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MS Global Strategy Chief: Tablets Are a Fad
jfruhlinger writes "Wondering why Microsoft isn't jumping into the red-hot tablet market? Well, maybe it's because Craig Mundie, the man in charge of the company's global strategy, isn't sure if the 'big screen tablet pad category' has staying power. Of course, it's possible that tablets will go the way of the netbook, but blogger Chris Nerney calls Microsoft's seeming total inaction in the face of a hot market 'mind-boggling.'"
I'm waiting for an improved tablet. What I would like to see is a tablet with an attached keyboard. Let's say, a device where the tablet and keyboard are joined by a hinge, so that it can be closed while not in use.
I think I'll patent that idea right now.
Wholeheartedly Agree with Microsoft.
I now fear comment retribution..
Didn't they something similar about the internet? Made MSN instead? Ended up trying to copy what AOL was doing, and we all know since AOL stocks are worth a fortune these days that must have been a great idea.
Looking at windows phone 7 & the x-box (kinect), the company can execute well, but they really need some vision for future markets to get ahead of the curve. Seriously, 18 months ago WP7 would have crushed android. Now? Nothing.
So, sitting here in a public establishment I look around and see 1 laptop and 5 netbooks... Since when have netbooks gone anywhere?
He is possibly correct.
Meanwhile, some others (notably Apple) are riding that bubble like the silver surfer and making money by the crate load.
So Microsoft's goal is NOT to make money from new tech?
Even if it is a bubble Microsoft shows its corporate vision (or lack thereof) in this.
Kind of sad because this is the same company that made the Kinect not so long ago, showing that not everybody at Microsoft lacks vision.
It took until Windows 95 until Microsoft decided that the whole "Internet fad" thing perhaps, just maybe had some legs.... meanwhile, many techies had been on the Internet since 1988 and on the World Wide Web since 1993.
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
It should be obvious by now that Microsoft is incapable of competing with Android and iOS whether on the phone or the tablet. Much less get into the game with something great enough it makes up for their tardiness.
The only strategy left is to hope it all goes away soon, and denegrating that part of the market is the only commentary they can make to help that along.
Look on the bright side MS, at least the standalone digital music player market is shrinking.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Now that somebody at Microsoft has said tablets are a fad, they're going to be around forever.
Here is a Microsoft prediction to real-life consequence translation table:
X is a fad = X is going to be a fixture in the future of computer technology
X ought to be enough for everyone = X is going to look very insignificant very fast
X infinges on our patents = X is a major threat to us
X (said 36 times in a row) = X is going to start migrating away from us
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I think there is a world market for maybe five tablets.
Aren't fads how most businesses make their money? I mean, if the things consumers bought weren't fads, they wouldn't need to buy new ones very often, would they?
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
...because, as we all know, there is NO market for MP3 players.
At least not for brown ones
The Zune wasn't really bad (it wasn't that good either) but the early defining feature seemed to be the fecal color... that seemed to stick in people's minds.
I don't think MS knows how to be a hardware company. I'm typing on an MS ergo keyboard, which I like, and I guess we can call Xbox/Xbox 360 a success. However, they have way more failures than I can count. They also aren't very good at providing software support for the new directions hardware takes. They're always playing catchup.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I'm inclined to agree. I have some coworkers with iPads, and they're starting to not carry them to meetings in favor of a PaperPad and a pen. They're either awkward to view (too horizontal), or too awkward to type on (too vertical with a case-stand). They're nice for playing angry birds during meetings though.
They failed with their tablets ~10 years ago...
They failed again with their tablets a few years ago then they attached legs to them and failed to sell them as tables...
Microsoft should stick to defending their monopoly and destruction of other companies (Nokia)... It's the only thing they're good at...
Microsoft effectively killed the netbook when they quit releasing versions of XP and forced everyone to move to Windows 7, which had higher memory and drive requirements. By the time you were done with a system that could run Windows 7 well, it wasn't that much cheaper than a regular laptop.
Tablets don't need to run a Microsoft OS. Apple and Google (and now Amazon) are showing you don't need to have a local PC to do most of the work you do with smartphones and tablets.
Obviously, we will never need more than 640k (he says as he types on a 1000 Gbps line, not using his quad-core machine with 8GB DDR3) and the Net is a fad too.
Here's a clue stick - Government Computer News shows about half of all government devices purchased are expected to be tablets like the iPad, iPad2, and iPad3.
Adapt or die.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Netbooks crashed primarily because of MS and the manufacturers got featuritis. Netbooks aren't really sold anymore, I'm not really sure that there is a lack of demand, but as long as nobody is selling a cheap, ultramobile device, it's really hard for demand to develop and be sustained.
I've got an Asus netbook, and apart from the battery life, I love the thing, it's big enough to type on, but small enough to be readily portable. But, then again, it doesn't run Windows, and MS expects to get a share of any netbook sales.
Not only will they be smaller, but I believe they'll incorporate some kind of functionality that will allow them to replace the telephone as well.
Netbooks are laptops with a smaller form factor.
Tablets are smart phones in a bigger form factor.
It appears that size does matter, but in what context is anyone's guess.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
No they didn't. Netbooks are all around us. I see people using the little laptops all the time, and the sales of devices like the Macbook Air seem strong. Netbooks and Tablets are absolutely running a trend roller-coaster, but when the ride finishes I still expect to see them as strong contenders in the marketplace.
The reason why Tablets failed before was that they simply didn't make sense. The OS was terrible (Windows lolwat?), the hardware was big and bulky, the battery life was scary, and the touch screens weren't responsive. Contrast everything I just said with a iPad 2011.
I think dedicated eBook Readers will die. Laptops and Netbooks will continue to merge closer and closer. Tablets and Phones might also merge even more. Ultimately however I think touch screen devices of some form-factor will survive.
Maybe but I don't think so, for a simple practical reason. A centre of a large, wall-mounted screen will be above your eyes. This is indescribably uncomfortable for anything that isn't basically vegging out in front of a TV.
I refuse to use
I'm guessing it's because Microsoft doesn't have a touch-based UI for Windows that they're saying tablets are a fad. They thought the same about the internet and portable mp3 players too. Yes, they had tablet PC's long before others but it was a barely-modified version of XP that simply replaced a mouse with a stylus - it wasn't the same.
They'll get into the market as soon as they can cobble together a "good enough" touch-based UI for Windows and then leave it about 5 years later when they realize they aren't making any headway against already well-entrenched Android and iOS markets.
The Microsoft-dominated era is over unless they can figure out a way to execute at least as well as their rivals.
What I would like to see is a tablet with an attached keyboard. Let's say, a device where the tablet and keyboard are joined by a hinge, so that it can be closed while not in use.
Too late to patent since you can already buy any number of keyboard cases for the iPad.
What do they all have in common? They join the tablet with a keyboard in a case you can close.
Only with these you have the option to take just the screen with you if you like, unlike the ancient inflexible devices known as "laptops".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Only because no one sells them anymore. They kept getting bigger and added spinning disks. I love my dell mini 9, but have no idea what to replace it with other than maybe a macbook air. I am going to be wiping the OS no matter what route I go. I want light, small, and do not want any moving parts. I will use it attached to a real monitor and real keyboard when at work and do any and all heavy lifting on servers.
This seems odd, since Microsoft has been trying to get people into tablets for about 10 years. UMPC/Slates/Etc. I remember this was a keynote item for Bill Gates.
Now someone else actually makes a success out of it, and it's a fad?
That seems like the very definition of sour grapes.
When has Microsoft demonstrated any vision beyond marketing? Microsoft makes profit out of their monopolies (Windows and Office) only. Everything else loses them money. Check out their annual reports if you don't believe me.
I wrote a blog-entry about this.
My karma ran over your dogma
It's not like the tablet fad caught Microsoft completely by surprise:
Bill Gates unveils Microsoft's new Tablet PC in 2002
And as for the internet thing, what you really mean is: Microsoft didn't get into the World Wide Web until 1995. This isn't terribly surprising, since the WWW hadn't been around yet when windows 3.1 was released. At the time, the WWW was one of several possible futures. The one MS first wanted to bet on was the 'Microsoft Network'. Of course, that's not the path history ended up taking, so they had to adapt.
Netbooks crashed primarily because of MS and the manufacturers got featuritis.
Of course it's totally a coincidence the Netbook market dies around the same time the iPad was released.
No relation here, no-sir.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There are two Zombie Technologies that will Just Not Die at Microsoft:
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Netbooks were killed by the simple fact that I can now get a full-size notebook for $350, so why would I want a DVD-less netbook for the same price?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The only truly intuitive interface is the tit.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The iPad is an upscaled iPod Touch with two really big batteries and a bigger screen. (Take a look at the pictures of a disassembled iPad if you don't believe me.)
Most other tablets are just flat netbooks with a touchscreen instead of a keyboard.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Netbooks are fad?
I still use mine all the time.
Or maybe just MS netbooks were fads? Mine runs Linux.
[enjoy warm, smug glow]
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
My idea of an "improved tablet" is one on which web sites cannot distinguish the fact that I'm accessing it on a tablet so that I won't get any more "We're sorry, but we don't have the content rights to display this on mobile devices" messages. Until that happens, I will always consider a tablet as a deliberately gimped PC. (That is typically actually more expensive than a PC.)
Netbooks are cheap laptops with a small form factor. Expensive small notebooks existed for years - for example Sony Vaio or Toshiba Libretto.
Overall, netbooks also are a combination of factors: battery life, price and portability.
Carrying a $199 netbook which can run at least 5 hours from one charge means a lot - it can be carried everywhere and if it breaks, this is not as bad as breaking a $3000 notebook. Having your projects with you (and without carrying a heavy briefcase or worrying of losing an expensive gadget) can sometimes be a big deal.
So, um... what do you use to clean the keyboard afterwards?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
when I worked at at&t I bought the eeepc 701 right when it came out because a small, cheap laptop without a cdrom was exactly what i wanted to carry around. So i got into the elevator with an at&t exec, he looks at the eeepc and with a smirk says "oh that is one of those kids laptops" ... yeah whatever...
that they are not getting better. The new Atoms are just as underpowered as the old ones. They lack most of the features of a modern CPU. They still have no gigabit ethernet, no USB3, no eSATA, no decent horizontal resolution. And Windows 7 Starter is even worse than Windows XP Home.
As a consequence, everybody who wanted a netbook has one, but there is no incentive to upgrade. They will sell again once they get better.
There's a big difference between abandoning a crowded market with meager margins and reaping enormous revenues from a product with outrageous margins like the iPad. Additionally, the hardware is only half the story. The iPad is not so much about the hardware as about the app and media purchasing ecosystem that it provides access to. Apple is the largest music retailer in the world, and collects about 30% of every dollar paid for songs, movies, and applications in this application and media ecosystem. It's not so much about the iPad alone as the bigger picture. Rather than innovating and providing leadership, Microsoft is getting its lunch eaten.
Dedicated eBook Readers serve a purpose that no other device can match, due to their e-ink screens (way easier on the eyes, especially in poor light, and uses hardly any battery power). Unless tablet makers figure out how to have a regular tablet screen that can also become an e-ink screen when needed, I don't see tablets wiping out eBook Readers anytime.
Tablets, on the other hand, well, I haven't quite figured out yet what purpose they serve. I've seen them used in certain business settings (hospitals, for example), and I see the value there. But as a consumer, I just don't see the value. I have a laptop, a smartphone, a digital audio player, and an eBook Reader. These meet all my electronic needs, and while there is some overlap, each device provides something that the others cannot.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
If you look back at MS's history, they generally try to downplay any new innovation they aren't actively in the market with. Smartphones, music players, tablet PCs, etc.
They don't have a tablet (at least not for sale or for show) so they're going to call it a "fad" and hope that keeps buyers from getting one and getting branded on it.
In the meanwhile their R&D department will be mad busy with their photocopiers, trying to make an "improved variation" on whatever they're labeling as a fad. No one believes them, but they're convinced that by simply making the statement, that somehow everyone will believe them and not create a market for the product, giving them time to scramble and rush something out the door in time to catch the wave.
18 months later they will suddenly stop calling it a fad and announce their new product, with surprisingly familiar looking features, plus a ton of additional bloat. Many months later, after delays, price increases, even more bloat, and cutting of key features that were pushed hard in the initial announcement, product will hit the stores. MS will announces this new product will "revolutionize" the market.
Despite outrageous amounts of funding and marketing, it will still bomb because the market has already been captured several years ago by what they were unsuccessful at downplaying as a "fad", it doesn't work like consumers are now expecting it to (even if some features may even work better than their ancestor in the market), is clumsy to use, and few will buy it.
After losing their shirts in a spectacular show of bad retail, someone will then get a clue and less than 6 months after product launch, an announcement will be made that the product has been discontinued. No official numbers will be given as to how much the fiasco cost the company, but inside sources will whisper tales of massive financial loss.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
How can anyone take what Microsoft says seriously?
They keep trying to barge into everyone's market and often fail, largely because they just don't get it - they don't understand the market, the product or the customers, but march in with their own Microsoft Brand and PR bandwagon going full-tilt, withdrawing quietly after a few years of marginal success or outright failure.
XBox is about the only thing they have going, but that didn't come cheaply and the one thing I know from decades as a video gamer - gamers are NOT loyal - as soon as a newer, better game shows up they're off to that platform and the old one is pushed to the back of the closet or flogged on eBay for what they can get.
Take away the revenues generated by The Windows Tax, Office software and Servers and they'd have gone bust a decade ago, with all the other phonus balonus dot coms and all their hubris about reshaping the world.
The one innovation which eludes Microsoft is getting their operating system off the home-brew legacy throttled model it has always been on. It may look glossy, but it's a cow, with security holes galore and all the important things users need to know safely buried in obscurity. At least Apple realized Mac OS was becoming a painfully large snowball to support and switched to a better model. The next version of Windows will again be completely unnecessary and try to copy everything Google has been doing, which will make it a real pain for desktop apps.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The truth of the matter is that Microsoft can not make an ipad-like object without screwing it up in someway.
(Either marketing, pricing, licensing, or bad design)
It takes vision that spans all 4 of these areas.
And they know it. They are completely relegated to XBOX and MS Word.
Netbooks were killed by the simple fact that I can now get a full-size notebook for $350, so why would I want a DVD-less netbook for the same price?
B/C cost is not always the sole selling point for everyones needs.
More features != better.
Apple learned that lesson. MS still hasn't.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
HP dmz1 I believe is basically a netbook. Uses the AMD Fusion processor.
I have one of these, and I love it. It cost less than half what my brother paid for his Envy 14, and it does almost everything I want it to while I'm on the bus or traveling around. 3.5 pounds, 11.6-inch screen, surprisingly comfortable keyboard, all for around $400.
IMO the real reason netbooks have lost is because Atom sucks so hard that it needs separate dedicated hardware to even play HD video. Netbooks were being compared to real computers, and kept coming up short. The new AMD Zacate-based netbooks (or notbooks or whatever you want to call them) are what netbooks should have been in 2009-2010: usable performance, paired with superior battery life and mobility. Nobody expects something that looks like a laptop from 2011 but performs like a laptop from 2002; it just feels slow.
In contrast, the iPad could get away with dirt-poor performance because everyone was comparing it to a smartphone or an iPod Touch. These devices also have dirt-poor performance, but that's okay because it's what you expected from something so small. It's all about managing expectations and expected markets: if you think of the iPad as a really small and lightweight computer then you'll be disappointed by how slow and limited it is, but if you think of it as a giant iPod then it comes out looking pretty good. The difference between netbooks and iPads basically comes down to the former trying to buy a laptop and being disappointed by the Atom's sluggishness, and the later trying to buy an mp3 player and being surprised at everything else it can do.
is a "laptop lite" and for us the primary selling point was in fact the sub-$200 price. It's a Damned Cheap Computer and that's why you buy one—because they're essentially disposable laptops but with adequate performance for most uses. Then you don't mind tossing them in a bag, taking them to the beach, using them on bouncy train rides with the screen hinge flopping, etc.
They can be used in all the places you don't want to risk your much more expensive laptop, and the small size that the constraint of small price imposed was just a bonus. No way I'd pay $300+ for a netbook, but our second netbook was recently acquired on eBay for $75. We didn't mind that it only had a sub-Ghz celeron processor, 512MB of memory, and a smallish hard drive. It runs the latest web browsers fine, and that's all that matters.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Asian manufacturers like Acer and ASUS starting releasing netbooks with versions of Linux on them because it wasn't possible to run Vista effectively on machines with first-generation Atom processors. They couldn't install WinXP on those machines because it had already reached its end-of-life, and MS wanted everyone to move to Vista. MS's partners like Dell and HP wanted nothing to do with netbooks because they feared, rightly I suspect, that these devices would erode the market for their more powerful laptops.
All that changed the day MS decided to extend WinXP licensing solely for netbooks. To protect its partners, MS imposed strict limitations on this license. "Netbooks" were defined by the screen size and limited to 1 GB of memory. Bigger screens or more memory meant no WinXP. Since Microsoft knew it was competing against a product that was free-of-charge, it dropped its OEM price for WinXP on qualifying netbooks to a mere $15 per copy, compared to four or five times that figure for OEM copies of Windows on laptop and desktop machines. Later they developed the crippled "Starter Edition" of Windows 7 to serve the same market and again charged hardly anything for it. It doesn't require a conspiracy theorist to see that these strategies were designed entirely to keep Linux off machines that might end up in the hands of ordinary people.
Well you can imagine what happened after that. The Dells and HPs of the world saw there was a demand for netbooks and began competing with the Acers of the world. People who wandered into Staples or BestBuy suddenly saw small form-factor devices with friendly old XP on them competing with systems offering some flavor of Linux with an unfamiliar UI. Guess which ones sold? Guess which OS comes with netbooks from Acer and ASUS these days?
Nowadays netbooks have 10" and 12" screens and often 2GB of memory. Which operating system are they running? Usually Win7 Home Premium. How much does it cost the OEMs to license that OS? A lot more than $15/copy I'm sure. The higher license fee pushed up the price of netbooks so they're no longer so price-competitive compared to low-end laptops. Dell and HP breathed a sigh of relief.
All this happened years before anyone ever touched an iPad.
1) You can print to a wifi printer (I think some apps are starting to get there.)
1) iOS from 4.1 on I believe, supports printing to a variety of printers, system wide (the app itself can offer printing or you can just take a screen grab and print that). Pretty much all document and note apps on the iPad support printing.
I have a $80 HP printer that's only hooked up over WiFi and the iPad prints to it just fine, with no fuss. There's no setup, it just sees whatever printers are on the network.
2) You can get a lot of different iPad cases that include bluetooth keyboards.
3) $500 is not that much compared to any decent laptop.
Other than weight why spend the same amount as you would on a really good (we're talking quad-core) laptop
It's not just weight, but weight and size.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think Tablets aren't going to last (people will get tired of carrying around something that large just like they don't want to tote around laptops everywhere), but I don't think 'full featured' tablets are the future.
For one, we've *had* laptop replacement tablets for a while as a niche market. It has failed to never get out of the gate I think that's enough information to suggest that it's a dead end. I don't think 4GB is particularly out of reach for tablets, but it's also more than the common user needs. In terms of processor, ARM performance has proven to increase leaps and bounds and is currently in the 'fast enough' category for most users. Of course, most damning, $1,200 is way more than any computing device market will bear nowadays.
For another, *if* Tablets of any sort have any staying power, it's explicitly because of the oversized phone vision that the 'popular' tablets deliver. Many of us who use 'real' computers considered the limited UI of smartphones a necessary evil due to the realities of the screen size. I think the tablets have demonstrated there is a significant market who wanted their computers to act like that the whole time (limited multitasking, one-app on the screen at a time, etc etc).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The one single thing wrong with tablets is - everyone knows what happens to a transparent surface when it's left open to the elements. It gets pitted, scratched, and ugly.
There may be materials that get past that, but that's the perception, folks. They need a cover.
They need to be isolated from dirty fingers, stray noodles, micrometeorites and orbital meatball impacts. Until the public thinks of clear screens as unbreakable, they'll need to think of them as disposable. That may be ideal from a supplier's viewpoint, less so from the buyer's. I don't want one.
If I were a nurse in a ward, my opinion might differ -- the fastidious might see them as "easier to disinfect".
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
More features usually means less well developed features which means worse.
Just bullet points are NEVER a consideration for better.
Apple takes it's time to develop the next generation of features well. Most/all other companies just don't get that.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure