Ballmer rapped over the knuckles for KIN, tablet failure (and that’s a good thing)

Many have claimed that employees at Microsoft lacked accountability for underperformance, noting a culture of under-delivery and delay.

It seems on this occasion at least more than the rank and file employees have been punished for what is in the end a failure by management to run a project properly.

Steve Ballmer has been denied the maximum bonus (twice his base salary of $670,000) he was eligible for, despite the company’s great performance in its traditional markets (with record sales of $62.5 billion), with an SEC filing blaming the “unsuccessful launch of the Kin phone, loss of market share in the company’s mobile phone business, and the need for the company to pursue innovations to take advantage of new form factors.”

While the company clearly did not suffer any significant financial injury due to these failures, the share price of the Microsoft has been stagnant or dropping due to lack of confidence by the market in the company’s ability to compete in the future, related specifically to the smartphone and tablet market.

While Steve Ballmer has suffered a cut in his annual salary from  $2.010 million to to $1.340 million, with an estimated fortune of $10 billion it is obviously no more than symbolic.  Hopefully however it is a further indication that the Microsoft board is putting even greater emphasis on the company innovating, delivering and competing even faster, rather that always arriving to the market 2 years after everyone else.

Read the full Reuters report at news.yahoo.com here.