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Microsoft's Surface Caught Windows OEMs By Surprise
MojoKid writes "Microsoft's Surface isn't just an attempt to take on the iPad or an articulation of MS's independent design philosophy — it's a fundamental threat against the OEMs who've spent decades as Microsoft's partners and collectively destroyed the industry's perception of the PC as a high-value product. The adversarial roots run deep. Microsoft didn't tell its partners about Surface until three days before the event and gave only the most minimal details on the product. Only the largest vendors even got a phone call; Asus and Acer, the 4th and 5th largest PC manufacturers worldwide, have stated that they had no idea anything was coming. For OEMs who have spent decades working in lock-step with Redmond, that's deeply unsettling."
HP and Dell are doing just fine killing themselves on their own, don't need Microsoft's help
Apple has taught them well. First locking down the software supply chain (Metro marketplace), now secrecy for new products.
For Microsoft, this isn't so much as a betrayal, as it is survival. Microsoft has spend decades relying upon third-parties innovating hardware in order to sell Windows Licenses. And, especially of late, those third-parties have failed. With the mobile market taking off and those third parties having mediocre mobile hardware AT BEST, Microsoft has no choice than to make a product. Maybe, it will diminish into a mere reference design, but only if those third parties actually get to serious work. This should be a wake up call for HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc., to "innovate or die." Of course, if Microsoft has signed agreements saying they'd never create a competing device, it IS downright betrayal.
Actually I believe this is too bad for MS, they chose wrong time. Now the OEMs actually have an options (Android, Ubuntu and co.) to deliver compeling use experience without MS. The one who can actually loose here is MS, since it can have hard time to compete with gazillions of generic lower priced offerings on the bottom end and iPad on the high end.
The way the story is normally told the scorpion specifically points out that the frog can trust it because stinging the frog would kill them both. The way you tell it, having the frog seemingly rely on the scorpion's promise instead of the scorpion's self interest, makes the frog seem dumb at the beginning.
"Sources close to Microsoft have told us that the software giant built Surface because it was unhappy with the way its traditional partners [such as HP and Dell] weren't innovating around its next-generation operating system."
I wonder why manufacturers might not be "innovating around" windows mobile, or whatever they call it these days. Because there isn't any demand...? Because MS is 5 years too late to the party...?
Because these companies were never innovators to begin with. They were box builders with economies of scale.
"Sources close to Microsoft have told us that the software giant built Surface because it was unhappy with the way its traditional partners [such as HP and Dell] weren't innovating around its next-generation operating system."
I wonder why manufacturers might not be "innovating around" windows mobile, or whatever they call it these days. Because there isn't any demand...? Because MS is 5 years too late to the party...?
cough PCs are commodity resources cough
Seriously, this is like 1973, but with tablets and phones rather than cars - price of gas suddenly goes sky high (from 0.25$US/gallon to about 1.30$US/gallon, shortages abound) the GM, Ford, Chrysler and American Motoros only focused on big V8 engines (think 6L or more displacement) Meanwhile the automakers of the rest of the world, who made cars which could stretch a gallon to 25 or more miles ate their lunch. Took about 10 years for Detroit to sort their junk out.
PCs have been more cores, more clock, more memory, but basically the same old sh*t operating system, just more confusing from release to release. Then the iPhone shows up and reveals not everyone is in love with being chained to a desktop or laptop (which can only choke out a few hours on battery.) Paradigm change.
Early Win XP tablets are clunky and problematic, because the operating system isn't geared to the interface. Most tablets are useless without a keyboard. Then the iPad launches and people find they don't need no steenking keyboard (though still nice to have sometimes, it's not entirely necessary.)
Now the war is in full swing between Google and Apple, which have trampled the laptop and desktop markets, largely because people want to be more portable and more mobile. And there are loads of apps which work great, Android promotes development more openly than Apple. And Microsoft has no answer but some abandoned Slate thingie.
Lot of water under the bridge and now iOS and Android rule the roost, with large customer bases, app stores, consumer acceptance (even lust in some cases.) Microsoft thinks they're going to walk in with these things and get it right on the first try, because their OEM buds were dropping the ball? Not quite.
Fewer people need Microsoft and many are happy to be free of that enigmatic and often incompetent company (Hey, what's a few security holes here and there? How about a few botched OS releases?) Honestly, adios MS.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I know the prevailing Slashdot wisdom about Microsoft partners and prevalent urban legends and fairy tales, but does someone have any hard numbers on how much revenues and profit the OEMs have made with Windows PC over the past 3 decades? A hundred billion? How about they invest some of those profits to try to one up Apple, Microsoft' Surface and Amazon. How is it Microsoft's fault that OEMs are failing to match Apple?
Lets take Compaq:
In November 1982 Compaq announced their first product, the Compaq Portable, a portable IBM PC compatible personal computer. It was released in March 1983 at $2995, considerably more affordable than the Canadian Hyperion. The Compaq Portable was one of the progenitors of today's laptop; some called it a "suitcase computer" for its size and the look of its case. It was the second IBM PC compatible, being capable of running all software that would run on an IBM PC. It was a commercial success, selling 53,000 units in its first year and generating $111 million in sales revenue. The Compaq Portable was the first in the range of the Compaq Portable series. Compaq was able to market a legal IBM clone because IBM mostly used "off the shelf" parts for their PC. Furthermore, Microsoft had kept the right to license the operating system to other computer manufacturers. The only part which had to be duplicated was the BIOS, which Compaq did legally by using clean room reverse engineering at a cost of $1 million.[12][13][14] Phoenix Technologies would shortly follow their lead, but soon "clone BIOSes" were available from many other companies who reverse engineered IBM's design, then sold their version to the PC clone manufacturers
So without Microsoft, Compaq and IBM clones wouldn't exist. What about Dell?
Dell traces its origins to 1984, when Michael Dell created PCs Limited while a student at the University of Texas at Austin. The dorm-room headquartered company sold IBM PC-compatible computers built from stock components.[7] Dell dropped out of school in order to focus full-time on his fledgling business, after getting about $300,000 in expansion-capital from his family.
In 1985, the company produced the first computer of its own design, the "Turbo PC", which sold for US$795.[8] PCs Limited advertised its systems in national computer magazines for sale directly to consumers and custom assembled each ordered unit according to a selection of options. The company grossed more than $73 million in its first year of operation.
The company changed its name to "Dell Computer Corporation" in 1988 and began expanding globally. In June 1988, Dell's market capitalization grew by $30 million to $80 million from its June 22 initial public offering of 3.5 million shares at $8.50 a share.[9] In 1992, Fortune magazine included Dell Computer Corporation in its list of the world's 500 largest companies, making Michael Dell the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company ever.[10]
To get back to your analogy, the frog became a Fortune 500 company thanks to the scorpion. Cry me a fucking river.
What about HTC, the big maker of Android phones? Another poor frog, right?
HTC was founded in 1997 by Cher Wang, HT Cho, and Peter Chou.[6] Initially a manufacturer of notebook computers, HTC began designing some of the world's first touch and wireless hand-held devices in 1998.[7] The company has a rich heritage of many "firsts", including creating the first Microsoft-powered smartphone (2002) and the first Microsoft 3G phone (2005).[6] Their first major product was made in 2000 and was one of the world's first touch screen smartphones.
Not to mention the fact that all this lead to prices going from about $5000 each to a very decent machine for $500 and made them affordable to the masses including the 3rd world leading to the PC and internet revolutions which everyone is reaping the benefits of(Including Apple which switched to x86 to drive down costs). If you think Apple hardware is exp
This space for rent.
That's pretty much it.
Microsofts business model for years was to build software that could run on a wide variety of hardware. They'd do some mock up non commercial things to show off concepts, and then leave it up to all of the 3rd party teams to either develop their own ideas, or to pick up on microsofts ideas and role with it.
And that's why we've all been using mTablets since 2000, because Bill Gates told us tablets were the future in 2000, with a half decent demo in 2002 of something that I think was even keyboardless (in the MS parlance that made it a slate).
Now here's the strange part. I've had tablets (convertible tablets) since 2005. Toshiba, HP. The latter has working touch on it, but the virtual keyboard input was always shitty, given that it was connected to a keyboard already that's not a huge surprise. So microsoft and partners *could* have had the iPad equivalent as early as 2003. And didn't, unless they didn't get touch working nicely until 2008. But either way, the manufacturers didn't innovate.
Surface is microsoft trying to either give their manufacturers a swift kick in the arse and shame them into doing something. Or its microsoft deciding that it can't rely on the manufacturers anymore, and it's going to do it itself (think xbox). A microsoft equivalent of the google nexus line of thinking is actually really compelling. Not so much because I'd want to buy one, but because it might make everyone else wake up and start making things worth buying.