Steve Ballmer Quotes

When I broke in, in 1957, it was wide open. Now you're up against strong competition.

I'm very analytical about the industry and I understand that there are value systems, and all sorts of things like that.

But they are also better, our competitors are better because Wal-Mart exists.

Today, the competition is considerably more intense.

The competition is pretty rough these days.

We recognize the need to adapt to a changing competitive environment.

I'm on the Business Roundtable, the CEOs of the largest 100-odd companies in the country. Most of these people wanted very much to be the CEO of a large public company but realize that it's not exactly what they had anticipated, for lots of reasons. One is competition has gotten a lot worse, and more global.

We fully expect our competitors to join us in embracing open standards with their next redesigns.

Sometimes your worst competitors are the ones which are dying because they do stupid things.

All competitors are fierce competitors; Vodafone is the world's second largest company. We fight it each day. Idea Cellular is big and successful, too. Competition is competition; we are used to it.

Competition is good because we need to educate customers, and Ozon.ru itself will not be able to do it.

In business, the competition will bite you if you keep running, if you stand still, they will swallow you.

My overall goal is to level the playing field for American businesses.

Every day, you get up, and the world is changing; your customers are expecting more from you. Your competitors are putting pressure on you by doing more and trying to beat you here and beat you there.

When a market isn't in transition, gaining market share is hard - you're fighting to take one or two points of share from competitors.

Almost every move in the market is either a move to align with where Cisco is going or to align to compete against us or to utilize that technology.

There's always competitors out there, one way or another.

Competing at full price is the way we like to do business, but we cannot ignore the promotional environment.

Many first-time founders fail to understand the difference between the potential of the Total Addressable Market (TAM) and the very finite subsection they can hope to capture. No company ever captures the entire market they pioneer. Innovation doesn't happen in a vacuum, and others will jump in from the moment you've identified the potential.

Strategic planning is not strategic thinking. Indeed, strategic planning often spoils strategic thinking, causing managers to confuse real vision with the manipulation of numbers.

You never quite know in business if what you are doing is the right or the wrong thing. Unfortunately, by the time you know the answer, someone has beaten you to it and you are out of business.

Business strategy is the battleplan for a better future.

Every company has room for the man who has a definite plan of action which is to the advantage of that company.

Every new change forces all the companies in an industry to adapt their strategies to that change.

When leaders of a professional team perform a scan, they examine the trends dominating their customer demographics, education, government policy, and especially their competition.