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Microsoft Said To Limit Device Makers' Partners
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) has asked chipmakers that want to use the next version of Windows for tablets to work with no more than one computer manufacturer."
The article also said, "Seeking to limit variations may help Microsoft speed the delivery of new Windows tablets by keeping tighter control over partners and accelerating development and testing. Though the program isn't mandatory, the restrictions may impede chip- and computer makers from building a variety of Windows-based models to vie with Apple Inc. (AAPL)'s iPad... In past versions of Windows software, chipmakers could work with multiple computer manufacturers. "
This reminds me of standard oil making deals with railroads, to not carry oil for companies that competed with standard oil, or to charge those other companies much more.
As I understand it, these actions by the old robber barons brought about the Clayton Act, and the Sherman Act.
So why are the new robber barons allowed to get away with such abusive, anti-competitive actions?
Limiting hardware and exercising very stringent control has worked for Microsoft so well with Windows Phone 7 and was obviously the reason their OSes didn't sell.
The reason DOS and later Windows took off was exactly that every Tom, Dick and Harry from the shadiest backroom company could slap together something to sell. Many of those things didn't sell, many of them were and maybe still are atrocious piece of kit. But they simply swamped the market, drove prices to rock bottom and made MSFT's software have 90%+ marketshare, made the current and former CEOs of Microsoft multibillionaires, etc. Additionally they drove Apple nearly to extinction since they just couldn't compete with true mass production.
But this time around everything is different. Learning from Apple means more profit and success!
I can only imagine that their goal is to limit the variety of tablets on the market in a vain attempt to make their partners design a few high quality devices. At this point, what Microsoft should be worried about is making sure that .NET and their other tools work exceedingly well on those ARM processors so that developers won't end up pulling out their hair trying to maintain compatibility.
Oddly, this is also Microsoft deliberately giving up what was originally their biggest selling point against Apple -- the PC won because you could buy cheap clones from any number of manufacturers, and they'd all run DOS and Windows, whereas anything from Apple would have exactly one choice of hardware manufacturer and OS provider: Apple.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Yeah, the market has completely flipped on that aspect. Style and marketing are what dominate now, and Microsoft will always be behind on fashion. They can never be 'cool', and this effort won't help them one bit. They should stick with cheap and encourage more bootlegging of their OS (piracy, I believe, is what the kids call it today), like the old days.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
No, they just don't want manufacturer's putting out crap products like with what is happening with Android. Microsoft needs to be able to establish their tablet OS as a premium product in order to compete against iOS, WebOS, Honeycomb, and Blackberry. Google doesn't care if their product is premium or not, just as long as people use it. They make their money on advertisement, not off of the OS directly. Microsoft is in a different position entirely. If they can ensure all the Windows tablet products are quality AND still give consumers a choice, they'll be able to compete directly against the Android tablet market and all the other options at the same time.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
That had more to do with IBM using an architecture they opened up than Microsoft in a lot of ways ... the way the arrangement was set up, Microsoft was selling a copy with every piece of hardware up until about 2000 or whenever it was, because it was required to be sold with the PC. (And, since everyone else was using it, that's what people needed.)
Some might argue that Microsoft got where they are today because everyone who bought a PC also was forced to buy MS-DOS -- it wasn't necessarily a superior product at the time. In fact, there were better things that ran on the same hardware at the time. It took a court ruling to say that Microsoft wasn't legally entitled to a sale every time someone bought a PC -- but many of us remember buying a PC for Linux and knowing that Microsoft was getting paid anyway.
For years, the biggest selling point for Microsoft was that an Apple computer cost more than a white-box clone of an IBM PC, and that business primarily used IBM compatible.
Microsoft have never been advocates of open platforms ... they just grew to prominence because of one. If Microsoft could have locked everything down earlier, they would have.
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No I would disagree. Android has a larger user base then Apple does because it is a "universal" OS for smart phones and mobile devices. Apple has a strong holding in part of the marking and stile but mostly due to the fact it has the most apps. Back in the Dos days When my family went to get their first computer they looked at Apple, Amiga, Commodore, and IBM/IBM Compatibles. They liked the Amiga, the Apple is what I used in school, the Commodore was OK too... But they went with an IBM Compatible... Not because of the hardware openness but because when you looked at the store you see 1 shelf of Apple, Amiga, and Commodore programs and 3 or 4 isles of IBM/Compatible software.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Sadly, now is better than ever for vendors to give Microsoft the finger and go for other options yet we probably won't see it happen. Precisely because Microsoft is still, ten years later, a monopoly that can crush a vendor if they don't do what Microsoft says.
I think more likely that a vendor with laugh at Microsoft, spit in their face, and go with Android. Microsoft is a complete joke in the mobile segment.
I liked Windows Mobile for a while, I think they were the only non-Nokia smartphones even available for years (have never liked Nokias for some reason) - but when Android started gathering momentum, I switched and have not looked back.
which is totally what she said
Apple is popular now in one segment of the market. Meanwhile, they are still a relative failure in their legacy products. Microsoft might want to consider that Apple might not be a darling for forever or not even a terrribly long time. Apple is already starting to see an erosion of their market share where brands aren't terribly important and turnover is quick.
Frankly, Microsoft isn't very good at being an Apple and probably never will. It's just not how the company operates.
Pretending to be another Apple will probably end badly for Microsoft.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Depending on how long you've been around, what you call "style and marketing", some people call "usability and good design".
I remember DOS from the mid 80s, and have used the earliest versions of Windows, Linux, old Macs, and a bunch of different flavors of UNIX.
My personal perception is that my iPad and my iPod are easy to use, do exactly what I want them to, and don't suffer from some of the frustrations I've come to associate to Microsoft products over the years. (I like iTunes, and I've hated Windows Media Player for just as long.)
I've got Vista, XP, FreeBSD, and Linux machines at home. I'd still like to have a Mac.
IMO, there's substance behind Apple's style ... and sometimes, Microsoft's style lacks substance. At the end of the day, it's what people are happy with -- and I have enough painful memories of Microsoft stuff to still be leery of them.
Hell, my retail copy of Vista Home Ultimate still makes me run into something where Microsoft deliberately crippled it so that I'd buy the more expensive version -- so, it is less capable for networking, and the built in back up manager lets me have exactly one scheduled backup set. There's no reason for this, other than Microsoft trying to carve up the market and get as much money from me as they can -- especially since all that was in there, but they took the time to cripple it.
Microsoft's operating systems have gotten vastly better over the years ... but that doesn't mean I don't occasionally run into something and wonder WTF they were thinking.
They've tried to mirror Apple's ease of use with frustrating wizards and dialog boxes that don't always help. Anything but the most basic error, and their wizards fall apart (because, really, I know my network cable is plugged in ... if that's the best help you have, it's useless). Once you exceed the most basic stuff, their attempts to make an easy user experience degrade to "something bad happened, contact your admin".
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Anybody read the story and is confused by this restriction? The reason I am confused is that normally the chipmakers are not the ones driving the integration of devices. The device manufacturers like Acer, Apple, Samsung, etc are the ones that pick and integrate the hardware and software. The chipmakers may work with the device makers but they ultimately are not in charge and possibly don't care. The chipmakers care mostly about selling as many chips as possible to as many device makers. Even Samsung sells chips to companies that compete with Samsung's devices. Anybody understand this better than I do?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Apple went it alone, and while they've had their share of heartache, they eventually built the shining behemoth they are today.
Microsoft never did that. *IBM* built their market, and Microsoft rode in on the coattails. (See the history of PC-DOS vs MS-DOS.) They certainly took advantage, but *THEY* did not build the market, IBM did.
As far as I can tell, they've NEVER built ANY market. They've always come in as a Johnny-Come-Lately. The 900 lb gorilla J-C-L, but never-the-less, not the innovator.
In the past few years it seems their entire business plan could be summed up simply as "Whatever Google is doing, plus Windows and Office".
Their stock has floundered under the leadership, or lack thereof, of Steve "Monkey Boy" Ballmer. They need a new direction, and since all they know how to do is emulate, they might as well emulate the most successful company they can find.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
No I would disagree. Android has a larger user base then Apple does because it is a "universal" OS for smart phones and mobile devices.
Wait, you are actually serious? Android is still largely a smart phone OS whereas iOS (previously know as iPhone OS) started out on the original iPhone but quickly came out on the iPod Touch and then the iPad last year. Apple has a huge head start over Android on tablet sales and whether you look at install base or marketshare of iOS devices versus all android devices Apple still has a huge lead. You seem to have forgotten about iPod Touches and the huge lead Apple has with the iPad and iPad 2 when you made the bold statement suggesting that Android had a larger user base than Apple.
I would argue that Android is less "universal" because Google had kept Android marketplace off non-phone devices like android based music players and non-3G tablets in the past whereas the Appstore was on all iOS devices as soon as it was introduced.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Hmm, I always thought it was pricing that put the IBM compatibles on top... But then, what do I know? I went with a Mac IIx because that's what the art department used
I really don't know the specifics, but sometimes a smaller user base can produce a greater flow of revenue for a particular company. While Google's strategy might generate more cash flow overall, they get a smaller percentage, and their business model is built on advertising, which could prove to be more stable on the long run than Apple's fickle market segment.. In the future, we might find out who buys out whom. Personally, I think Google will indeed come out on top, and Apple will become like their 'gold card' appliance for the emo segment of their market :-)
Microsoft's attempts to lock their stuff down with cost them big time. They will have move to the opposite direction if branding is really important, otherwise the only way to make money with them is shorting their stock until they end up as as small as SCO and patent/copyright trolling becomes their primary business model.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
The other side of the coin says that Google is getting a bad rep (whether or not deserved) by not exerting the same control that Apple does over its hardware AND software base.
Microsoft is WAY behind the market, and needs to catchup. Using that good old Jobs zen approach of cutting away the distractions might help them catch up. This of course, means that all of the other leaden madness that ties them down is somehow assuaged. But comparing them to SCO is a non-starter. Microsoft probably helped finance SCO just to be a PITA to the FOSS movement. But SCO's market cap wasn't even statistically relevant to Microsoft's. Like them or hate them, Microsoft has unbelievably high cash resources (even after buying Skype) to digest or kill what it wants.
BTW, "emo" is only a fraction of what motivates people to buy Apple stuff.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I think Android has a large install base because Android phones are cheaper. AT&T has 4 Android phones under $20, T-Mobile has 4 free phones, and Sprint has 2 free phones (all with 2 yr contract.) My mom, dad, and aunt don't care if you root or jailbreak your phone. They want a cheap phone that can email, browse the web, and show off picture of the grandkids. Their is a lot more non-geek user than geek users; they don't care about the underlying technology, they just want a cheap phone.
I think the Osbourne effect must have something to do with your system biting the heads off bats and mumbling incoherently.
The Osborne effect is probably what you meant.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
It'll also bite them to call the tablet OS "Windows 8" if there is also a PC OS called "Windows 8".
What Apple did which was smart marketing, was not to use the "OS X" brand for the tablet/phone, even though iOS is indeed based on OS X. They called it something completely different, so customers will never think "Oh, my iPad runs OS X, therefore I can run $RANDOM_MAC_APP on my iPad!"
What will happen is people will buy ARM-based Windows 8 tablets and find most applications for Windows 8 won't actually run because they are Intel binaries (and most apps for Windows aren't .NET so .NET won't save them). So the early adopters will voice their disappointment that their Windows 8 tablet doesn't run most Windows apps. Now if Microsoft didn't insist on calling their tablet and phone OS "Windows", they could break this association and set different expectations.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
That had more to do with IBM using an architecture they opened up than Microsoft in a lot of ways ...
Indeed this is very true.
In the mid-80s there were a number of machines on the market which ran MSDOS but were not strictly PC compatible, for example the ACT Apricot F1, but these all fell by the wayside as not all software played by the rules and expected either a specific memory layout or specific type of graphics card (e.g. MDA, Hercules or CGA) to work. This was true of Lotus 1-2-3 and early versions of MS Word, where you needed specially modified versions to run on the Apricot.
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
Nah, OS/2 died because of its stellar Windows compatibility.
Once it could run almost every Windows app, It had two main advantages over Windows itself - it was more stable, and it could also run OS/2 apps. The thing is, at that point there was also zero incentive for an app developer to build a separate OS/2 version of their software and voluntarily limit their market.
This meant that the supply of good OS/2 software dwindled. Soon, most software was written for Windows. This meant that the practical differences between OS/2 and Windows were that OS/2 was more stable, and also that it was more expensive.
When tasked with cutting expenses, it became very hard to justify buying OS/2 for corporate use when Windows was "stable enough" and ran "all the same software." Thus OS/2's death knell was sounded. This is also why, IMO, OSX will never run Windows apps natively - Parallels is enough of a threat there.
FWIW I still have my old conference button: "OS/2 for PS/2 - Half an operating system for half a computer." Somewhere...
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Now two eyes scanned the horizon for the tiny penguin fighters.
Again, it's all about perception and what you want out of it.
To me, iTunes is what I use to manage my media, and is a convenient way to manage my iPod and my iPad -- it all works the same, and it's all in one place. I've also been using it for around 10 years now.
When I bought my iPad, I'd owned iPods for a long time ... plug it in, select which movies and music to sync, ready to go in 20 minutes. Nothing new to install, just another device. I can manage as many devices from iTunes as I want to.
Just out of curiosity, what do you perceive has changed or is deficient? To me, the interface has mostly remained the same for as long as I've been using it. I actually like the fact that it's all integrated ... but maybe because that's the way I expected it to be. Right now I've got four iPods and an iPad, all sync'd to the same library ... adding a new one takes precisely zero work.
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Apple's monosystem helps Apple because it keeps their support options limited, rules out funky hardware and mysterious interactions between odd combinations of hardware and software. Their software can be exquisitely tailored to very specific hardware.
But the only way this could help Microsoft would be for Microsoft to design very specific hardware. The fact that they have multiple hardware vendors who are not under their control means this business model won't help them. You might extrapolate and say it would help the individual hardware vendors, but it won't, because they have no control over Microsoft's software.
There's also a very simple rule for things like this. If you have to dictate unpopular terms to companies where there is sufficient competition for the companies to make intelligent decisions on their own, because their very survival is at stake, then your dictated terms are NOT in the best interest of said companies. The same rule applies to people, too, with s/survival/happiness/g. If Microsoft feels the need to pressure these companies against their better judgement, Microsoft is doing something wrong, which is their usual modus operandi: when in doubt, be arrogant and stupid.
Infuriate left and right
OS/2 died because IMB's advertising (In Europe, anyway) was so cr*p that it actually hindered sales. Your button illustrates that the name was an obstacle that was unlikely to overcome even by good marketing. (Yes, I had one of those buttons too, but also ran an OS/2 support BBS (on OS/2)
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And half the Xbox library doesn't run on Xbox 360. And Windows 3.1 apps don't run on Windows Vista 64-bit or Windows 7 Starter or Home Premium 64-bit. (I haven't had a chance to try them in Windows XP Mode on Windows 7 Professional.)
So which store are you buying your Windows 3.1 apps from? We're not even talking about old Windows apps here, we're talking about ordinary everyday Windows apps that you buy and try to install on your tablet and it doesn't work.
And while I haven't tried it, I strongly suspect that 32-bit Windows 3.1 apps will run on 64-bit Windows 7; it's the 16-bit apps that can't run on a 64-bit x86.
Yet. If Windows 8 is really intended to unify Windows NT and Windows Phone, then perhaps Microsoft will require all apps carrying a "designed for Windows 8" logo to be rewritten for Silverlight or XNA, just like it already requires of all apps for Windows Phone 7 or Xbox Live Indie Games.
Yeah, that'll work. 'I bought this Windows game and it won't run on my tablet 'Look on the back of the box, does it say it's designed for Windows 8? No, see, it won't work.' 'But it's Windows, why won't it work?'.
Microsoft have built their fortune on backwards compatibility; there's no reason for an average user to buy a Windows tablet if it can't run their Windows programs.
Windows 7 was Released To Manufacturers (RTM) on July 22, 2009. Windows 8 is scheduled for sometime in 2012. So three years, which is actually a totally normal span of time for Microsoft to release a new OS. It took five years between XP and Vista, so if you're used to that, three years for a new MS OS seems like a really short time span. Windows 7 has seen a very rapid uptake, but the problem is that there are a LOT of Windows XP computers out there. And until those computers die, lots of people will likely use XP. Most consumers will never upgrade their OS, they just use whatever their old computer came with. However, every new computer is sold with Windows 7 these days, and people are generally happy with it. You're not seeing much of the XP downgrades like you did with Vista.
Windows 8 (or whatever MS decides to call it) will be a desktop replacement for Windows 7, and will ALSO be available in an ARM version (or versions) for tablets. You hear a lot about the new Windows 8 ARM version (and less about the desktop OS version) since an ARM version of Windows has never been widely available before now. Microsoft saw the writing on the wall and realized that desktop Windows just is too fat and bloated to run on the new tablets. I know this from experience - I have a Windows XP convertible tablet (I'm using it now) and while it works OK as a tablet with an input pen, hardly anyone at my work actually uses it in that configuration - desktop software just isn't designed to be used with a pen. And the battery life stinks compared to an ARM-based tablet. With dual batteries, the best we can expect from our tablets is about 6-7 hours. The iPad (and other ARM-based tablets) can get over 12-16 hours constant use.
In my opinion, you're going to see the OS stats change drastically from XP to 7 in the next year or so. Businesses for the most part gave Vista a pass - plus during the recent recession, a lot of businesses gave any kind of OS or hardware upgrades a pass. But XP is looking a little dated at this point, and a lot of them can no longer put off upgrades. Businesses are starting to upgrade - and it's to Windows 7 they are upgrading to. (Especially since MS no longer sells XP licenses or provides much support.) The fact that Windows 7 SP1 came out recently is a definite plus, since some businesses wait until the first Service Pack to jump into a new OS. At my work (a medical practice), all our new computers are getting Windows 7 64-bit, and we've had very few problems with it.