11–20 of 99 posts
I actually find it very interesting in a good way that metro apps will be able to run in a desktop mode. This can be a great reply to google chrome desktop apps.
How is this nuts? These are all smart moves as the personal pc landscape is changing and moving toward mobile devices. Making your desktop users happy with ye olde start menu and giving away WP are very smart moves. MS still will make a lot of money of its patent portfolio via android and its own WP app store. Selling an OS is an outdated concept and everyone knows it.
Microsoft isn't nuts, but black text on dark gray background is... yikes.
What has been frustrating for me is how this way forward was missing for years now, but criticism of MS management was always shrugged off with references to Windows and Office. Criticism of Ballmer was met with "profits are up", and a sprinkling of "MS is a huge company, you think you could do better?" Mmmm, so helpful. Then the industry they depend on as the source of those profits is registering double-digit declines YOY and all of a sudden it's a crisis. So aggravating.
Microsoft isn't nuts. They simply missed mobile. Microsoft almost missed the Internet, and retained some of their dominance only after decisive top-down action and investment. By the time Microsoft understood what was happening in mobile, it was too late. The fiasco was compounded by Ballmer's indecisive reaction, but it was already set in motion. Anything Microsoft does with mobile, perhaps short of something that l…
If they could grab a good fraction of mobile developers (5-10% ?) they'd be in a good position to launch some sort of device.
Well, they could try.
How is this nuts? These are all smart moves as the personal pc landscape is changing and moving toward mobile devices. Making your desktop users happy with ye olde start menu and giving away WP are very smart moves. MS still will make a lot of money of its patent portfolio via android and its own WP app store. Selling an OS is an outdated concept and everyone knows it.
Why do people repeat saying that "the personal pc landscape is […] moving toward mobile devices"? I don't know anyone who stopped using their PC just because they got a tablet or smartphone. Sure there is a decline in sales for PCs because the market is saturated and for the most people, unless they are gamers, their 5 year old computer will do just fine. Yet people keep shouting that the days of the desktop computer…
I got an iPhone and suddenly about 40% of my Internet consumption went to the iPhone. Now, in that case most of the 40% was incremental, but it did supplant about 10% of my desktop browsing.
I got a tablet and suddenly about 30% of my Internet consumption is on the tablet, stealing about 10% from the iPhone, 10% incremental, and 10% from desktop.
I've reduced my desktop Internet use by only about 20%, but now desktop only makes up about 40% of my internet activity.
What sane mega-corp would sit there and say "well, we still dominate the desktop 40% so lets not worry about the other 60% that is now consumed by related products."
Computing is moving to mobile doesn't mean the mobile use has to come from cannibalization.
Microsoft isn't nuts. They simply missed mobile. Microsoft almost missed the Internet, and retained some of their dominance only after decisive top-down action and investment. By the time Microsoft understood what was happening in mobile, it was too late. The fiasco was compounded by Ballmer's indecisive reaction, but it was already set in motion. Anything Microsoft does with mobile, perhaps short of something that l…
We'll see what I happens, but I wouldn't write Microsoft off the mobile market yet.
Edit: market share is around 10% in five European countries according to this: http://www.kantarworldpanel.com/global/News/news-articles/Ap...
Microsoft isn't nuts. They simply missed mobile. Microsoft almost missed the Internet, and retained some of their dominance only after decisive top-down action and investment. By the time Microsoft understood what was happening in mobile, it was too late. The fiasco was compounded by Ballmer's indecisive reaction, but it was already set in motion. Anything Microsoft does with mobile, perhaps short of something that l…
Microsoft isn't nuts. They simply missed mobile. Microsoft almost missed the Internet, and retained some of their dominance only after decisive top-down action and investment. By the time Microsoft understood what was happening in mobile, it was too late. The fiasco was compounded by Ballmer's indecisive reaction, but it was already set in motion. Anything Microsoft does with mobile, perhaps short of something that l…
The main mobile computing vendor in the early 2000s was Palm. Microsoft destroyed the existing entrenched competitor with genuinely better products and a wider ecosystem.
And then forgot to innovate. Then got out innovated by competitors.
Just like with the browser.
How is this nuts? These are all smart moves as the personal pc landscape is changing and moving toward mobile devices. Making your desktop users happy with ye olde start menu and giving away WP are very smart moves. MS still will make a lot of money of its patent portfolio via android and its own WP app store. Selling an OS is an outdated concept and everyone knows it.
MS still makes plenty of money selling Windows licenses to PC manufacturers, so charging for an OS isn't going away just yet. Arguably the other dominant OS in the desktop space - OSX - isn't free either. Upgrades are now free, but you (well, certainly 'I' anyway) pay a big chunk of cash over the hardware costs when you buy a Mac, for the privilege of running OSX and the iApps.
MS isn't going to make much money on the WP App store though. Even Apple barely breaks even on the iOS App Store. Digital stores are essential to maintaining a viable ecosystem, but they're not profit centers. So if you have to give away your OS, barely break even on content sales (if that) and don't sell the hardware either where do you make your money?
Well, MS is trying to answer that by selling the hardware as well, but the problem is the main reason they're doing that is because otherwise nobody would be making hardware to run their mobile OS at all. That is how bad things are.
Even so, what are MS#s alternatives? They simply cannot afford to remain irrelevant in mobile. IMHO their best shot now is to go all-out with mobile versions of Office on WP, WinRT, Android and iOS. If they can manage to become relevant in mobile apps, there's a reasonable chance they might be able to leverage that into relevance in other areas.