Why are the charts that old? (2011, 2012) With newer charts from 2015/2016, it's clearly visible that Microsoft lost the mobile war, with less than 1% market share. Not that grim, but bad as well is the XBoxOne marketshare compared to the allmighty PS4. And the Win10 marketshare is half of what Microsoft expected one year after launch, almost another Vista - from a consumer perspective the privacy leak makes it worse than Win8 and Vista combined, but that's another story some will say - well the users aren't dumb, they choose the better alternatives every day, and Microsoft looses marketshare. Think about it.
The war Microsoft should have won
21–30 of 53 posts
Re: The war Microsoft should have won
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a fair analysis, though? It's not like Apple or Samsung had monopolies that they leveraged to their advantage to drive mobile share. Unless this is a subtle commentary on Google's use of their search monopolistic power to drive adoption of Android (which drives further adoption of Google products) -- if so, then kudos to you.
> It's not like Apple or Samsung had monopolies that they leveraged to their advantage to drive mobile share. The iPhone was a natural progression from the iPod, which dominated the music player market since the turn of the millenium.
I agree. Just look at the announcement of the first iPhone by Steve Jobs at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN4U5FqrOdQ and notice that the focus on iPod accounts for a good part of the sales argument.
Re: The war Microsoft should have won
#23I started writing Android programs in 2011. With Android: * I can develop the apps on Windows, Mac or Linux * There is a lifetime developer fee of $25 * The source code is available To program for the Windows phone, I believe I'd need a Windows setup which I don't have. "A small barrier" some might say, but a barrier nonetheless. I believe the Windows Store fee was $100 a year or something like that. Not much for a s…
iOS has the same issues, though, except you need an Apple machine, which is usually WAY more expensive than a comparable Windows machine (not sure how well needing to pay for VisualStudio closes that gap).
I doubt this was a factor at all for Microsoft's success or failure, frankly.
EDIT: Apparently I type slow. I'll leave this here anyway.
Re: The war Microsoft should have won
#24They lost because their ultimate strategy was "All Roads Lead to Windows." This is what handcuffed all their talented developers and product managers into creating extremely inferior products. The ones that had freedom from the Windows ecosystem, like X-Box, did relatively well in terms of competitiveness. Steve Ballmer was stuck in his dinosaur thinking and couldn't see the writing on the wall. The break away from t…
Microsoft hasn't really given up "All Roads Lead to Windows." They are pushing very hard in the VR/AR space for Windows to be the prime OS, partnering with Oculus, creating HoloLens, adding Windows Universal App support for AR devices. And XBox no longer has the independence it once had -- it must also run a standard offering of Windows.
Re: The war Microsoft should have won
#25They lost because their ultimate strategy was "All Roads Lead to Windows." This is what handcuffed all their talented developers and product managers into creating extremely inferior products. The ones that had freedom from the Windows ecosystem, like X-Box, did relatively well in terms of competitiveness. Steve Ballmer was stuck in his dinosaur thinking and couldn't see the writing on the wall. The break away from t…
The xbox runs a form of windows?
Re: The war Microsoft should have won
#26They lost because their ultimate strategy was "All Roads Lead to Windows." This is what handcuffed all their talented developers and product managers into creating extremely inferior products. The ones that had freedom from the Windows ecosystem, like X-Box, did relatively well in terms of competitiveness. Steve Ballmer was stuck in his dinosaur thinking and couldn't see the writing on the wall. The break away from t…
The xbox runs a form of windows?
Xbox runs a crazy hybrid of Windows through a couple of virtual machines, but is converging on the OneCore standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_One_system_software
Re: The war Microsoft should have won
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not like Apple or Samsung had monopolies that they leveraged to their advantage to drive mobile share. The iPhone was a natural progression from the iPod, which dominated the music player market since the turn of the millenium.
I don't buy that. If the iPhone was 'just an improved iPod' at release, reception wouldn't have been as mixed as it was ('brilliant' vs 'flop') The iPhone was a small battery powered box you can hold in your hand and it could play music, just like the iPod, but at the time the iPhone debuted, that's about where the similarities ended. Also, because of its price ($500 plus a two-year contract) the iPhone targeted a di…
Looking back at the keynote where Steve Jobs announced the iPhone, the progression from the iPod served as huge leverage and represented one of the core three components of the phones marketing strategy.
The iPhone was about combining your music player (that everybody already owned) and with your phone and then adding an incredibly smooth web experience. Without the iPod functionality, it would have still been a revolutionary phone, but the mass adoption and hype surrounding it would have been reduced.
Re: The war Microsoft should have won
#28I started writing Android programs in 2011. With Android: * I can develop the apps on Windows, Mac or Linux * There is a lifetime developer fee of $25 * The source code is available To program for the Windows phone, I believe I'd need a Windows setup which I don't have. "A small barrier" some might say, but a barrier nonetheless. I believe the Windows Store fee was $100 a year or something like that. Not much for a s…
This is true, but Apple has the same model - you need an OS/X machine (note: much more expensive than a basic windows machine) to develop for iOS, and I believe the app store fee is also $100. It doesn't seem to have hampered iOS at all. (although the argument to be made is that because they were the first to get big, the barrier to entry didn't matter much).
True — but it's also why neither I nor the companies I've worked at have worked on iOS apps (of note, the Android apps we've built have been internal corporate apps, not consumer-facing apps, where iOS's consumer base would be an asset).
I as a developer very much don't want to use Windows or macOS. Why would I want to use either of them when I can use Linux? I know there are others who think otherwise; it's great that we all live in a world where we can direct our destinies.
Re: The war Microsoft should have won
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this a fair analysis, though? It's not like Apple or Samsung had monopolies that they leveraged to their advantage to drive mobile share. Unless this is a subtle commentary on Google's use of their search monopolistic power to drive adoption of Android (which drives further adoption of Google products) -- if so, then kudos to you.
Other than the XBox, what new thing has Microsoft launched that has not hinged on its existing dominance? It seems that the people that brought Microsoft to where it became the dominant force either left or were no longer listened to and Microsoft simply expected to succeed because they where already huge 'over there.'
> It seems that the people that brought Microsoft to where it became the dominant force either left or were no longer listened to and Microsoft simply expected to succeed because they where already huge 'over there.'
May be these people have no more disruptive ideas.
Re: The war Microsoft should have won
#30I think the article is a nice summary of why Microsoft lost, but it doesn't fulfill the promise of its title. "Should have won" implies that there were steps Microsoft should have taken to overcome the difficulties it faced. Let's explore some: Lack of vendor trust, not wanting to get locked in with Microsoft like PC-makers did. No easy solution there. Hampered by success of cash-cows like Windows/Office. Shouldn't M…
They had just the same opportunity to do mobile web as Apple - CE devices could run a real browser. Unfortunately, that browser was IE.
I think Apple's real innovation was the App Store, combined with a usable (non-resistive) touchscreen. Prior to the App Store, it was remarkably hard to get apps onto phones. You were dependent on the mobile carrier, whose levels of customer gouging made Microsoft look like newbies. And they were usually terrible when you did start them, so few bothered.
The other problem was that the CE UI was not adapted for mobile; its look and feel was the same as the desktop. Too many tiny click targets. "Metro" was the attempt to fix this (too late). Apple also brought in the pinch-zoom gesture system and dynamic rotation.