Satya Nadella at Microsoft’s annual shareholders meeting in Bellevue, Washington DC, on Thursday. — AP
Satya Nadella at Microsoft’s annual shareholders meeting in Bellevue, Washington DC, on Thursday. — AP
Since he took over at the head of Microsoft in 2014, replacing Steve Ballmer, Satya Nadella has shown himself to be a man of change, encouraging creativity and reactivity in all Microsoft's businesses.
Under his leadership, the company has begun innovating again, seeking out new challenges, including offering a multi-platform operating system, getting involved in virtual reality, and manufacturing its very first in-house laptop.
India-born Satya Nadella, 48, joined Microsoft in 1992. Before being appointed CEO, he was head of servers and cloud computing businesses aimed at companies.
Although he had years of experience at Microsoft and a good knowledge of most of its services, he had to deal with a vast job-cutting plan when he was appointed. While 2014 was a year of restructuring, 2015 has proven to be a year of innovation.
Windows 10 is at the centre of Microsoft's strategy Under the leadership of Satya Nadella, Microsoft made the news throughout the year. It started with all the announcements relating to Windows 10 through its launch on July 29. The operating system has undergone major changes and is now a multi-platform service, running on PCs, Xboxes, smartphones, tablets and even connected objects.
It includes a voice-activated assistant (Cortana), a new web browser (Edge) and for the first time, it offers facial recognition and a digital fingerprint sensor to enhance security. Microsoft continues to focus on the cloud, which is at the heart of the new Office 2016.
On the mobile front, the situation does not seem to have improved as handsets installed with the Microsoft mobile operating system accounted for only 1.7% of smartphones sales worldwide in the third quarter 2015, according to Gartner data.
It will be up to Satya Nadella to ensure that all these promising new developments reach the general public.
