Its big new product is way overdue. And Linux is challenging Windows" desktop dominance. What will it take to get the software titan moving again?
When a company"s revenues grow 17%, as Microsoft"s did in the past quarter, it might seem a little churlish to suggest its glory days are over. Its chairman, Bill Gates, even reclaimed his title as the world"s richest man, after a widely published story claiming that the founder of Ikea had replaced him turned out to be so many Swedish meatballs. And Gates" baby, based in Redmond, Wash., is still by far the largest software maker in the world, with a healthy $56 billion in the bank and revenue conservatively expected to rise 5% next year, to about $38 billion. It has buried the hatchet with Sun Microsystems and AOL with billions of dollars in legal settlements. What could possibly be wrong with Microsoft?