Ballmer will be gone from Microsoft very soon. So I actually wouldn't attribute that much significance to what he says.

The only time M/S has been a leader was way back in the dim and distant past when they made the 1st Windows O/S for Apple used in the late 1970's. From then on they have just reversed engineered other peoples ideas and improved on existing business and design models. This has paid off for them. Now they are look like they want/are to drop their 2 main hardware partners the x86 chips and jump on the ARM type of design chips who they together with Intel tried to kill off in the late 1980,s. This was a marketing ploy then now when it has been found to have failed, the same person who engineered this then is now embracing the chip design which he fried to kill off then.