Steve Ballmer steps down from Microsoft board to focus on Clippers, civic duty

It’s over. Steve Ballmer has stepped down from his position on the Microsoft board. You may have thought it was all over when he stepped down as CEO, but now it’s properly over. In a letter addressed to Satya Nadella, the man who replaced him as CEO, Ballmer explains that his commitments to the LA Clippers — which he recently took ownership of — and his civic contributions mean that he no longer has time to be an active part of the Redmond-based company’s board.

While there had been rumours that Ballmer would likely step down from the board soon after his retirement, the former Microsoft CEO says that he actually hadn’t really thought about what he would do until a couple of days before his retirement.

“In the six months since leaving,” he says, “I have become very busy. I see a combination of the Clippers, civic contribution, teaching and study taking a lot of time”.

He also still seems to believe that Microsoft is heading in the right direction: “I have confidence in our approach of mobile-first, cloud-first, and in our primary innovation emphasis on platforms and productivity and the building of capability in devices and services as core business drivers”.

He does however believe that the company “will need to be bold and make big bets to succeed in this new environment”, including “moving to monetisation through enterprise subscriptions, hardware gross margins, and advertising revenues”.

Ballmer will remain a major shareholder and should still be able to wield a fair amount of influence from that position.