Microsoft was like IBM after Bill Gates. Not a tech leader for many years until Microsoft pivot to Cloud computing and software as services.
Microsoft was still overwhelmingly a product company in the decade after Gates. It did not abandon its product-centric focus and switch to a service-centric business model ala IBM. IBM hasn't been a product heavy company in several decades at this point. Microsoft never stopped being product heavy.
IBM liquidated its core product businesses, one after another. Microsoft never did that.
Microsoft's sales increased dramatically during the Ballmer years, going from $23b in 2000 to $77b in 2013. IBM's sales haven't increased like that in decades (quite the opposite in fact, they've had a stagnant or contracting business for a long time).
The cloud boom that Microsoft is currently enjoying, was planted during the Ballmer era, and it's being very successfully harvested during the Nadella era.
Nadella is a superior CEO to Ballmer, and far superior at product. However Ballmer did not wreck the ship nor switch Microsoft to being primarily service focused in the model of IBM. IBM by contrast is a wrecked ship.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=ibm+pho...
https://www.canadianbusiness.com/the-last-days-of-target-can...
In France we've had to deal with LOUVOIS, the payroll software for all the armed branches, being an unending train wreck. There were quite a few families of deployed soldiers who had to deal with near-bankruptcy because of it.