Elop would be a HUGE improvement for Microsoft from a PR perspective. Balmer is good at what he does, but he comes off as being a beer drinking, football loving, trailer park American whenever he is seen in public. Elop is the opposite. He is a quiet class act who spent the last 3 years taking a failing company and turning it to at least a neutral ground on the path to profitability in an industry which is dominated by the likes of Samsung, Apple, and a growing number of Chinese vendors. That has been no small task at all.
But, the best thing that I like about Elop is that he has an understanding on pricing for the market. Microsoft products are typically not bad, but they are priced allong the lines of Apple products while not being Apple products. Elop understood that if the Lumia line was to take off then it needed quality products that have low overhead so that they could undercut the market. So we get Samsung priced devices that feel like they have a much better build quality, and have grown a reputation of being indestructible. I would like to see this philosophy come to Microsoft above all else. Xbox should be priced the same as the PS4 and focus on making their money on accessories and software sales. Surface RT should be practically given away to get a hardware base in place which is forced to purchase apps in the app store. Surface Pro devices can be a little more expensive, but they should not be consistently $1-200 above their competition. I think that if MS really wants to transition to a device and service company then they really need to focus on hitting these price targets rather than looking at it from a profit per sale perspective like they are use to. But this is something that the MS board will not stand for, so I am not sure that Elop will be able to fix this particular issue even if he is placed in the CEO seat.
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