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Microsoft's Approach To Battling the iPad In the Workplace
An anonymous reader writes "Even though Microsoft's public stance, when asked about the impact of Apple's slate is 'iPad? What iPad?', the Redmondians are preparing the company's partners for battle in 2011. Microsoft is making available to its reseller partners marketing collateral to help them defend against the iPad's encroachment into the enterprise market. I had a chance to check out a PowerPoint dated December 2010 on 'Microsoft Commercial Slate PCs' that the company is offering to its partners to help them explain Microsoft's slate strategy to business users." Besides the iPad, there are also the raft of tablets (available and upcoming) running Android, and Blackberry's QNX tablet that Microsoft will have to sell past.
It may not be the best OS of the bunch, but the fact of the matter is that it will run on a whole host of hardware.
Which means very little by itself. Linux runs on lots of hardware but isn't remotely dominating the operating system market. There is more to it than that. It needs to run on the hardware people want and run the software people want and have a critical mass of users of those devices. Pulling all that off is no mean feat. Possible you will be right but you shouldn't be so certain.
Apple and RIM have lost in this respect, because there will be very little choice.
You are presuming two things. One, that people will care about choice in hardware. The iPod is a great example of a device that has dominated its market despite a multitude of alternative hardware choices available. Choice in hardware might not matter much at all. Two, that Apple & RIM need a monopoly to be successful. The iPhone is wildly profitable and popular and Apple is making a fortune even though there are plenty of other choices out there. The iPhone does not dominate the market the way the iPod does but you'd have a hard time arguing it isn't a successful product. Apple's strategy is a bit of a high wire act and they could easily screw it up but they've shown every reason to think they might succeed.
WebOS and Android will take the market because soon enough someone will be running it on a toaster.
My wife was just telling me the other day, "Why isn't our toaster web enabled? Isn't it about time someone did that?" [/sarcasm]