http://www.economist.com/news/business/21577371-windows-8-only-beginning-microsofts-problems-microsoft-blues
What does Microsoft’s U-turn mean? Is it a sensible manoeuvre or a humiliation? The Financial Times described it as “one of the most prominent admissions of failure for a new mass-market consumer product since Coca-Cola’s New Coke fiasco nearly 30 years ago.” Various analysts speculated that this is the beginning of the end for Mr Ballmer, who has been running the company since Bill Gates stepped aside in 2000. Others argue that the whole thing is overblown. Microsoft is simply doing something that is routine in the computer business—fixing glitches in an enormously complicated operating system and then launching a better product. The reality is more nuanced: Microsoft’s problems are smaller in the short run than its critics imagine, but bigger in the long run.
