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Ballmer Only Gets Half a Bonus Due to Mobile Challenges

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Microsoft has a lot of catching up to do in the mobile space and the company’s board of directors decided to give CEO Steve Ballmer a kick in the rear…sort of. The board gave Ballmer only half of his expected salary, cutting a check for just $670,000. The reason he didn’t get the entire $1.34 million? In Microsoft’s annual proxy filing, the board cited the KIN phone failure, WinMo’s sliding market share and not pursing innovations to take advantage of new form factors.

There’s no argument that Microsoft needs to buckle down when it comes to competing in the mobile ecosystem, but I don’t think witholding $670,000 from Ballmer is going to have any measurable effect in Redmond. That sum might get a lot of people’s attention, but it’s a blip on the radar to someone who’s worth over $10 billion. To put that in perspective, that’s like not paying for someone’s bagel and coffee that has $100,000 in the bank.

Ballmer’s big incentive is to increase the value of Microsoft’s shares as he owns nearly five percent of the company.

via Reuters

4 Comments

4 Comments

  1. gEEk

    10/01/2010 at 8:07 am

    According to Forbes, Ballmer’s net worth is $14 billion. I’m sure he has enough of that in secure assets that his lifestyle can’t materially diminish. Unless he is very greedy he’s probably motivated more by his competitiveness and pride than by money.

    This is an important public sign from the BoD that they view the mobile segment as important though. Hopefully that will translate into tablet devices once they get WM7 launched.

  2. GoodThings2Life

    10/01/2010 at 1:26 pm

    I’ve never been a very big fan of Ballmer’s leadership, but I think this is pretty telling considering it’s just a short time since it was effectively announced there would NOT be a Courier device. They need to be pushing these alternative platform devices immediately, not “soon”.

  3. Oliver

    10/02/2010 at 9:46 am

    Maybe instead of cutting his bonus they should have fired him?

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