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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."
Microsoft is a software development and licensing company.
At least that's where all the money comes from. The Devices and Services aspects are huge money losing hobbies they've started.
I hope this means the end is near.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
It's not going to be a smooth ride. Microsoft will have to keep an eye on software updates to existing products as it attempts to shift it's position
Other than Xbox MS is largely unproven on the devices front. Surface could be a winner like Xbox or it could be a complete disaster like the Kin.
Windows 8 OS will either be a success or annoy users completely. It seems there's little to no middle ground. If you're gonna have to learn a new OS why does it have to windows?.
They're probably gonna piss off some OEMs as well. In the short term if they're lucky, long term if they're not.
Ballmer's track record is not great. Ballmer completely missed the way things were going with mobile and search. Sure, MS now has competitive products and services (some yet to launched (Surface), some not finished (updates to Windows after it was RTM)), but its behind Google on search and mobile. MS never misses and opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Now we're supposed to believe that Ballmer knows devices and services as well? They're at least three years behind Apple and Google. If they had been on the ball they could have predicted trends and even set trends, they could have had huge profits like apple and market share like google. There's only one reason they haven't. Ballmer.
Even the board knows it, this years bonus for him was 9% less than last year. That's three years in the trot he hasn't made his maximum bonus. Some of that is due to the economy, some of it is because he's simply missed opportunities to create or expand markets.
Watch those corners
Microsoft's mice and keyboards have always been really good - or a better way to put that would be - the old ones I bought years ago are really good. Still using them! I don't know about modern ones. My point? I like their peripherals so there is a chance the tech they make will be good. Software ... another matter.
Microsoft seemed to be heading in this direction, with Microsoft keyboards and mice on the shelves and rumors of a "Microsoft PC," when they were rudely interrupted by the anti-trust suit (which lore attributes to federal judges really detesting IE4).
Now they have resumed this path.
It might work for Apple; will it work for Microsoft? Possibly, especially if their model is licensing their OS and software as a precursor to hooking us up with smart homes and persistent, cloud-based data (or buzzwords of the day).
The signal here is that Microsoft may no longer see the OS as a huge moneymaker, as people shift away from PCs to tablets and the like, and they may also have doubts that people outside business will keep buying Office and other software. I'm skeptical on this; I don't think tablets will replace PCs or that people will stop buying software (usually for the support contracts).
One thing that history seems to make clear: the bigger a company is, the more likely it is that it will become unresponsive to market forces, and drop like Goliath with a head wound.
Ok Microsoft, so you're Hardware and Services now, just like Apple. Now go and price your OS upgrades the same way Apple prices theirs. I can guarantee that you'll see much quicker uptake on new OSes if they're $20 and one purchase covers every device in your house.
I read the internet for the articles.
No, a well managed company does this when it starts, and does it continually throughout the life of the company. It often changes, too. That's all normal, good stuff.
I don't respond to AC's.
Nice troll! Did you write that from your parents' basement?
I don't respond to AC's.
This is like some kind of awesome recursive meme.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Unfortunately for Microsoft, their ability to expect to continue making money of software licensing in the future is constrained by other "devices and services" companies (notably, Apple who started as devices and has been ramping up services, and Google who went the other way around) at commoditizing software in the areas on which Microsoft relies, directly and indirectly, for its software licensing revenue. Even Ballmer can read the writing on the wall with Apple passing Microsoft in 2010 to be the biggest tech firm, and Google passing Microsoft this year in the #2 spot. Whether Microsoft can reinvent themselves successfully remains to be seen, but that their past business model may not be viable much longer is pretty evident.
I think the end of Microsoft-as-we've-come-to-know-it is quite near; whether the end of Microsoft as an independent major player in the tech industry is near is a different issue, though.
MS (and others) always mimic the wrong parts of Apple. Apple products are successful for two reasons (in this order): (1) They provide social status and (2) they provide a good user experience.
People buy Apple products, initially, because of the marketing and the fact that owning such a device elevates their social status. When they're waiting in line at a grocery store, they like the feeling of holding that lovely, shiny device in their hands, knowing others are looking at it, evnious. You absolutely don't get that feeling with a dumbphone, or even most other smartphones. Pretty much the only the phone that will trigger that feeling is a probably Galaxy S3.
The user experience only comes after that fact. It's what keeps customers; that's its only real purpose, business wise. Without both the ability to attract customers, and keep them, Apple products (or any products) won't be very successful.
That's all that there really is to it to Apple's success. They make people want a product, and then they make them want to keep it. Things like "Apple makes their own hardware, so we will too!" or "Apple is a walled garden, so we will be one too!" never work if you don't concentrate on those two things. Everything else is, at most, just a means to an end.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
I don't see Microsoft dying off quite yet. They still rake in an obscene amount of money from the enterprise half of the tech world, and that's where all the money is. After all, what's $50/seat for a consumer OS license when they're raking in $5,000 or more for each Enterprise-tagged SKU?
I can however see them losing the consumer side, and hard. That in turn will start creeping into the Enterprise side of things - first as a trickle (iPhones at work, anyone?) then as a flood.
It'll take about 10 years, but by then I think that unless Microsoft does something drastic and effective, they will be reduced to selling Exchange servers/services/licenses, and that's about it (unless GMail takes over even that...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Microsoft is a monopolistic public utility that sells Windows and Office the way Consolidated Edison sells electricity. Everybody buys it, but nobody particularly likes it.
IBM is not a technology company; it's a multilevel sales organization.
Apple is not a hardware company; it's a software company that bundles its software with large, sleek, phone-shaped license-enforcement dongles.
Google is not an Internet services company; it's an advertising and market research company. So is Facebook.
HP is a printer ink company that's desperately trying to be something else. Anything else.
Oracle is not actually a company; it's actually a newly discovered type of supermassive singularity with a gravitational pull that only affects corporate accounts.
That used to be what MS was good at. They were last to enter after the "innovators" made typical "pioneer mistakes", then MS swooped inand cleaned up. But something happened by about 2002 and they can't do that anymore.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I think the key is creating/using a brand that isn't "Linux."
"Linux" is great but isn't a great name for a commercial product.
As nomadic suggested, Android is already widely accepted by consumers (and developers) and has fantastic brand awareness. That may be the key route to ending the Microsoft monopoly with an open source replacement.
And it's still Linux on the desktop! :)
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
A chair counts as a device. They should start making them. Then as an added service they can make them fly.
The only "service" that MS provides is the kind a bull provides to a cow.
People buy Apple products, initially, because of the marketing and the fact that owning such a device elevates their social status.
I'm getting rather tired of this social status meme. Nobody sells 80 million phones on social status and most people who buy Apple products do so for fairly practical reasons. (perceived ease of use, network effects, halo effects, perceived quality, etc) Apple products aren't rare or hard to get and nobody thinks you are special because you have one. Status isn't elevated unless there is some sort of exclusivity. There is almost no exclusivity with Apple products - people who want one typically go ahead and get one. They're not cheap but they are well within the means of lower middle class families in the US. Apple products are considered cool but not because they are exclusive and certainly not because of a few social climbers.
Only one i would object to is the idea that IBM isn't a technology company. In fact, they still have some excellent technologists, their R&D investments and results are still significant and important - and they file LOTS of patents, and very noticeably the kind that don't make us all swear at the PTO, in that they pass the legitimacy smell test.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
Yes, don't feed the trolls.... but for a car analogy it would be a Ford Fiesta welded in between two Hummers, and only the Fiesta has gas in the tank.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Not everything they choose to do is successful so suddenly they're not a successful company? What kind of logic is that?
My reading of this thread suggests that the GP's logic is more that Ballmer has zeroed in on an area where Microsoft has made considerably less money, and has lost considerably more money, than in the company's core business of software.
From the things I've read as a casual follower of MS's progress, the Zune lost a ton of money, Windows Phone hasn't done all that well (the Kin vanished after months of hype, for instance), and I don't think the XBox has broken even when viewed over the whole history of the console rather than just in any one fiscal year.
Meanwhile, the Windows OS and Microsoft Office software businesses have been moneymakers for decades now.
So the logic appears to be not that "some of Microsoft's operations aren't successful, ergo the company as a whole is unsuccessful" -- instead, it's that "Microsoft is focusing more and more on its lossmaking operations, ergo the company as a whole will be increasingly unsuccessful."
Considering that this move directly threatens partners such as HP and Dell, we could wind up seeing more support from such companies for Linux as they seek to hedge their bets against Microsoft's incursion into the hardware market. I think the software and computer industry could be on the verge of becoming much more interesting.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
There seem to be a lot of CEO's recently that have been put in charge of places that are "too big to fail" that seem to have done their best to prove that nothing, not even a destructive CEO, can finish off the company. HP, Australia's Telstra and QANTAS and many other places have had people that could not have done more damage if they were being paid by a hostile party to destroy the company they were leading. Nokia of course is busy demonstrating that they are not too big to fail :( However MS has enough rusted on customers that they will survive no matter what happens.