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Microsoft Backs Out Of Wi-Fi Equipment Market
Glenn Fleishman writes "Say it ain't so! Microsoft makes good consumer Wi-Fi equipment but is exiting the market, News.com reports. They'll sell out their inventory, but won't make new models or produce new product. I can't recall a case in which Microsoft had viable products and decent sales and exited instead of spending more money to compete more effectively. Or even when they had non-viable products (Pocket PC's original OS) and spent years and billions before they had something that worked. Perhaps competition from Cisco (Linksys subsidiary), NetGear, and even Apple (which has a disproportionate marketshare) made MSFT blink."
MS also started Expedia and sold it off when it became popular. Bill Gates said that it originally started as a way to push MSN, and then turned into a travel agency and he had no experience there. He wanted the company to stay in it's core market.
I think that Cisco also doesn't want any competition for it's Linksys brand. They may have pushed MS. Cisco makes a lot of software and this may have been a deal to push some of their software to run on Windows. Vonage runs a system built by Cisco on Sun Microsystems, and this may be a backroom deal for Sun to push their software on the Windows platform.
I personally would have liked to have seen MS play a little bit harder in the Wireless space. Combined with their Kerberos implementation, we could have seen a commodity EAP-TLS system that worked out of the box. Boom! All of your wireless security concerns gone.
And no....don't talk to me about open-source here. I''ve played around with building an EAP-TLS system with Free Radius and after two days of solid effort it still wasn't working.
A real shame that opportunity has been missed.
Pretty sure Microsoft wasn't viewed as a weakest link by anyone who is considering their performance in the wireless market thusfar. It's probably simply about profit margins. Wireless is becoming a commodity and MS is ditching it while the getting out is good.
Perhaps competition from Cisco (Linksys subsidiary), NetGear, and even Apple (which has a disproportionate marketshare) made MSFT blink.
We are talking about the same MS, right?
The same MS who jumped into the game console market with Sony and Nintendo? Who wrote Word and Excel, when the market already had Wordperfect and Lotus? Those guys? The ones who wrote Internet Explorer when Netscape was already on it's third release?
You can say what you like about MS, but don't say competition scares them. They look at an unentered market the same way Peg Bundy looks at a bon-bon. They know that they can intimidate and out-spend anyone on the planet. Even the law can't stop them, because they simply view the fines as a business cost.
A better question to ask would be why. Why would they leave a market, just when they're gaining share? This is what they live for. Move number two in this game is to take revenue from the other near-monopolies and turn this market opening into another monopoly, to fuel the next market they wish to exploit.
It can't be that they view the market as a brick wall. They didn't view the DOJ as a brick wall! I'm supposed to believe that after that, Cisco scares them?
I don't know why they left the market, but believe me...they have a good reason, and it's in everyone's best interest to figure out what it is. Especially the people who make WiFi equipment.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Congratulations. You've never used a MS networking product.
I have. They're phenominally easy to use, and basically force you to set 128-bit WEP as the default. The newer ones suggest you use 256-bit WPA, which works hunky-dory with Apple's WPA implementation. I have a MN-700 base station a short distance from me right now and it absolutely screams.
Lest not overjudge. Like their keyboards and mice, they're damn fine products. If only they put that focus into other stuff.
Perhaps competition from Cisco (Linksys subsidiary), NetGear, and even Apple (which has a disproportionate marketshare) made MSFT blink." Actually, it's competition from dirt-cheap south korean and taiwanese chip makers selling at a loss. That's why AMD exited the market. To quote their VP, it was a "bloodbath"
I was a beta tester for the first round Microsoft Broadband Networking software & hardware. The networking software is very good, especially for home users who are new to networking. I have 2 laptops and 3 desktops wired with Microsoft wireless networking cards & networking cable. It was only when I got the base station and cards (beta) from Microsoft that I set up a "complete" network at home to replace my two desktop peer to peer network.
I guess I don't mind either way... I just won't be getting any more free MS hardware. I may now have a chance to check out "the competition."
Add ultimate tv to that list.
When I bought my TIVO I had a MS salesperson (they actually had one stationed at The Good Guys trying to sell the piece of junk) tell me that I was making a big mistake in buying the TIVO because they would be outta business in no time flat and that MS was the smart purchase.
Needless to say, we know what happened....
Caution: Contents under pressure
I would like to just mention that I have had the same 802.11b PCMCIA card and access point for almost three years now, but on a recent business trip, it got broken.
Several trips to a SuperJumboElectroMegaHut (or a Best Buy, I can't remember which) later, the only 802.11 card that would work "out of the box" with my Linux laptop was a Microsoft MN-520. All the others on the shelf used one of the either not supported or barely supported 802.11g chipsets.
For various job-related reasons using non-standard kernel patches wasn't an option for me, so the few other supported cards were out.
It is getting harder and harder to find wireless cards that work well with the stock kernel (or the Fedora/RedHat kernel, which, of course, can't really be considered a stock kernel).
So I'm sorry to see Microsoft leave this market because they were the best provider of Linux-friendly Wi-Fi cards. Ironic, innit?
while I agree on this for the most part, the Bluetooth Keyboard/Mouse Combo just plain sucks. The Mouse never goes into standby, so it's a big drain on batteries. Then 75% of the time, if the batteries die while the computer is off, you have to reinstall - which is very cumbersome.
you have to break out the good old wired versions to do this. They don't even offer a patch to fix this, just suggest a reinstall and or relocation of the bluetooth devices. Now why the hell do I want to reinstall every couple of weeks or so.
Microsoft makes good consumer Wi-Fi equipment but is exiting the market...
It was my understanding that their appliances were very easy to configure, but the performance is poor and the feature set is wanting. Still, I suppose this is somewhat disappointing since there is a need for easy-to-use gateways. Many users looking for uncomplicated solutions will probably turn to Linksys products instead, which are arguably worse.
You (and others) are right, Microsoft has licensed some great hardware over the years.
I've used plenty of different WiFi products, and was curious to what Microsoft had licensed, but never saw the killer deal on them to encourage me to buy any to find out. Other brands were always at a lower price, every time I went shopping. It seems that everyone in the WiFi business buys someone elses product and sticks their own label on it. I'm sure if you cracked open any Microsoft WiFi product and looked inside, the chipset wouldn't say "Microsoft" on it.
This, of course, has been Microsoft's way with everything, including many of their software products. They buy out a company, change the names, and sell it as Microsoft. The biggest example I can think of off-hand (at 1am, mind you) was Microsoft SQL, but throughout their lines, it's something they've bought (or stolen) over the years. What was the case they lost a year or so ago, where they had been distributing someone elses code as a Microsoft product, and finally lost in court?
I was expecting, if I ever got my hands on some Microsoft WiFi equipment, that I'd find a decent brand inside. Too bad that won't be happening now. If I get one, it'll be used junk someone is throwing away.
Almost everyone I know is using Linksys or Netgear wireless stuff. Even across all the wireless equipment I've heard (carefully not admitting to anything potentially illegal), I've never run across any Microsoft gear.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.