As Tim Cook Prepares To Unveil iPhone 5, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Greeted By Yawns Amid ‘Painful’ Annual Meeting

Have the salad days of Microsoft passed? Insiders say CEO Steve Ballmer was greeted with yawns at a recent annual meeting replete with reportedly “painfully flat demos and lifeless speakers.” Ballmer, who once derided the Apple iPhone market share as a ’rounding error,’ is now on the defensive, adopting the mantra “Windows Cannot Lose.”

At a recent annual meeting held in Seattle, “droves” of people left while Ballmer spoke, according to one Microsoft blogger. “It was just too much to endure such painfully flat demos and lifeless speakers in their sleepy attempts to show excitement about our products and our future,” writes to the Mini-Microsoft site.

Microsoft’s Windows 8 has been both applauded by outsiders and blamed by company employees as alternately the savior and sole vision of Ballmer’s company.

Although we shouldn’t cry too many tears over Microsoft’s current slump, Apple has played a large role in eclipsing the house that Bill built. “Apple has been soaring with its excellent device results, blowing Microsoft away and cannibalizing our Windows powered device market,” the blog noted.

Other Microsoft staffers say employees are hanging around just long enough to finish their portion of Windows 8. Ballmer himself could be one of the employees exiting the company. Calls reportedly are underway to replace Ballmer with Steven Sinofsky, head of Microsoft’s Windows and Windows Live division.

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