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Why Microsoft Can't Compete With iTunes
A reader submitted "Why Microsoft Can't Compete With iTunes which is an interesting op-ed piece about the differences between the two companies, but also the intersection with a different type of business like that of television. I've read some of the same arguements before, but this piece ties it up nicely together."
The fact that the market is saturated alredy with people who can use iTunes and who own iPods? What is the insentive to switch?
The Power of Monopoly
Interestingly, while Microsoft's monopoly power dominates the PC industry, it didn't achieve that position in the same manner as Apple found success with the iPod. This is very important to understanding why Microsoft can't compete with iTunes.
It has everything to do with choice.
More than 80% of Microsoft's revenues for Windows come from corporate volume licensing and OEM copies of Windows bundled with new PCs. That means the company doesn't have to compete to sell a product at retail.
davecb5620@gmail.com
* applying Windows stickers to all PCs sold, and using a keyboard with a prominent Windows key.
Hah. One of the first things I did, after building my first PC 4 years ago, was lever off the Windows keys, which flew behind my desk and haven't been seen since. Annoying pieces of shit. Everytime I accidently hit one for Ctrl or Alt fed the need to remove these unwelcome interlopers of QWERTY keyboards.
More than 80% of Microsoft's revenues for Windows come from corporate volume licensing and OEM copies of Windows bundled with new PCs. That means the company doesn't have to compete to sell a product at retail.
Which I've always said, Microsoft are lucky and they have never learned anything.
How was it that the scrappy Apple beat Microsoft in online music and movies? How was Microsoft's omnipotent empire defeated, and is there some chance that Microsoft will still have the opportunity to beat Apple at its own game with Zune, the company's solo effort at developing an iPod killer?
Simply put, without knowledge of how to build a business, Microsoft has been playing Follow-The-Leader for years. Throwing their massive profits from Windows and Office sales into subsidising these disasterous forays. It's kind of like watching the Soviets try to compete with the rest of the world with their Lada cars.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Microsoft's DRM is fascist. If they could force you to pay a separate license for each ear for listening to music in stero rather than mono, they would. Even average customers are beginning to grow wise to Microsoft, and when Vista is released and they find to run Aero they have to add RAM AND a video card, and then later upgrade their hard drive (and reinstall because they won't have ghost or dd or partimage) and oops, sorry, they just used up their last activation, time to buy again per the EULA. . . or in the case of music specifically, they just bought a new MP3 player? It won't sync, too bad, so sad, Microsoft will tell you to buy it again.
Apple has discovered a balance between hindering blatent "piracy" and fair use which most people find tolerable, almost downright customer-friendly. If they were to offer iTunes for Linux, I just might buy music from Apple.
However, they (Apple) still have to realize that when I buy it, I OWN it, and I have the right by law to transfer ownership of what I purchased to someone else if I damn well desire to, just as I can sell or give away a used CD I no longer want.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
To that end you should probably stop referring to yourself as a consumer.
I still consume, I just don't go in for every toy which everyone else has to have to part of some clique.
Also, Apple is just trying to sell more stuff by taking advantage of people who use iPods as statements. Some idiot waving their red music player around like it is a fashion statement doesn't make me feel like an idiot for having the same player (in white) discreetly stashed in my pocket.
And they're smart, because it keeps their product in front of everyone's nose as the fashionable trend. Microsoft shouldn't even be associating themselves with Zune, they should have set up a separate company and kept the association quiet. There's nothing trendy about them or their name and all the advertising dollars in the world won't change it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well that is a big difference. If you notice when Apple gets some competition they improve their product. vs. Others who try to kill the competitor by other means.
For example the iPod Mini (Now the Nano and Shuffle), was designed and sold to Compete with the cheaper flash based MP3 Players that their cometitors were producing and were getting a foot hold in. Vs. Microsoft with Windows who makes sure that every PC is sold has windows on it and all advertising saying that it's recommended.
The Differance is Apple is asking the Consumers to choose what MP3 Player they want. Vs. Microsoft Telling all the venders to put their product in (to get the discount) and really giving most consumers little choice on what to use.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
With marketing prowess like this, it's very unlikely that they will be able to compete with Apple.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
To me, Apple seems to be applying DRM, but not really in a way that's meant to be terribly intrusive. Yes, the songs from ITMS contain DR, but you can always just burn them in a play list and rip them back as you desire (a feature that Apple is fully aware of, but it hasn't seemed to cause any problems with ITMS sales), which I'm sure won't be an option with the Zune Marketplace (or whatever it's called).
Though the article is interesting and enlightening, I could not help but notice that Firefox (1.5.0.7) did not render the page well. Some of the text from the article was underneath other text. It made the reading real annoying. On the other hand, the web page rendered well with IE.
It's like Bizarro world... A great article exposing Microsoft limitations and/or weaknesses, but it will not render well in Firefox. Because of that, I have to rate the article a 6.5 to 7 (on a scale of one to ten). Fix the rendering so that Firefox renders the text well and then it would probably rate as a 8.5 to 9.
It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
Microsoft's ideal position would be to create a ZuneOS that comes pre-installed on mp3 players and locks you into WMP and the Marketplace. That way they don't have to spend any money on hardware -- just licensing the ZuneOS.
But they can't do that, so they're forced to create an entire product themselves -- something they're historically not all that good at. Compared to Apple, who historically has to make sure everything works together smoothly, and succeeds due to its hardware control. It can say "yes, iPods work via USB and triggers iTunes, and will update and function accordingly" because they control the hardware and the software.
That doesn't make them a monolithic, big-brother company, just one that makes sure its product functions well and as intended. You can still choose another mp3 player. Look at the bad rap Microsoft gets due to bad hardware and faulty drivers, where people blame the OS when they're buying shitty hardware!
Conversely, Excel runs just fine on OS X -- no reason someone can't use it. And the majority of companies who use singular tools like the grandparent mentions have their spreadsheets and tables and forms heavily configured, so it takes MORE time figuring out where everything should go and what everything means than it does to actually use the application.
Really, most people who end up working in, essentially, thin-client corporate environments are OS agnostic. They use Windows because that's what the IT dept. bought because it uses the 2 or 3 pieces of software, and it's cheaper if they spend the money on a bare-bones machine with stuff semi-preconfigured. But that only gives Microsoft a competitive advantage due to convenience. The only thing really stopping another company from coming out with a "SpreadsheetOS" that essentially does what an entire, say, billing department would need is that they have no distribution, as that's monopolized by Windows. Doesn't matter if it's a better product, because Microsoft essentially controls the supply chain.
To me, this is no more evident than in the fact Microsoft puts a great amount of emphasis on its corporate/enterprise software, neglecting its "home user" consumers. Apple, who realizes that people buy a computer to do all these different things on them, realizes that it can make people very happy by simply including it themselves. They're not focusing on enterprise level word processing applications that can track changes across multiple users -- they're making Pages, something that can incorporate media easily and layout changes quickly. It's practically a "scrapbooking" app.
Anyway, enough of a tangent. Your point is excellent because the reason Microsoft has such control is directly opposed to their continued success. If Excel just works and it's customized to work in a network, why should they upgrade? That's just more training and support expenses all around. The only way they can actually make money is to force companies to sell computers with their latest OS pre-installed. Otherwise, companies would simply install whatever version of Windows they own. I've got a friend whose office is entirely Win98, because their software is equally old. It still works, though, so they have no reason to update. To them, they don't care that they're using Windows. They could use an all-in-one computer/OS system that does just the 3 or 4 things needed in the job and be fine. And that doesn't help Microsoft at all.