From January through December, the software company pumped out a wave of new offerings, from the early success of Kinect to the flaming failure of Kin.
Yet, for all the activity, Microsoft's stock has done little over the same period. Microsoft started the year at $30.48 a share but closed at $28.01 Tuesday -- down 8.1 percent.
Top leaders also exited the company: Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, Entertainment and Devices division President Robbie Bach and Business division President Stephen Elop.
As the economy continued its snail's-pace recovery, these were the bigger product launches of the year.
As Chief Executive Steve Ballmer first said at a University of Washington speech in March, "We're all in" the cloud, a platform where software and data are stored in remote Microsoft data centers instead of corporate servers and are accessed with Internet-connected devices, such as laptops, mobile phones, tablets and televisions. Cloud computing is a bet-the-company move for Microsoft. In the next 10 years, the company believes delivering software via the cloud could make up half of the company's revenue.
The progress has been slow, however. Success of Azure depends on how many developers build software for it. It now has 20,000 customers. The company, meanwhile, continues to release new features and products for the cloud. In July, Microsoft announced plans to sell an Azure appliance that would reside on a corporate campus rather than in a data center run by Microsoft. The product is aimed at companies that don't trust their business data to an outside company.
AP - Stock indexes were mixed Friday in quiet New Year's Eve trading.
AP - World stocks traded in narrow ranges Friday in thin trading, with Chinese stocks powering ahead strongly but still ending the year with one of the worst annual declines among major markets.
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