1
Shares surge as Ballmer quits Microsoft (Rory Carroll in The Guardian)
Microsoft has stepped into a new and uncertain era with the
announcement that CEO Steve Ballmer will
retire within 12 months, triggering a search for a successor to take over the
software behemoth. The announcement surprised analysts and investors and sent
shares surging, reflecting belief that the company will benefit from new
leadership as it tries to innovate and chase the market for smartphones and
tablets. "There is never a perfect time for this type of transition, but
now is the right time," Ballmer said.
Ballmer, 57, who succeeded Bill
Gates as CEO in 2000, will stay on until a successor is found. Gates, who is
now chairman of the board, will be part of a small committee tasked with
finding the successor. It will be chaired by John Thompson, the board's lead
independent director, and consider internal and external candidates.
Ballmer's departure will likely
draw a line under Microsoft's origins and traditional tenure. He first met
Gates in 1973 when they shared a dormitory hall at Harvard university. He
joined the company in 1980 – the company's 30th employee – after it landed a
contract to supply an operating system to IBM and swiftly rose up the ranks. Under
Ballmer the company developed successful products like WindowsXP and the Xbox
360. It grew to be worth $78bn and employ more than 100,000 people. It has more
than a billion users and remains immensely profitable.
Over
the past decade, however, its share price stagnated in contrast to the
meteor-like performance of Apple, Google and Amazon. Once the world's most
valuable company, Microsoft hemorrhaged more than half of its market value. Critics
accused Ballmer of failing to anticipate the explosive growth in tablets and
smartphones and the decline of personal computers.
2 India’s urge to create more states (Neeta Lal in
Khaleej Times) Creating smaller
Indian states could be an invitation to anarchy. If the US can prosper with 50 states, why can’t India with just 29?” a
veteran Congressman riposted as we jaw-jawed over the pros and cons of India
being disaggregated into smaller states. The UPA government’s recent decision
to create the country’s 29th state — Telangana — out of the southern state of
Andhra Pradesh, has unleashed a political storm. Just days after the
announcement, regional ethnic and religious groups have upped their ante to ask
for separation from their parent states.
India
last redrew its internal boundaries in 2000, with the creation of three new
states in the northern half of the country. But the moot point is: do smaller
states work better in a pluralistic and heterogeneous country like India? If
yes, then how should the states be carved up and administered? After all, India
has five states with individual populations larger than Europe’s biggest
nation, Germany. Even the country’s 16th largest state – Haryana -- has more people
than the whole of Australia!
Besides,
many of India’s 35 states and union territories are at demographic extremes.
They are either monsters like UP and Maharashtra (their combined population of
320m is greater than that of the US), or minnows with barely one million
people. Being a small state alone doesn’t guarantee good governance, economic
performance and welfare of individuals. A basic research on various development
parameters of the three states that were created in 2000 proves that small is
not always splendid.
Nobody
objects if the states are bifurcated on a scientific basis. But dividing them
purely to accrue electoral gains is an invitation to chaos. The lust for
political power seems to be eclipsing constitutional propriety. India’s unity
may not be under immediate threat, but more and more states being disaggregated
can rupture the national fabric. Eight Indian states are already under
militarily governance. Long story short, division of India is the antithesis to
any sensible reconstruction of constitutional federalism.
3 Why Nokia may
leave India (R Jai Krishna & Sven Grundberg in The Wall Street Journal) According to a report in the Indian
Express newspaper, the Finnish handset maker has said that India has become
“the least favorable market” and it would rather exit and export its handsets
from China. Nokia couldn’t confirm the
contents of a letter apparently submitted to the government and cited by the
report, but Nokia spokesman Brett Young said the company has been in
discussions with the Indian government and the state government over ways to
bring “greater clarity to the business environment in India.”
The report comes after the company ran
into tax issues in India. In late May, Nokia lost an appeal against an order
for 20.8 billion ($323.4 million) in retrospective taxes on software the Indian
unit supplied to its parent firm. The company contends it has not received a
tax refund it was promised as part of a pact with the southern Indian state of
Tamil Nadu. The Helsinki-based company cited “political risk” of operating in
the country that could impact its future investment decisions, the
newspaper reported, citing a letter written by the company to India’s trade ministry
in June.
Nokia has a facility to make handsets
near Chennai, in Tamil Nadu, where the company said it has invested $285
million in manufacturing operations. Nokia
was dethroned as the number ne handset maker by revenue in India last
fiscal year after a decade by South Korea’s Samsung Electronics
Co. according trade publication Voice & Data. Nokia’s revenue
from India also dropped 18% to 97.80 billion ($ 1.52 billion) in the year that
ended March 31.
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