Mulally and Microsoft’s VP of cloud-and-enterprise group Satya Nadella. However Mulally has since indicated that he plans to stay on at Ford and remain in Detroit. Whoever the new CEO turns out to be (Microsoft plans to announce who gets the top job in the early stages of 2014) they will have their hands full.

The new CEO will have to steer the ship into a new age, with tablets and smart phones being more prominent these day than the trusty old PC. Other issues to be dealt with at Microsoft will be what to do with Bing and also the Xbox. Although the Xbox is a a leading brand in a huge growth area, the way that the latest console was handled and the debacle and backlash that was felt by Microsoft when it was first released that the Xbox would need to be connected to the internet 24/7 and the issue with the console not being able to play second hand games. These issues have since been fixed since the launch of the new Xbox One, however the new CEO may look into handling the Xbox differently. Bing is also a hot topic within Microsoft, with last year the online service division were Bing resides losing $1.3 billion. This is a lot better then the year before that with the online services division losing $8.1 billion. However things don’t look to bad for Bing with Microsoft integrating Bing’s search technology into all it’s new devices, it’s just whether users will use Bing with more popular search engines like Google being users first choice for a search engine.

However the company is still in relatively good shape with it’s “bread and butter” of Windows and Office still paying the bills, it loooks more like the new CEO’s task will be one of streamlining a company that many have said is too big to compete with slicker and faster moving companies born out of the internet era. This could mean selling off Bing and Xbox and focusing again on their “bread and butter” business model. What do you think, should Microsoft’s new CEO shake things up a little or keep the ship sailing the same course? We’ll keep you updated with more information when it becomes available.

Thank you CNET for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of The Sydney Morning Herald.