Steve Ballmer: We're a Devices and Services Company

Nerval's Lobster writes "According to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's latest shareholder letter (not exactly a gripping read), Microsoft sees itself as a 'devices and services company.' The subsequent 1,200-odd words hammer that point, mentioning software such as Office and Windows 8 largely in the context of tablets and other hardware — and while Ballmer acknowledges the 'vast ecosystem of partners' building a 'broad spectrum of Windows PCs, tablets and phones,' he leaves the door wide open to Microsoft building its own toys in-house. If one takes Ballmer's words at face value, it seems that Surface, the tablet Microsoft's building in-house and promoting as a 'flagship' Windows 8 device, isn't so much a lark but the harbinger of the company's future direction. Whether Microsoft's decision to build its own devices affects its long-term relationship with Dell, Hewlett-Packard and other manufacturing titans remains to be seen. Perhaps Ballmer can take some comfort from Apple, which profited enormously by pursuing the 'we build everything in-house' route. But it's indisputable that a devices-centric approach is new ground for Microsoft."

Comments

Nobody Panic

[scorp1us]

Every time Microsoft copies another company, they fail. The only notable exception is XBOX which they sustained losses for a while in order to develop market share.

Look at the rest of MS copycat products/services:
Hotmail (worst web email experience ever)
Zune (worst brand-name MP3 player ever)
Windows phone 0-7.5/7.8 Worst smart phone OS ever (No multitasking)
Silverlight (worst copy of Flash)
Virtual PC (worst VM, at least QEMU can host multiple architectures)
MS Windows (worst OS2 clone ever)

The problem is that me-too mentality just does;t translate into ground breaking products. They only get as far as "good enough".
Some things I left off the list are Word and Excel. However these happened early enough on that they were clones of DOS programs (WP and Lotus 123) that when they went graphical MS took "proper" ownership of them.