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Microsoft Should Dump Middlemen, Build Own Phones
suraj.sun writes "Microsoft has a long and illustrious history of operating system sales. The model has served the company well on the PC, but if it wants to make money in the phone market, it needs to start thinking like a consumer electronics company and start making its own phones."
Given that the xbox has done rather well for them, but they'd be entering a market where cool is king. They would have to come up with some seriously strong designs.
Microsoft's search for a viable business model continues.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is a dumb opinion piece from no one important. I don't see why it's here. :/
Just what we need -- a Microsoft apps store.
Palm trees and 8
...they're too far behind to be viable in this market. Just give it up and stick with servers MS.
Microsoft do not have engineering talent nor software talents to pull something like that off, especially not in management. No matter how good of a phone the grunts make, management will kill its potential. It has happened countless of times before and it will happen again.
Xbox is not a success and while now making modest profits it has lots and lots of investments to recoup before giving any payment on the money spent. Its an utter failure up until today and if nothing ground breaking happens it will keep on being a third rate console.
The only way Microsoft could succeed is to break out a mobile team and totally isolate it from any managment and Microsoft itself. Even when they buy an excellent and complete product like Danger they still manages to wipe it off the planet my mismanagement.
Im also not so sure being a top down shop like Apple is good in the long run. Those kinds of companies tend to stiffen up and become stale and slow pretty fast when given enough market share.
HTTP/1.1 400
Worked for Goo... wait, what? Oh, nevermind.
... and failed spectacularly?
And seeing how the "make the OS, leave making the phone (mostly) to others" business model seems to be working rather well for Google, I don't see, why it shouldn't for Microsoft.
Your call cannot be completed. The number you have dialed is not on a Microsoft-supported phone! Press 1 to report the issue to Microsoft. Press 2 for technical information about this error. Press 3 to hear these options again. Or press 0 now to speak to a Microsoft technical support representative!
They are trying to exert the same control over the user experience that Apple does, but without making the hardware themselves. This might have worked five years ago - maybe even two years ago - but why would the hardware vendors (not to mention carriers) sign on for a new platform over which they have no control? Android is out there, which gives them the freedom to customize the phones to their hearts' content. For those that prefer the vertically integrated experience, there's Apple. Going to be tough to carve out a market niche, unless there is a compelling feature. I will be surprised if the "Windows" name is enough.
They already did, it was called the Kin and it failed miserably (i love that absolutely commonplace expression "failed miserably"... as if there was any other sort of failure that would not make one miserable?)
Oh yes, of course, Microsoft should TOTALLY build their own factories and then build their own hardware. All the Linux, BSD & Mac users agree that Microsoft should definitely invest all of their cash in some big money holes until they go bankrupt. :-)
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Because everyone wants that cool "Microsoft" logo on his/her gadgets [rolls eyes].
839*929
I think Microsoft should just leave the phone market all together, insofar as entire operating systems are concerned. Windows Phone 7 looks cool, but the lack of multitasking and the walled garden approach make it a moot point. Let's face it...if you are going to deal with a walled garden, you're most likely going to go with Apple.
Xbox Live connectivity is intriguing, but not only do I not care about constant contact with my Live friends list...I don't want it. The mobile gaming is also a slight draw, but that's why I have a PSP/DS...
At this point, Microsoft should just concede this market. They will never catch up to RIM/Android/Apple, and all it will do is hurt their image when it fails.
Living With a Nerd
Just look how well designing the XBox 360 without the requisite expertise worked out for them...
Nonsense. They're hardly going to build a manufacturing plant. They could (like Apple do) sub-contract to another manufacturer. But, in essence they've already done this with HTC making the bulk of Windows Mobile devices. I guess they could (like Google did) get HTC to build a Microsoft branded phone, but it wouldn't make a whole lot of difference as to what they have today.
I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree.
Microsoft generally makes pretty good hardware and doing the whole package would give them a tight control over the integration.
The downside is you lose the ability to sell the OS to a bigger portion of the market at the outset.
I think as long as they control the hardware requirements and perhaps have an approval process so that they can do some QA on the phones made by 3rd parties that would be a happy medium for them.
So that they match the screens.
Why are they looking everywhere but where the problem is? Roz Ho is the reason why "Kin" is a failure. Roz Ho is the reason why Android exists (her screwing up of the Danger takeover). Roz Ho is the weakest link. And yet, she's still there, apparently un-firable.
Make their own phones? Why? I had an old trusty Palm Treo running Windows Mobile. It was actually pretty decent. Google has a great partnership with HTC.
Microsoft's failure at phones is completely the fault of MANAGEMENT.
It was called the "Kin". It sold for what, 3 weeks?
Selling your own hardware is not necessary in this segment. The issue with Windows Mobile has never really been the hardware. The HTC HD2 has great hardware, it is the software that sucks. Microsoft needs to fix the software. The problem with Windows Mobile is the typical Microsoft issue. They make a first software version lavishing many resources to enter a market, then when it gets successful they dump the developers overboard (happened to Internet Explorer as well). The Windows Mobile software platform has stagnated for way too long.
Making Windows Mobile a .NET platform is essential, because it is an easy platform to develop for. Many people know how to develop for it, and those who don't learn quickly. C# is an easier to use language than Objective-C. Making the applications run in a sandbox means you are less open to security vulnerabilities and can afford not to waste as much resources reviewing third party apps before adding them to the online store.
Lastly the Windows Mobile UI is pathetically backwards. It was good back in the day, but now it is too clunky.
MS already built a phone. Actually two of them. They were the Kin One and Kin Two and they have failed miserably.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
...have been clamoring for a Zune Phone. AmIRight?
"Microsoft revolutionized the operating system market back in the early 1980s. Indeed, Microsoft created the operating system market back in the early 1980s. Back then, when you bought a computer, it normally had its own special operating system that the vendor bundled (or even sold at extra cost)"
I thought IBM hired on Microsoft to write the OS for the proprietary IBM PC? And didn't a company called Apple bring out the Apple 1I in 1977 some time before the IBM PC in 1981?
Yes... but I'm not buying one, unless it comes in brown.
Seriously, MS's biggest Achilles Heel is it's whole Marketing / Design Dept. If they had better people there, they'd be a lot more successful, regardless of hardware or software.
What if I don't want microsoft to make money?
... and start building more middlemen.
Why not come out with an attempt at a kick-ass OS (Windows Phone 7 Series - no idea if it'll be good or not when released but presumably the idea is that it doesn't suck), a tightly-proscribed hardware reference definition for the manufacturers (chipset, number of physical buttons, minimum resolution etc) and then leave all the awkware engineering and production to companies that do it best such as HTC or Foxconn? They don't need to actually manufacture them themselves.
I agree with this Microsoft needs to really rethink there mobile market strategies and ideas. They have the market in the OS but they have yet to make a dent in the mobile industry this is surprising for a company that has the resources and the finances to do lots of RND.
http://www.thetechnologygeek.org
.
Here, let me fix that typo for you.
"Microsoft has a long and iniquitous history of operating system sales."
the Zune-phone!!
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
If Microsoft made its own phone all the other phone manufacturers would quit using windows mobile. Yeah, that's a great idea, convert your partners into enemies.
Just because Apple looks "cool" doesn't means that Microsof has to imitate them. In fact Android seems to be able to kill iPhone relevance in the next years. Yet Android is not the product of a company that does software + hardware.
the real problem is microsoft is a marketing driven company that is trying to squeeze a nickel out of and make everyone else happy except the person actually using the phone. If they would just concentrate on the end Customer and quit trying to make the all these other groups happy that have no other agenda, but to degrade the phone (with drm, etc) they would be more successful.
Problem solved.
I've heard that their upcoming phone OS is very good. Unfortunately, it's saddled with "Microsoft" and "Windows". If I were Microsoft and wanted to give this division the best chance to succeed, I would spin off the mobile OS division into it's own company and be the majority (only?) shareholder. Part of the spin off agreement would be that Microsoft has perpetual rights to build products around the mobile OS.
Microsoft should then concentrate on enterprisey products (ie, take on RIM) and cede consumer oriented devices to the new company.
This would let Microsoft succeed where they have their best chance and would give the phone OS a better chance of attracting talented developers. Face it, if you are under 30, Microsoft is about as cool as Oracle. And like it or not, cool matters with something like a phone which is an accessory as much as it is a device.
This would only work iff the new phone OS is better in many respects than iOS and Android. Is it? If it isn't, it's going to be WinCE part deux.
The model has served the company well on the PC, but if it wants to make money in the phone market, it needs to start thinking like a consumer electronics company.
Companies that stick to their core competencies thrive.
Companies that lose track of their core competencies decline and fail.
Microsoft is, first and foremost, an operating systems company. Whatever they do must serve that core competency. To stray from that into another market, say into the cellphone market as a direct competitor, is to pursue an afterthought against those devoted to that market - the fail should be apparent from the outset.
TFA demonstrates as a positive the Zune, showing the author is confused about what constitutes "success".
TFA demonstrates as a positive the Xbox, which is a closed system little different from their main offering of an OS running apps on a PC.
Cell phones are different. They're not PCs. Microsoft should consider it's own history, and that of others: deviating from devotion to the core competency is a fast, and expensive, track to fail.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
This prototype ?!?
The cell phone market is essentially closed to anyone that is trying to break in in a huge way. Without something big, and I mean BIG, to offer Microsoft is just better off to rest on it's laurels and stick to what it does at the moment. I refrain from saying what it does best, cause I think it could do better with some effort, but I digress. You know what I mean. Just cause a company makes good cars, doesn't mean it should build roads.
I'd love to see this. When they decided to get into the music player market they made a brown turd, thought of how to make the word "Tune" edgier and came up with "Zune". Maybe they can shoot themselves in the foot all over again in the phone market with another brown turd with the same awesome marketing skill. "What do we do on a phone?" "I think we talk!" "Ok, let's change the first letter and make it sound hip and edgy!" "Yeah, let's call it the Zalk!" "Oh man, I'd want to buy a Zalk!" "Oh me too!" "Watch out iPhone! The Zalk is the next new hip thing!"
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
while updates to Microsoft Phone Direct(tm) are being installed. Would you like to make a phone call after Microsoft Phone Direct(tm) has been updated?
MS has to understand why it is doing well in GAMING systems, but at the same time MS has to stop "gaming" the features and functions it puts into products and start focusing on users; their new ads claim they are listening to what consumers want, but extra features come with an extra price... MS treats features and functions the same way car dealers treat options like stereos, paint schemes, leather seats.
The are more interested in locking in customers, and milking them for $$ than making them happy...
Until they decide they want to make customers happy, they really shouldn't be selling products to end users; the one place they are doing that are GAMING systems; customers in that market demand the right set of features and functions and MS does it, makes them happy and they are making money.
Microsoft's strength is in the fact that it delivers a software product that hopefully works on almost any manufacturer's hardware. The competition for the actual hardware is fierce, and therefore margins are thin. But Microsoft doesn't care whether Samsung, Nokia, LG, or whoever has the hottest line of phones, because they should be selling on all of those devices.
The main argument the article makes is look how well it works for Apple. But, Apple has spent years perfecting its products and building its reputation. You can also look at the Android model and see different hardware manufacturers building a phone that competes effectively against the iPhone monolith.
When Android 3 comes out, the various UIs on top of the Android phone and the various lower levels of hardware interface will go away. What was suppose to be an Android strength -- the OS being customizable to various platforms -- has a big weakness. The problem with Android 1.x and 2.x is that it is almost impossible to keep the OS up to date. Many phones are still sold with the old Android 1.6 OS and maybe with no hopes for updating. With the fast accelerating market (the original "Droid" is less than a year old and is now an obsolete phone) the vast differences in hardware is causing problems.
There are also weaknesses with the iPhone model. If the iPhone is available to all cell phone providers, they find themselves as a commodity business competing only on price. Android allowed Verizon to offer distinct phones that its rivals cannot offer. Android 3.0 will take away some of this flexibility as the hardware platform is more standardized, but it isn't as unified as the PC platform. There are too many marketing forces that want to keep the various phones distinct from each other.
W7P is following the Android 3.0 model. The phones can be base upon three different reference platforms, and the platform specifications are loose enough to allow for a wider variety of phones and functionality than found in the PC market. This can be an advantage as cell phone service providers and cell phone manufacturers try to make the devices they offer different from their competitors.
The main threat against W7P isn't external, but the internal forces at Microsoft. There is pressure to rewrite the Zune based W7P platform to use Windows internally. The W7P group already has been told that it cannot offer its OS on tablets (why this group is Windows 7 PHONE and not Windows 7 MOBILE). The Windows CE team is still around and has successfully killed the Project Pink group and is now aiming at the Zune and W7P group. The desktop Windows group is also taking aim at the Zune and W7P group. If Windows 7 Phone fails, it'll won't be because it wasn't a viable platform. Most reviews of W7P have been very good.
Hi! I'm Clippy! Microsoft Bob is not available. You could leave him a message if you like. Just hold down the #, *, 7, and 3 keys. It looks like you are trying to make a call. Would you like me to help with that? I see you've dialed a 9. There is an area code "978", can I finish dialing that for you? Oh, I see you've now dialed a "1". You might be trying to make an emergency call. I could... ** REBOOT ** Hi! I'm Clippy! Microsoft Bob is not available right now...
is that MS has a lousy OS, with lousy tech support at a high price and is no longer being pushed by the other companies. IOW, it is time for MS to try and by-pass those companies who will no longer take MS's bribes, and go straight to the consumers.
What a ---kin great idea!
Own up, who has a Microsoft mouse despite running *nix? I do. Best build quality for the price.
Microsoft make great hardware. Just so long as it doesn't need drivers and doesn't have any significant embedded software, it's fine.
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
I simply MUST be the first person to have a brown Phune.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
This isn't a good space for Microsoft. I don't think they will ever be competitive here. They are too big and too kludgy and too out of touch with what's cool and new and cutting edge to ever do this. Microsoft makes a pretty decent enterprise OS...and that business and that mentality does not translate all that well to phones. Yes there are some similarities, but in terms of the forward thinking mindset needed to stay competitive in the phone market...MS just does not have it.
I am not an apple user but, honestly, this is really a perfect market for them. They're big enough to know how to make a clean, stable OS but small and arbitrary enough to come up with new ideas and send them down the pipe without asking permission. They have proven that they are good at making devices (I run nothing but MS on the desktop and nothing but apple on my devices...I live and die by my ipod).
But they recently tried doing just that. And it was an epic failure.
Read my blog.
I think copying Apple is a good idea up to a point, and I'll qualify that: the thing that was most revolutionary about the iPhone (and something that I think is often missed) is its inversion of how phones were created.
Old model: the wireless carriers essentially go to phone manufacturers and say what they want. The problem with this model is that while the wireless carriers have an excellent sense of what is selling currently at that moment, they don't have a lot of vision or expertise in the realm of the innovative or possible in their market.
Apple's model: We're going to make this cool phone. We've already decided it's going to have these new features seen before, and we think we know best about what it should or shouldn't provide. We don't care what you think about it, wireless providers. We're just making this phone we like. Who wants to make a deal to sell it?
I think if Microsoft is to have any prayer in the phone market (and it is a slim prayer at its best), they need to take the same mindset of figuring out a bunch of cool/useful things and making a phone that does it. I can't see them having a lot of success with the Android model of "we built this platform, now anyone go and make a cool phone out of it."
Frankly, after some of the boggling omissions in the Kin's feature set, I have my doubts that Microsoft's phone people have the vision to even know what the killer features would be -- but as dubious as that is, I can't see any other way in which they can make a serious dent.
Because of course we've all actually just seen exactly how well Microsoft managed to create their own phone!
Microsoft has no expertise whatsoever in any field.
Their only competitive advantage is that they are big.
Why do we think they can produce anything but a crappy phone?
Great information in your post. I suspect the reason Microsoft doesn't go with an ODM is because it might be significantly more expensive, which would result in a more expensive phone that won't compete as well in the marketplace (see: Dell Streak @ $299).
Also, it seems to be their dream that a horde of OEM's will license Win 7 phone OS and save Microsoft the hardware R & D, and exposure to flop risk. It's a false hope considering OEM's have Android available for free, but I'm pretty sure that's what Steve B. is thinking.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I don't quite know where to begin with this strategic suggestion for Microsoft from an armchair CEO.
Microsoft is a successful vendor of OS software. Partly this is due to their products' quality, but largely it's due to inertia, already having market dominance, having some rather aggressive, predatory business practices, and generally operating in an ethical gray area.
It's rather sloppy thinking to believe there's only one kind of corporate success, IE if Microsoft is a Big Company, and it takes a Big Company to make and sell a product like a cell phone, then Microsoft ought to be successful at making and selling cell phones.
Thinking like that ignores a lot of major differences between Microsoft and eg. Nokia. Differences that include knowledge of the cell market, good relationships with cell phone network companies, a service and support organization that would have a much larger customer base than Microsoft's software support apparatus, higher costs for manufacturing the product, larger exposure to risk from having more physical inventory vs. just having CDs and manuals, lack of design expertise in the area of phones and lack of management talent for running such an organization.
Also, the cell phone manufacturer space is crowded. If they're manufacturing physical phones they're competing with national and overseas companies that are much better at making phones than they are (initially and for the near term). They'd start at a disadvantage, something they're historically not good at.
Saying that since Microsoft wants to dominate cell phones with Windows 7 so they should start making phones is like saying Goodyear wants to dominate the car tire market so they should start making cars. You're suggesting a company that is good at something car related should automatically be good enough at making cars to dominate the market.
Finally, I believe Microsoft has a history of making MS hardware devices with few successes. The MS mouse and keyboard are exceptions. The Xbox could be considered a failure except as a loss leader for selling software (games). In some quarters their hardware produces a profit, but it's tiny compared to the profits from software. Certainly not enough to gain market dominance like the article suggests should be possible for phones. How many people do you know that own Zunes?
Microsoft will probably end up making their own phones anyway. They will, however, let other companies beta test their OS and find what works best.
Once that's been established Microsoft will take the best features, all the lessons learned, and all the data they've gathered to create their own device. They'll bundle it with some exclusive special sauce Microsoft-live-something service. The hardware and software stack will be newer and better and be incompatible with their initial offering. The old hardware/software stack/services will cease to be updated.
Why do I predict this? It's the exact business model Microsoft used for the Zune. They got a lot of companies on board with the "plays for sure" idea, tying DRM to windows media player.. Then promptly threw all of their partners under the bus when they released the Zune, obsoleting both players and software. I wish I was there when the CEO of Creative learned that microsoft had just fucked them over.
I think it would be a very bad time to enter this market. LG and Nokia have just posted record losses: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-28/lg-electronics-profit-falls-33-after-company-falls-behind-in-smartphones.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-10725887 BlackBerry is also losing business market share to iPhone and other smartphone makers: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65N5WC20100624 Microsoft would do better to build their reputation in the mobile marketplace with quality operating systems - for now. Consolidation in the marketplace seems inevitable. When there are fewer competitors and Microsoft is established and trusted in the market, that would be the time to launch microsoft hardware. But its devices would need to rival iPhone in quality and HTC in price.
Business mobile phones
I almost choked on my coffee reading this, "Microsoft has a long and illustrious history of operating system sales.". WTF does that have to do with anything regarding the ability to sell products into a channel which they do not have _control_ of? The middleman is what has given Microsoft control and maintained sales of Windows on PCs. So Microsoft dumping the middleman is like telling a gunman to dump his weapon.
FYI, the phone is not tied to the desktop PC so Microsoft has no control and therefore their "long and illustrious history" of leverage is worthless. Especially now that Apple and Google have shown companies can make profits in the segment and promises from Microsoft or spoon fed profits via marketing kickbacks have little effect and any of the large vendors.
BTW, how did that Zune do? Dumb concept of an article IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I'm not really interested in helping Microsoft with free advice. But what would be a lot better for MS, and for the market, would be MS forcing phone HW to become as open as is PC HW, and marketing Windows (or whatever) OS as the best choice to install on it. Much like their current strategy, but from the "open" angle, so MS can steal market share from Symbian, Android and Apple even after the user buys the phone by installing the MS OS instead of the default. Let desktop Windows install a mobile OS onto a phone, and sync everything between the two. That's a lot more likely to succeed, to offer the huge profit margins MS is used to, and to be like the SW business that MS understands, instead of a low margin HW business that competes with some big MS customers.
If MS could force the US to unbundle the mobile networks from the HW as the default, so there's a single mobile Internet instead of what's like the 1980s Compuserve/Source/GEnie that transparently roams even during a call, that would be the kind of platform where MS could make most of the profit while the HW and network providers do most of the work. Work that uses MS software to get done.
Google is pressuring that gradual openness. If Microsoft joined it instead of joining Apple, we'd all be better off - even if MS got most of the benefit.
--
make install -not war
Maybe this is in the works. Just read that they are getting the ARM core.
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4204863/Microsoft-takes-ARM-license
Obtaining the leading processor core for mobile phones positions them well to create a mobile phone, don't ya think? :)
Does anyone remember this? I used to have one, I loved it. It was cordless and the base station connected to the serial port on your system (before the days of USB) and had some great features. Answering incoming calls could be customized based on caller ID to answer with different messages and messages left were recorded into .WAV files and filed into directories so you could use them like any other file. Incoming call from your friend? "Hey Mike, I'm heading up to the bar now, be there by 10-ish." Incoming call from your girlfriend? "*cough* Sorry sweetie, still pretty sick, I'm in bed already, I'll call you tomorrow." Incoming call from a harassing creditor? Email it to a lawyer.
It was well built and it's sitting in my storage unit, I'll bet it would still work if I hooked it up.
The only catch is to use all of those features you had to leave your PC on at all times... I think that'd be less of a problem these days, since many people run home media/file/print servers that are generally left on 24/7 anyway.
I'd jump on a MS Phone 3.0, I think. Especially if they got clever and combined it with a cell phone...
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Microsoft is not a hardware company.Phones are complex and highly competitive due to market size. Chances are that Microsoft would not be able to build a competitive phone on the first offering and the cost of setting up a fabrication facility would be a dreadful loss. And then there is the worst of all problems. In order to build a decent phone it would probably need to be Linux based and that would amount to a very degrading admission on their part. (I just had to add that last sentence.)
Is a fucking oxymoron. Every piece of hardware they have ever produced has been complete shit, worse even than their OS.
Salut,
Jacques
Microsoft is a software company, therefore they have 90% profit on sales.
Apple is a hardware company, therefore they have 40% profit on sales.
Very true.
But Microsoft sells a product to you once. Then they are done, as far as collecting more revenue (or profit).
Apple sells you a product once. But most of the devices are as you say hardware - and most of them now either iPod or iOS devices.
Thus after the initial sale, the continue to get more revenue (and profit) from the user base, in an uneven but recurring stream from iTunes (music/video/app sales).
One other response to your post indicated Apple's sale growth was not linear as Microsoft's is. This is why.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Didn't MS do this already, I think it was called the Kin and sold for about 3 weeks on one US network that operates a cellular technology that no-one else in the world uses.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
All that's left to fight over is whose logo is stuck on Foxconn Product. Is it apple, nokia, ms , motorola?
Hmm. I named 4 players off the top of my head. Everyone knows that when an industry shakes out, there are 3 or less players that form the final oligopoly. So there will be a shakeout. Which stock(s) to short?
The product cycle is what, about 12 months? In another 3 generations, all the bugs will be worked out, all the cool GUI stuff will be stolen and implemented every in every ones phone product.
So in 3 years, we reach commodity on smartphones.
Acer is already making smart phones. To me, and this is just a personal thing, If Acer is making smartphones, I would declare commoditization is here. Low margins are here. But that's just me.
Microsoft has less than 3 years to capture significant market share.
It has to ship significant volume of ergonomic, beautiful, pleasing to the eye, with NO BUGS and long battery life. A thought out, FINISHED product.
Significant volume product that JUST WORKS, and no safety net of version 2.0 or 3.0, because the Chinese will put their product in Walmart and just drown MS with 'Cheap! and good enough'. Foxconn wil drown everybody! And if the Chinese state gets behind this and feels like a good scrap, then there are state subsidies and dumping.
I don't see the vibrant Microsoft needed to pull this off. I see licensing games and lawyers run amok.
I see a management, er, um team? that is old, cranky and fights amongst itself.
I have not seen any slash dot articles about the new Microsoft Dream Team consisting of PROVEN world class engineers to handle this RACE to get into this market place before the VERY LAST 3 years of this window closes.
But what do I know.
Those of us who are older than DOS, know that the operating system market existed before Microsoft, and that IBM (or maybe better stated, the DOJ) caused the operating system market to really take off. Microsoft pretty much kept it in a stranglehold, in the personal computer market, once it established it's monopoly via anti-competitive practices. Once again, DOJ action was required to restore it to the not-quite-healthy state it is in today.
The embedded devices operating system market operated pretty much wholly independent of Microsoft until around ten years ago. Microsoft hasn't ever really offered a good operating system choice in the embedded market. (Although they had an opportunity when rich application clients started coming into demand.) Robustness was always a big stumbling block, back then, and openness is what will trip them up today.
Wrong. Microsoft HW division has been churning out pretty much impressive stuff for years by now. Zune/Zune HD HW-wise hasn't been too shabby efforts ether.
Yah, just like Google does with Android... Oh, wait...
Seriously, how original. Let's look to Apple to see what else Microsoft should do.