Steve Ballmer’s ‘failure’ illustrated in a single chart

A picture is worth a thousand words and sometimes a chart is worth even more. Microsoft’s announcement late last week that Steve Ballmer would step down from his role as chief executive within the next year rocked the tech world, though it was hardly a real surprise. While Microsoft is still the largest software company on the planet, Ballmer has been widely criticized for the past few years due to Microsoft’s failure to address the exploding smartphone and tablet markets. While Microsoft’s future likely isn’t quite as bleak as some make it out to be, there is no question that its mobile efforts in recent years have failed — after three years, Windows Phone’s global market share is now just 3.7% and in the tablet space, Windows RT has hardly been well received. The following cart from mobile analyst Benedict Evans shows exactly why Microsoft’s minuscule smartphone presence and late, ill-received move into the tablet market is, as Evans puts it, a failure:

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This article was originally published on BGR.com