MICROSOFT has been at the forefront of innovation in music downloading, internet chat, internet-based e-mail, internet searching and e-commerce for the past decade. Not that you’d notice.

The company has failed to capitalise on that innovation with a viable sales and marketing strategy. Now it is trying to play catch-up with rivals such as Google, Yahoo! and Apple.

Those companies are mere tiddlers in comparison with the great Windows behemoth, but they perform far much better for investors and have a far better image among the technology-using public — which, increasingly, means all of us.

Microsoft currently lacks the vision to come up with the next big thing, the type of vision that has ensured success for Google and Apple among others. Yet its chief concern, one that will remain after Bill Gates’s departure, is its seeming inability to get the new products and services it invents to market with a reliable sales strategy.

When a man such as Mr Gates says that he is going to step down, you would expect at least someone on Wall Street to sit up and take notice, but shares of Microsoft have hardly budged in the past 24 hours. They are still floating lifelessly where they have been for the past five years.

The chief reason for such inertia is Microsoft’s transition strategy. Mr Gates stood aside as chief executive a couple of years ago and will relinquish the reins almost completely in another couple. In the meantime, it’s business as usual.

So no shocks there — but Microsoft’s share price needs a shock to get it off the floor. A closer analysis of the trading in Microsoft shares on Thursday shows what the market really wants. About an hour or so before Mr Gates announced his move, a rumour that Steve Ballmer, the Microsoft chief executive, was about to resign flashed across trading desks. The share price spiked up. Then the real news came out and, with a great sigh, the wind left Microsoft’s sails and the price went down again.

In the past Microsoft has relied upon getting PC manufacturers to sell its Windows software for it to customers with no choice but to buy it. With Office it sold bulk licences to big corporations looking for a good deal. These were fine sales strategies, which Mr Ballmer spearheaded, but the world has moved on.

In the post-Bill Gates era it seems as if it is up to Mr Ballmer again. If he doesn’t do something quickly, it is likely Wall Street will begin asking him for his transition strategy, too.

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