Bill Gates announced Sunday that he is thinking of leaving his seat as chairman of the board of Microsoft.
Gates, 58, co-founded Microsoft Corp. in 1975 with Paul Allen. He is the first chief executive officer of the world's largest software company. In 2000, he stepped down from his chair and was replaced by Steve Ballmer. Even so, he remained as the chairman of the board of the company.
In August 2013, Ballmer announced his retirement plan and gave the company a year to find his replacement. As the board reportedly prepares to give the CEO seat to Satya Nadella, chief of Microsoft's cloud and enterprise, it is also contemplating on replacing Gates as the chairman of the board.
Surprisingly, Gates, too, thinks of giving up his title as the chairman of the Microsoft board, according to sources of Bloomberg News.
Even as he departs from his seat, he will still remain as a director at the company and will be involved in the company's product development, especially when it comes to developing must-have merchandises, but not with running the company. He will be working at the office at least once a week.
"Bill's product reviews were legendary, and Microsoft's products would benefit from his input," said former Microsoft executive Todd Warren to Bloomberg. "My concern would be that the tech landscape has shifted away from the PC in recent years."
The company's tech landscape was originally for personal computing. However, the company is slowly drifting away from that and closer to mobile and devices.
It is uncertain though if Gates' decision was influenced by the investors wanting him out of the board. These investors, who hold five percent of the company share, believe that he is preventing the company from adopting new strategies and may limit the new chief executive to making significant changes.
