Dear Mr. Ballmer,
As I was subjected to an advertisement for the Zune for the 23948239842348532904932745th time, the thought occurred to me that you may not be fully aware of the state of your company.
You are beating a dead horse (maybe more like a stillborn colt) with the Zune, and you are beating dead horses in every business you compete in.
You are fighting fierce battles, on several fronts, against savvy opponents. Apple in consumer devices. Oracle and SAP in business software. The open source movement in development software. Google and the freeware movement in desktop software. Google, TimeWarner, eBay, Yahoo, and News Corp. in internet properties. Sony and Nintendo in gaming platforms.
You are either losing, or your lead is precarious, in all of these battles. More importantly, you have already lost the battle in the hearts and minds of your potential customers, who see you as either pure evil, or even worse, just plain uncool.
As I see it, your company has two choices.
You can admit that your company is in a long, slow, irreversible decline, and that your stock is in reality a bank treasury, and you can use your cash war chest of $25 billion to fund a buyback and a significant dividend, in order to reward your shareholders.
Or, somehow, someway, for the first time in your company's history, Microsoft could start innovating.
And cease the beating of dead horses.
