Steve Ballmer
Current CEO of Microsoft, Ballmer has been at the forefront of their recent product development. The launch of Windows 8 in the latter part of last year marked a dramatic shift in Microsoft’s strategy, and 2013 is the time when they’ll have to prove that they’re still at the top of the industry after recent competition from Apple and Google.
Their Surface tablet will sink or swim. Windows Phone 8 will attempt to expand its currently modest market-share. Xbox will likely reveal a successor to the 360. Windows 8 itself will attempt to emulate the ubiquity of its predecessors.
Ballmer has a lot to prove, and this year is key. With a bevy of gambles last year in the touchscreen space that have yet to pay off fully, 2013 could be the year of Microsoft.
Marissa Mayer
Despite still attracting hundreds of millions of visitors, Yahoo! has faced various trials recently. The omnipresent Google did much to gobble up its market share, and its public image is a shadow of what it once was, but it’s looking to be revitalised over the course of 2013.
‘If you can’t beat them, employ their staff’ seems to have been their motto with their latest big change. Marissa Mayer is a former Google executive, and quickly made waves when she became president and CEO of the Yahoo! corporation in late 2012. Amongst other things, she is credited with overseeing the design of Google’s impossibly familiar Search homepage.
Tasked with competing with the company she helped to grow, Mayer has an uphill battle ahead of her. Still, anyone attempting to take on the might of a company whose very name has become a verb deserves the moniker ‘hero’ in our books.
Tim Cook
Apple certainly wasn’t without sin in 2012. Forced to apologise after iO6’s native Maps app was an unmitigated disaster, they were meanwhile embroiled in lengthy patent disputes with rivals Samsung. They had to apologise for that, too.
Their main hardware innovation of 2012, the iPad mini, was criticized for being overly imitative.
CEO Tim Cook bore much of the brunt of this, and he will be looking to atone for Apple’s mistakes in the new year. But Apple have usually got a shiny new gadget up their sleeve, and this makes Tim Cook one to watch.
Gabe Newell
Co-founded by Newell, Valve corporation is a giant of the PC gaming scene. Developers of the Half-Life and Portal series of games, they also have a huge market share in the digital distribution of PC games through their Steam software.
Valve looks to have its sights set on expanding rapidly, with hints of experiments in wearable computing and living room PCs cropping up frequently.
Notably calling Windows 8 a “catastrophe,” Newell’s strong views will be tested in 2013 as Valve tries to soar to even greater fortunes.
Peter Molyneux
Ex-head of Guildford-based Lionhead Studios, Peter Molyneux is the man behind Black and White and Fable. After ascending to the giddy heights of Microsoft’s Xbox division, he left to found his own studio: 22Cans.
The studio has been responsible for the game/social experiment hybrid Curiosity.
Known for somewhat grandiose visions and expectations about his projects, will Molyneux’s freedom yield the revolution he’s always promised?