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Why Eric Schmidt Is Wrong About Microsoft Not Mattering Anymore
First time accepted submitter Gumbercules!! writes "Eric Schmidt said he believes there is a 'Gang of Four' technology platform leaders — Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook — Microsoft isn't one of them. I wrote about why I believe he's wrong and what it might say about Google's weaknesses. From the article: 'It's no secret that Microsoft have utterly failed to make significant roads into the mobile market place. Windows Phone 7 has approximately no marketshare (ok they have live 5% or so) and this has actually gone down over the last year. It's also no secret that Microsoft have failed to gain any semblance of "cool" and that they're also managing to drag Nokia down with them. It's not even a secret that nearly everyone who looks at the new Windows 8 interface-formally-known-as-Metro doesn't like it. However this isn't the whole story.'"
Facebook is not one of them but Microsoft.
You can see it from their price history.
All four of the companies mentioned are walled-in gardens.
Ballmer and out-of-control, boy-billionaire eccentricities including management implementations, R&D based on petty jealousies and magical thinking are to blame for MS' slow, steady decline. Stick a fork in MS, it's done insofar as stock value as far as staking its entire hopes for the future on legacy Windows and Office market bases.
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Why would I buy a laptop or a PC for my staff ever again I could buy them a single tablet – or even pocket sized phone – that just connects to a dock or cable and viola - it’s now a fully fledged PC, running all my corporate software, legacy or otherwise on a full sized monitor with keyboard and mouse.
This paragraph proves that this guy has no idea what he's talking about.
A tablet has a completely different user interface with swipe gestures and a crappy keyboard.
Why would I want to run legacy windows applications on it that already had in many cases godawful overcomplicated user interfaces with tiny menus and microscopic meaningless icons.
Legacy photoshop on a windows tablet?
Or standard Excel or Word with a monstrosity of control toolbars/ribbons with gazillions of tiny controls?
Not going to happen.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Microsoft is making money. Lots of it. Facebook has a really good idea on how to make money.
Make your predictions about MS failing...there's evidence to suggest they are going the way of the dinosaur. Facebook's Golden Goose on the other hand has yet to lay eggs.
Amazon and Facebook are more at the mercies of companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google than anything else. What a crazy idea that they push technology. Having a good selling tablet makes you an leader in computing? Has the industry really become that volatile?
and I've yet to find the part where he actually explains why.
Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, HP, if you look at it from a business point of view. Apple is a bit cornered here with only the iphone / ipad products, but people seem to like them. MS is obvious: software, Cisco runs most of the networks, and HP is popular w desktops & printers. On second thought, maybe we should swap out apple for IBM here too. Business sales are far more established, less trendy, and without looking up statistics on it, are a lot more $ than consumer sales.
Yet another "Please come read my blog post where I totally miss the point of what someone said, but read it anyway so I can get some ad revenue" story on Slashdot.
I read the article. It boils down to "Microsoft may make a comeback so they matter". Given the lack of anything other than speculation in the article - the author could've just as easily replaced "Microsoft" with "RIM". I mean, really - we should expect Windows tablets to make a strong showing simply because they can run Windows applications? Then why didn't all the old Windows tablets end up ruling the roost?
Microsoft isn't a game-changer anymore. Sure, it's possible they'll rebound - after all, Apple was in the same boat in the 1990s. But they haven't demonstrated any reason we should give them the benefit of the doubt.
#DeleteChrome
as long as there is business, there is microsoft. as far as facebook, the golden goose just shit all over the dinning room table.
Something something Visual Studio something something.
Now pay me!
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
An article about how wrong he is.. but no link to his actual comments? Really?
http://allthingsd.com/20121010/live-from-new-york-walt-mossberg-kara-swisher-interview-eric-schmidt/
Schmidt: Something unusual has happened. All four companies are networks/platforms generating enormous scale effects. We’ve never had that before: Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Google. All different, all competitors, all making enormous investments.
Swisher: You left out Microsoft:
Schmidt: Deliberate. ...
Mossberg: Why did you keep Microsoft out of the Gang of Four?
Schmidt: They’re a well-run company, but they haven’t been able to bring state-of-the-art products into the fields we’re talking about yet.
8:23 pm: Schmidt: The Android-Apple platform fight is the defining contest. Here’s why: Apple has thousands of developers building for it. Google’s platform, Android, is even larger. Four times more Android phones than Apple phones. 500 million phones already in use. Doing 1.3 million activations a day. We’ll be at 1 billion mobile devices in a year.
Schmidt: We’ve not seen network platform fights at this scale. The beneficiary is you all, the customer, globally. “This is wonderful.”
8:25 pm: Compare this to the PC industry. Phone user population is six billion, one billion smartphone users. Much bigger than the PC industry — maybe a billion, 1.5 billion installed.
Every month, quarter, year, the growth rate of mobile adoption exceeds everyone’s expectations. The phones become so useful that “it’s good enough for normal people” in lieu of a PC, for day-to-day events. Years ago, “people like myself, we missed that.”
1) It's Eric Schmidt. of course he's biased.
and
2) he didn't seem to be specifically talking about mobile. Facebook, Google+, etc.
So it's laughable that 100m apple phones, or 500m android phones is a significant platform.. but the OS used on 95% of a billion PCs somehow is not.
Microsoft is relevant today the same way that railroads are relevant. It will continue to be part of the infrastructure for a long, long time, but only as a necessary evil and a relic of the past.
Eric Schmidt has spend a lot of time competing against Microsoft. I think he's mostly right. Microsoft has only been able to prosper through monopoly tactics and those won't work anymore. They come out with a lousy version 1.0 to keep competitors away, refine it some through versions 2 and 3, then version 4 becomes useful. They can't even think about that strategy now because someone else came out with version s 1, 2, and 3.
Microsoft is still dominant in the word processing and spreadsheet markets. Unfortunately, they'll probably lose that franchise, given the rise of PDF for interchange, and their unwillingness to port their products to either Android or iOS. Someone with deep pockets, probably Google, will come along and take those markets from them.
There's also a lot of back office software that uses their servers, databases, and development tools.But those markets will never grow as quickly as the consumer end.
They won't be going away any time soon, but if they're ever going to get back in to growing markets, they need to change radically. In the end, no company that size will turn on a dime, and its not clear whether there's still time for them to get back in the game.
Play it cool, play it cool, 50-50 fire and ice.
In exactly what ways is Facebook a technology platform leader that can be placed adjacent to Apple, Google, or Amazon. I'll buy Amazon. They have Kindle, but even without Kindle there's Amazon's web and cloud services, plus their supply chain management with all the technology that supports it, but Facebook? Facebook is still nothing more than a virtual platform that depends completely on existing platforms. Apple, Google, and Amazon can coexist independently in their own spaces. Facebook is a download, whether it's via browser to your personal computer or to your mobile device, it's still a download. Facebook does have its tech too. Something has made Zynga games successful and a seamless experience on Facebook, but Facebook has nothing that its competitors or its contemporaries lack except clicks. MySpace's luck with clicks and Facebook's constant stock devaluation illustrates just how easy it can be for Facebook to slip away. Microsoft has numerous platforms that interact with each other and is showing signs of realizing that today's market wants enterprise connectivity with consumer style, something Google and Apple have known. I would say that this "gang of four technology platform leaders" would best be described as a "gang of four attention leaders".
From the article:
All the apps that matter to most users (and virtually all businesses) can be run on Windows just fine, thanks (in fact most exclusively run on Windows). So why have an Android tablet and an Android phone, plus a Windows laptop and / or PC. Why not just have the one device to rule them all? At the very least, Windows 8 stands poised to decimate Android tablet sales overnight. As I mentioned in my Microsoft Office article, running genuine productivity software on a tablet is still something of a rarity (emphasis mine), while Microsoft’s Surface Tablet is the first tablet device that’s aiming at exactly this market, first and foremost.
Perhaps the most common business "app" would be Microsoft's office suite. No one is going to be creating powerpoints, word documents, excel sheets, etc. on a tablet or a mobile phone. The tablet is just not designed for that. You need a keyboard and mouse (or the other option is some massive investment into training people to deal with no keyboard/mouse). Windows 8 stands to be the laughing stock of OS's if they do not address usability issues on the desktop. Until then, I only see it being acceptable on a tablet -- or on desktops with fingertouch input displays
The author pretty much defeated his own argument with: running genuine productivity software on a tablet is still something of a rarity -- it will remain for pretty much any application needing quick input from a keyboard/mouse.
Microsoft already has a stranglehold in one market, and that is anything enterprise related. Anything E-mail related has to work flawlessly with Exchange.
Same with AD. Even Linux installations end up having to have some form of AD compatibility if they are to be allowed in the data center.
After the data center, Microsoft does still control the desktop. We don't consider desktops that much, since there are tons of other devices, but MS is slowly clenching its fist. First was product activation. Now, Windows logo machines have to have UEFI boot, and anything ARM based have to have UEFI boot, and no way to turn it off to boot any other OS. I wouldn't be surprised that in a future version of Windows, x86 joins the ARM platform at being Windows-only in order to sport a logo.
Of course, don't think Microsoft is out of the phone arena. I mentioned this a few weeks ago. MS can completely wrest control of most of the smartphone market in a few steps:
1: Create a protocol that supersedes ActiveSync. This protocol would be copyrighted, patented, trademarked, and IP protected many ways. It would also be used for protected content and documents as well. That justifies DMCA protection.
2: Justify to PHBs and Federal regulators why this new protocol is more secure, in effort to get people to move to this. On the other end, drop support for ActiveSync as much as possible, similar to how IP over IEEE1394 met its end in Windows Server 2008.
3: License the protocol out as need be. Apple likely would license it. Everyone else would be left out in the cold.
4: Actively go after anyone reverse engineering the protocol under the WIPO/DMCA guidelines (since it is used for DRM.) DMCA would be a hammer used against individuals, patent violations for larger organizations.
5: No "?????" needed. MS would own the enterprise smartphone market, lock/stock/barrel. The only thing MS might have to deal with is the EU (and they can always make a version of Exchange just for that geographic region), but in the US, this would completely shut down Android from the enterprise now and in the future.
Which could happen soon, Microsoft won't have a business model at all. Currently Microsoft is being floated by patent extortion. If that ends, they are in big trouble.
I left Microsoft last year because of several reasons. One of those reasons was that I found them no longer interesting. They have missed the boat on mobile, Internet, and hardware. The Xbox is a loss leader. They give them away at Microsoft stores with the purchase of a new PC.
I worked for Microsoft because I wanted to see what it was like. I spent years before MS working with Windows, Unix, Linux, BSD, and OS X. I come home to a Linux laptop. It just works. No need for defrag, no need for AV, no need to reboot, no slowness after a few months. I move everything to Linux if given the chance. I tell everyone about Linux. It's been my default desktop since 1998. Legacy crap has killed MS. They are relevant for only so much longer. When software like office suites and others become de facto cloudware, MS is screwed. This is why they are rushing to reinvent themselves. US companies are viable, on average, about 40 years. There are exceptions. MS is hitting 40 pretty quickly. Notice IBM? They are now a services company. HP is heading that way. Apple is viable for some time -- until a real competitor hits the market with an iPhone killer. It will happen. The other four companies are useful for now. Sooner or later they all fall.
If Microsoft do this right, it’s going to be game changing – and right now, Google doesn’t have an answer for it, that I can see.
Microsoft doesn't have to do anything right. In fact they don't have to do anything at all, just wait, until technology miniaturizes enough that you can run desktop business apps in a tablet or phone hardware format. The portable device space has been all about device and feature consolidation, and I don't expect that trend to suddenly reverse because Google excluded Microsoft from some list they made up.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Their past strategy insures that business will continue to use a Microsoft OS as long as they need access to their legacy documents exactly as they were created. With their purposely none standard formats Microsoft has effectively locked in anyone that doesn't want to spend massive amounts of time and money to insure that all documents converted to a different format are actually as they were created. They don't have to be Good, and they don't care if they are liked are not, because they have your balls in a vise!
What horse shit. They may not matter in search or mobile due to their current market share, but I'd speculate Research in Motion is a great example of how one day you are on top, the next you are bottom of the heap. MSFT has been churning out desktop and server operating systems, enterprise applications and CRM/ERP solutions for as long as I can remember. With further penetration into the virtualization market I'd say MSFT has a bright future and an obviously consistent and impressive track record. Remember, MSFT was piling up hundreds long before google, facebook and amazon even existed.
Long live Slashdot!
Why would I buy a laptop or a PC for my staff ever again I could buy them a single tablet – or even pocket sized phone – that just connects to a dock or cable and viola - it’s now a fully fledged PC
What I don't get is the requirement for a viola to go with the cable...?
Anybody who can write that "iOS is static and hasn’t improved since 2007" has no idea what he's talking about. He's writing on an Android-oriented site, so I can certainly understand why he would come from the point of view that Android is the best. That's a reasonable opinion, even if I disagree. But to claim that iOS has remained the same as it was in 2007 isn't just a disagreement about opinions. It's factually mistaken, and it's sheer idiocy. It's hard to give credibility to someone who claims to believe that.
Microsoft's biggest revenue sources are still alive and well
MS SQL and Office
In my opinion, in the computing word,
The powerhouses are
Google, Apple, Adobe, Oracle, Microsoft
To be honest
Facebook is losing users everyday and while they have a lot of dominance they can't be a force in the world of computing. What they do or don't won't matter much to other parts of the IT world
Amazon's biggest competitor is eBay
I can't believe Schmidt would group Facebook, a company who can't figure out how to make money, in with Google, Apple, and Amazon, who are revenue monsters. Just because Facebook has it's own movie doesn't mean they are guaranteed to avoid the fate of MySpace. Facebook doesn't sell anything, they make their living on the backs of their users who don't read the privacy agreements. Soon enough, there will be a different 'cool' community site and that will be the end of it.
Microsoft have failed to gain any semblance of “cool”
I don't think that Microsoft ever had cool. Microsoft rose to prominence not by being cool but by ensuring that their OS and utility applications became the default Business and Home standards.
New, layman computer buyers have had little choice but to send some money to M$ with every new machine they bought for most of the past 20 years. These people weren't buying "Cool" gadgets though. On the whole they were buying computers. Computers for their homes, school, work, internet connections - computers that happened to come with Microsoft products running on them.
Their vast OEM agreements with all major computer manufacturers and Getting Word and Excel to be ubiquitous with Word processor and Spreadsheet is what gave M$ their market share - Nothing to do with how cool they are.
. .
At home I have a couple macs. They do the job I need a computer to do. But to service the whole families needs, to provide a media center, and to provide something for on the go usage I need another work station plus a tablet. Eventually my other computers will get old and I'll need to replace them.
Now if I could just use a tablet hooked to a big screen I'd need ferwer devices and I'd be happier. The tablets would let me use apps that are touch freindly with ease and the attached screen for typing and mousing apps. It would allow on the go use. Media use (where you want to move it to the chair or the amplifer or tv). perfect.
so far all the tablets seem to only mirror their small screens if they have video out at all. Or they lack a desktop mode for mouse and KB usage.
Windows 8 is going to have both.
I had been wondering why win8 had both metro and desktop modes but suddenly I get it. this use case is a killer app.
it fits my profile exactly. it fits my moms profile. it fits my kids needs.
What sucks is that I don't like windows or the apps made for windows. I'd prefer to use the ones I have on my macs.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
While PDF may be the format that is passed around, most of those are composed in office. Also, you wouldn't use PDF for spreadsheet data.Also, some of their products have been released on iOS and Android.
Microsoft is making money
Horse and buggy makers were still making money (and lots of it!) when the first Model T rolled off the assembly line. Doesn't mean a big change wasn't coming.
The bulk of Microsoft's revenue comes from Windows and Office on the desktop. PC sales have slowed and begun shrinking - people just don't need to upgrade as often and the market is saturated.
The iPad alone is a significant slice of the PC market (25% in the US) but more importantly it continues on a tremendous hockey stick growth curve. That's a market that Microsoft cant sell Windows to and refuses to sell Office to. It doesn't take a genius to see the wall of pain coming Microsoft's way and Windows 8 is a desperate attempt to push what worked in the past into a new area. Windows has been so successful in the PC arena that Microsoft cant imagine life without it or any strategy to monetize iPad users that doesn't involve billions in risk on producing their own hardware (like, say, Office for iPad.... A no-risk proposal that might cost a few million in developer salaries).
That's always how entrenched players get beaten. It simply doesn't matter how dominant Microsoft is on the desktop because all the growth is happening in tablets and mobile... And being good early does you nothing there, you have to be good at the right time - the time when the market starts to look like a hockey stick so network and ecosystem effects can become self-reinforcing. Microsoft has already missed that point. That's why people think they are irrelevant.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
This use case-- the mostly docked tablet-- also makes the use of intel processors make more sense. Everyone is going low power for tablets. Which is fine for batteries. But to be a true desktop replacement I prefer something more substantial. by itself an intel tablet is a sucky idea--a bettery burner-- but if I mostly use it docked and only as a portable device occasionally, it makes sense.
technology platform leaders — Google, Apple, Amazon and Facebook
Google - Android phones, Nexus Apple - Macs, iPods Amazon - Kindles Facebook - ???
iOS is pretty much the same as it was 5 years ago. Rows of static icons hiding your data from you. If you went back in time and handed an iPhone 5 to an iPhone 2G user, they'd be pretty comfortable with it, I'd say. It hasn't changed much.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
> Microsoft is making money.
Although, less now.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Anyone who believes that the style of the UI remaining the same means the OS is the same is an idiot. What you're saying is sheer ignorance and prejudice. You don't have a clue what you're talking about, factually speaking.
The more likely case is that Google is the irrelevant one, sure they have Android...but it doesn't make money. Otherwise they only have search. That's it. Nothing else. Amazon and Facebook together could totally destroy Google, no one is really going to touch Apple, it's sort of a niche product with a cult following. Sure the cult is growing, but cults never last. I use Google, but with adblocker...this is Google's challenge. They make 90% of their revenue off of advertisements, it can't last like this forever without another revenue stream. Microsoft has tons of revenue streams, while it doesn't do one thing really really well, it still makes tons of cash.
From TFA:
Actually the market don't buy "coolness" per se.
"Coolness" is an added value which the market appreciates, but what matters the most to the market is the practicality of the product - and in Microsoft's case, I'm sorry to say there is a lack of practical value for most of its products today.
It used to be that Microsoft provides practical value back in the 20th century - it provided the DOS for the original PC (well, DOS was not an original creation of M$ but that's beside the point), and it duplicated the functions of Wordstar and Lotus-123 into the products it offered on DOS, and later Windows
And with the maturing of the Windows operating system (and with competing operating systems offering windowing environment) we do not see any added practical value from Microsoft on its own Windows OS.
That is what making Microsoft weaker and weaker, and the biggest problem Microsoft has today is Ballmer - the guy does not seem to be able to lead Microsoft to a greater height.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
At least Google lets you get your data out.
Actually they are making more now. There revenue is still growing.
I use a last gen Apple TV when I need to put video on the big screen, and to send audio from any of my macs or portable devices to my home theater. No need for a dedicated tablet when a $100 device does the task very well. For better network performance and sanity, instead of using Apple TV's built in wireless I use it hooked to a Gigabit Ethernet switch that provides connectivity to all the networked devices in the entertainment rack.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
It's nice to see an intelligent comment.. most of the above are people calling him stupid, stupidly. Gotta love the 'net.
I agree with much of what you said but I think you missed his point about the tablet converting to a desktop use model ( ie by connecting a keyboard and mouse ). The technology does exist. Motorola just cancelled such a product.
This is an interesting link.. mentions Microsoft picking up the ball ( sounds like the beginning of a bad joke to me) :
http://www.zdnet.com/the-webtop-concept-flop-was-motorola-just-too-early-7000005395/?s_cid=e539
MS is in no way a direct competitor of Google anymore so he is completely right. Apple and their mobile devices, Amazon and cloud services, facebook and social media. Though facebook doesn't deserve the right to be call a member among the "Gang of Four". Not yet anyway. They hang at the whim of the fickle user much more than the other companies in the list do, ask MySpace or even their own stock prices. They might become worth what they tried to sell themselves as but not for a long time or some major innovations happen to allow them to capitalize on their potential.
I think the point was they are quickly fading into obscurity, the new IE ads that are everywhere and Windows 8 are signs of their losing grip on the pc market. Where people would usually buy a laptop running windows they buy a tablet running a simple to use OS, and that scares Microsoft quite a lot.
> Microsoft is making money.
Although, less now.
No, they are making more money now than they ever have with consistent steady growth in income. That may change in future but right now they are certainly still increasing not decreasing.
There is literally nothing that will unseat Windows on the PC. Yes there will be pockets of Mac users and even smaller pockets of Linux users, but Windows IS the PC. Especially in the corporate environment.
BUT...there is a way to get all your legacy apps, in the corporate environment, on an android phone. Citrix has a mobile app "viewer". And it drives the point home very quickly. For as awesome as it is (and it is awesome to be able to use RDP and PUTTY from your phone) it sucks. There are two problems here. 1. Legacy apps are not made to run on the small footprint. 2. Small footprints don't run legacy apps well.
It doesn't matter who does it better - every implementation of a legacy app on a tablet or phone will suck.
But Google, FB, Apple, Amazon are NOT about the past. They are about the future. And that's why MS best days are behind them. Yes - MS will continue to dominate the PC (much like Fox dominates cable). But just as there is a huge demographic shift away from cable that means that Fox will dominate a platform that nobody cares about, MS will continue to dominate a platform that is used "only when it has to be".
Developers aren't stupid. They develop for the people - and today's business is in a huge paradigm shift called "BYOD" (Bring your own device).... and nobody is bringing their own desktop....
-CF
think he's mostly right. Microsoft has only been able to prosper through monopoly tactics and those won't work anymore.
Schmidt tried that too while he was at Sun, but MS beat him. Which is one of the reasons he hates Microsoft.
Microsoft sells stuff that is useful. There's an ongoing market for that. IBM has prospered for over a century serving medium to large businesses. So can Microsoft.
Facebook, on the other hand, is in a business where coolness matters. Formerly cool social networks include AOL, Geocities, Salon, Tribe, Myspace... Social networks have a life cycle, like nightclubs. Facebook web traffic peaked about a year ago, according to Alexa. The ad-supported model doesn't translate well to the small screen ("We'll get back to what your friends are doing after a word from our sponsor".)
Facebook had a really good idea on how to make money. It involved an IPO that made Facebook employees rich and screwed everyone else.
http://xkcd.org/1118/
Seriously. Microsoft is still in business? If so, *why?*
His opinion stopped mattering the moment he even dared mentioning Facebook in that regard.
*formerly known.
Microsoft is a mature, boring tech company. Look at IBM, they still make lots of money and are important in lots of different ways, but there's nothing about them that is exciting to consumers. Microsoft's peers are going to be IBM, Oracle, Cisco, etc... Huge, profitable, and dull companies.
The big reason is that Microsoft is now staffed by everybody who didn't leave for Google, Apple, Facebook or other startups.
Any gray beards out there that remember the BUNCH? Burroughs,Univac, NRC, Controls Data, Honeywell. Loads of big tech companies have gone to the elephant graveyard. Many more will follow. This isn't a bad thing. New technology eclipses old technology. We all get way cooler stuff. It's just happening a LOT faster these days. HP just lost #1 to Lenovo (still a good move by IBM). Dell admits they don't have a product or a strategy for the hottest market. Microsoft can't figure out how to" phone home". So their big plan was to plant a clone in Nokia? Pop question: who do you think will swirl down the drain first, Nokia or RIM? The market is just too big now. Winners and losers become obvious faster than ever and spin is ineffective. In geek speak, resistance is futile.
Although, less now.
Thanks to some anti-MS dipshit yesterday, I looked up the facts.
Microsoft is posting record revenue. Thats record as in, they have never posted numbers as high as they are posting now. Thats the exact opposite of "less now" like you claim.
You made it up, its something we honest people call a lie. We honest people also know that dishonest fucks such as yourself never contribute positively to anything. Its in your nature to deceive, and are willing to do so even when there is ample amounts of truthful ammunition that you could have chosen to use to express those beliefs. You blew right past the truthful anti-MS stuff and went right for a lie. You arent much value to anyone that isnt intent on deceiving. Have you considered Obama's campaign?
"His name was James Damore."
> Google Chairman, Eric Schmidt today made the bold
> statement to renowned yay-Applers All Things Digital...
Oh good, it's about time we got some impartial analysis around here.
> Google's enjoying fantastic success with Android right
> now -- and why shouldn't they: it's the best phone OS
> there is right now. iOS is static and hasn't improved
> since 2007...
oh, never mind.
Wow. You can say you're not impressed by iOS 6, or that the things it has now, it should have had all along, but to say it hasn't changed in 5 years is just so... I don't even know what it is. It's so wrong, "wrong" doesn't begin to cover it.
As if that weren't enough reason to stop reading, he spends half his piece breathlessly talking about how unbelievably great it's going to be to run every single Windows app EVAR on a Windows 8 tablet. Yeah. Let's revisit that in 12 months (and then again in 24, and 36) and see how they're doing. MS will move a lot of units, but 8 will be more like ME and Vista than XP or 7. The coming small spike in computer sales will be people desperately buying Win7 systems before they're gone. MS will do OK with OEM and business sales because of their huge market share and inertia, but Win8 tablets will affect iPad sales about as much as Windows Phone has impacted iPhone sales. It might even be down in Zune-vs-iPod levels.
He goes on and on about how Windows 8 will rule the world because businesses (the only people that matter) will be happy that they can keep running their legacy apps forever. Um, hello? There's this thing called "progress" that makes legacy apps less and less important every day. Smart businesses KNOW the future is in web-based and mobile apps and they will NOT accept crappy Win32 and IE6 apps forever. Even shitbags like SAP and ADP will eventually have to come around or else competitors WILL come along and eat their lunch.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
No, last year, they had a quarter with a year-on-year drop of 8% of net profits, and 15% loss of sales. They've recovered, but it cost Ballmer his bonus.
He is wrong because he is right but some people don't like it and write stupid sponsored articles on /.
Microsoft is making more money as they become less influential and relevant to consumer electronics.
When several different manufacturers say things like "Our car was rated better than the Accord" then you know the Accord is the real one to beat.
and immediately following that they had record profit and revenue quarters.
A single quarter does not make a trend, especially when they follow it up with record profits.
I've always said that "some guy said something" isn't news, but this article must have been made specifically to mock that idea. How far away from news is "some guy said some other guy was wrong when he said something"? Hey, if I write an article about how this blogger was wrong when he said that Schmidt was wrong when he said that Microsoft didn't matter, can I get on the front page too?
Jim Cramer calls those companies the "Four Horsemen" of tech.
Always good to see the Windows hooligans trying to pump up their lame dick of a company. Guess that's why their called Microsofties.
FTFY
each bussiness model has its heyday. They come and go. Sometimes slow, sometimes quick. Some company who once had an extremely sucessful de-facto walled garden was IBM. The change was quicker than expected, one should say.
Apple already had once a de-facto walled garden (Desktop Publishing), where you had to bow to theirs standards. One generation of shitty devices and it was over.
MS is making software which works more or less. I think if they focus on doing that, they will able to hibernate trough this period.
I made this mistake, and its contents (i.e., Windows 8 on portables might consolidate mobile and PC use cases) could have been summed up in half the length of the slashdot summary, which in turn was just astroturfing. Then, as usual with Microsoft propaganda trying to outdumb readers, the slashdot summary does NOT say: "Windows mobile version xxx is pretty good / growing / will be the good for whatever", but, adapting the message to the slashdot crowd, first it tactically discredits MS just to buy our agreement, then slip on the real message in parentheses, almost subliminally, which is the assumed 5% market share. It's not even near that except in certain Seattle and Espoo cafeterias.
The article itself is full of cheap dramatization like "When it was pointed out he forgot Microsoft, Schmidt said this wasn’t a mistake. (then in a standalone paragraph) I believe it is." and patronizing passages like "Seriously stop and think about this for a minute. [...] give it 12 months and try again."
iOS is basically the same as it was in 2007. It's had some piece meal improvements, like the Android "inspired" notification center. Otherwise, it's basically the same thing it always was.
Microsoft have never been overly influential in consumer electronics, There big money making racket is in the enterprise, consumer goods are just icing on the cake.
Actually, I'd say that the big 4 here would be Google, Apple, Facebook and... Twitter!
The desktop isn't MS's biggest money maker anymore, it is server and tools now and more specifically it is enterprises. The ipads have almost zero impact on their largest revenue and incidently their fastest growing segment at that. You like many other people make the mistake in thinking MS is a consumer centric company, they aren't, they are an enterprise centric company that "also" does consumer stuff.
December 6, 2011: Google Chairman Eric Schmidt is on stage at LeWeb in Paris and is asked by an audience member why most application developers still choose to develop for iOS first rather than Android? Schmidt’s response:
“Six months from now you’ll say the opposite. Because ultimately applications vendors are driven by volume. And the volume is favored by the open approach that Google is taking.”
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Microsoft is making money. Lots of it. Facebook has a really good idea on how to make money.
Microsoft just showed a 2% profit loss this last quarter. On average it has 23% net income. That's good, but it's not that good considering it's not growing its market-share.
Google: Having issues sustaining itself and may in fact implode on itself soon. There's a reason why people are leaving the company and it's because people don't like what it has become.
Apple: Has grown tremendously but is losing a lot of support due to a lack of innovation and overpriced merchandise in a falling economy. Competition is also readily available and Apple products are no longer top of the line except for those devoted enough to believe so.
Amazon: While convenient, Amazon does one thing well and that's providing a website that sells goods for cheap. Their website on the other hand is terrible to use and they have failed to expand themselves beyond it. So eventually when people stop ordering online with Amazon, it will crumble really quickly.
Facebook: facebook is going to die. Already it's losing a lot of popularity even though registrations are going up. Registrations are going up because of spam companies register in bulk. With the involvement of big brother and facebook, people are already switching over to alternative social networking services.
And why is getting so much attention from us?
That's what you're saying by that.
Apple do more than bookreaders on their device, as do Android which you missed off completely in order to find something stupid to say to defend Apple.
The entire article is a MS fanboy dream, an old dream, the dream that the next version of Windows Mobile will sell. You can read the article and get to it pretty quick:
What I don’t think Google are taking into account (or at least not publicly talking about) is what’s going to happen when I can go out and buy an Intel based Windows 8 tablet or even phone
That is his entire argument, Eric Schmidt is wrong because people might suddenly start buying a product from a company that hasn't managed to sell that product in a decade, yeah that is how long MS has been trying to get one of their phones to sell.
It could happen of course. And Apple could stop selling the iPhone as if their hot cakes and pigs could fly and I could get laid when I tell a girl I am a programmer. I don't think it is very likely though.
Anyway MS fanboys, WP8 is almost out, isn't it time for you to start admitting that the current version isn't 100% but the NEXT one, that one will take the world by storm and finally see MS phones reach sales outside people who were forced to.
The think the MS fanboys just don't get. PEOPLE loathe/have utter contempt for Microsoft. Or maybe resentment is a better word for it although al these words sound to passionate. The word Microsoft is to most consumers dog poo on the sidewalk you can't get around. Not worth hating just one of lifes annoyances you got to put up with.
And so they go into a store and see a shiny iPhone or a usuable Android phone of a cheap symbian feature phone and a pile of dog poo just begging for a shoe. And they step around it, because they can. Windows is something you use, because you are forced to. People LOVE switching to OSX, you can't shut up the Linux users about how free they are but windows users. "mwah, I have to use it for work and it came with my PC and I need it for games". No windows user says "Yeah, I LOVE using it, it enables me, it enriches me".
This is okay, the sugar industry doesn't have any fans either but it sells billions of tons of the stuff. Nobody likes the petrol companies but they still make a fortune. But none of these try to use their loathing filled logo's to sell something the customer doesn't need and has more attractive alternatives for.
MS greatest mistake is that they have always been to arrogant to openly admit their shit stinks, they truly believe they got wonderful stuff. The customer has a different view and has left MS products it has an alternative to on the shelves.
Easy proof? MS keyboards and mice. They are not bad. But who buys them? Nobody! Nobody will admit to buying a MS keyboard. There are plenty of fan sites for logitech products but a MS keyboard? People just hide it and claim it came with the PC. You can make billions with a necessary product that people loathe but you can't launch a new gadget with that reputation.
That is why MS does not matter in this list. The other companies people "like". MS they merely put up with.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Their profit loss was based on a writedown of an asset. Their actual income has increased and more importantly their key marketshare where it matters (enterprise) has also significantly increased.
Probably, because the world does not work like the neckbeards imagine it does.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Q4 2012 Revenue by Division
Windows & Windows Live: $4.15 billion, down from $4.74 billion a year earlier.
Server & Tools: $5.09 billion, up from $4.64 billion a year earlier.
Business: $6.3 billion, up from $5.87 billion a year earlier.
Online Services Business: $735 million, up from $680 million a year earlier.
Entertainment & Devices: $1.78 billion, up from $1.49 billion a year earlier.
I'd argue that Windows isn't seen as being dogshit. More a case of it being a commodity of which most people give little thought. The Windows brand is not going to be selling phones. Conversely, it won't directly damage sales. It's simply not that relevant. What will hurt adoption is a lack of interest in the brand, and pretty strong offerings from entrenched competitors.
Lack of interest in the geeky side of things is one element pre bring Microsoft from extending their desktop dominance to the touch world. The shift has made it way easier to break with old issues, such as compatibility with existing software and peripherals. Microsoft is way too late to the party to dominate the existing platforms. Barring desktop Windows bridging the gap between desktop and touch, which risks alienating their existing desktop customers, they're fucked.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Micrisoft has never, ever been a technology leader. They're been a very, very successful marketing and channel sales leader. They have always succeeded by taking technology developed by others that has proven successful, tweaking it to call it their own, and levaraging their sales skills to dominate the reseller channel. Part of it was luck: their competition had a tendency to implode.
Watch for this strategy to continue with the newer tech, unless Microsoft themselves implode.
You do realise that its rumoured that in february of 2013 microsoft wil lannounce office for IOS and Android right?
that's codespeak for garden.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx
Revenue and Headcount Last updated: June 30, 2012 Headcount & Revenue Growth Microsoft's worldwide headcount and revenue growth for the past 10 fiscal yearsare summarized below (click headings to sort): Fiscal Year Ending Head Count Net Revenue (US$) Growth Net Income (US$) Growth
June 30, 2012** 94,290 $74.30B 6% $23.60B 5%
June 30, 2011 90,412 $69.94B 13% $23.15B 23%
June 30, 2010 88,596 $62.48B 7% $18.76B 29%
June 30, 2009 92,736 $58.44B -3% $14.57B -18%
June 30, 2008 91,259 $60.42B 18% $17.68B 26%
June 30, 2007 78,565 $51.12B 15% $14.07B 12%
June 30, 2006 71,172 $44.28B 11% $12.60B 3%
June 30, 2005 61,000 $39.79B 8% $12.25B 50%
June 30, 2004 57,086 $36.84B 14% $8.17B 8%
June 30, 2003* 54,468 $32.19B 13% $7.53B 29%
* Fiscal year 2003 results have been restated to reflect the retroactive adoption of SFAS 123, Accounting for Stock Based Compensation. ** Fiscal year 2012 results are adjusted for Windows Upgrade Offer deferral and goodwill impairment charge.
"...Microsoft have utterly failed..."
"...that Microsoft have utterly failed..."
Eric Schmidt obviously has a problem with the English language which negates any effort he may make in making a point. Either that or he thinks there are more than one Microsoft.
(The scumbug English people are ruining English!)
You are 100%, a tablet does 90% of what you need it to do. 90%. I don't get paid to do 90% of my job, I get payed to do 100% of it. I expect most people expext that a job gets done the full 100%.
Ergonomic keyboards are an example. They are perfectly usuable 90% of the time and when you need to hold a phone and type with one hand, they are not.
And that may only happen 1 in a thousand far less then your 10% but it still means they are not as usuable.
The is reason the PC is a general purpose machine because it FULLY needs to cover ALL requirements, not just a select few.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Tablets are not a step forward from the current state of the art
That's only true if you expect things to remain unchanged. Like PCs in years past, tablets are still finding their niche. They've already found one in personal entertainment (movies, light browing, light email, books) and they seem to be finding more in places like aiding pilots, managing data in doctor's offices and the like. No they aren't going to replace PCs for everything but they are a big step forward for certain activities. We're integrating them into our manufacturing plant as an efficient way to distribute work instructions to the factory floor. A PC would be a lot more awkward since our people have no need for a keyboard - they simply need to get PDFs to read.
PCs are advantageous for tasks where a keyboard is necessary and there are a lot of those. Tablets are a better form factor for certain tasks that have less need of a keyboard and they'll find their niche there. Keyboards are handy but they are not the best way to interact with a computer for every task and lugging one around can be surprisingly awkward at times.
I use a last gen Apple TV when I need to put video on the big screen, and to send audio from any of my macs or portable devices to my home theater. No need for a dedicated tablet when a $100 device does the task very well.
Yup. There's not even a need for a specialized device (a la "Apple TV"). Any old shitty desktop/laptop you have laying around (or a cheap sheevaplug/raspberry pi/whatever) can do the whole "media center" job just perfectly.
That has been the pattern for Microsoft... they announce "just wait, something better is coming". But something better never comes,or if it does it comes too late.
I use windows at home, and at work. Probably 90% of OS users use windows at one or the other. A very large percentage of those also use Office. They also have a seach engine and mapping service that they are trying to promote in compitition with Google. They have tried to enter the mobile market against apple (not very well so far). They are supposed to be entering the tablet maket (again, they were first really), to try and beat apple. Probably most the computers on earth run Windows and windows software.
Blogger must be right, Microsoft is totally irrellevent.
'The iPad alone is a significant slice of the PC market (25% in the US)"
Have any real numbers to back that up or just the ones you pull from your ass?
Remember there are several more divisions besides Office & Windows this thread seems to avoid mentioning...
Xbox?
Skype?
Server & Tools (Exchange, SQL, Windows server)?
And so they go into a store and see a shiny iPhone or a usuable Android phone of a cheap symbian feature phone and a pile of dog poo just begging for a shoe. And they step around it, because they can. Windows is something you use, because you are forced to. People LOVE switching to OSX, you can't shut up the Linux users about how free they are but windows users. "mwah, I have to use it for work and it came with my PC and I need it for games". No windows user says "Yeah, I LOVE using it, it enables me, it enriches me".
For PCs, Windows is the status quo. At this point, you have to go out of your way to get a new PC with OSX (buy from Apple) or Linux (build it yourself or buy a PC from the few manufacturers who offer Ubuntu or SUSE as an option). Not surprisingly, people aren't going to notice because that's what they expect.
Easy proof? MS keyboards and mice. They are not bad. But who buys them? Nobody! Nobody will admit to buying a MS keyboard. There are plenty of fan sites for logitech products but a MS keyboard? People just hide it and claim it came with the PC. You can make billions with a necessary product that people loathe but you can't launch a new gadget with that reputation.
Microsoft used to be the golden standard in mice with the Intellmouse line, but these days the market is a lot bigger than it was back in the late-90s/mid-2000s.
Most people don't bother to get a mouse or keyboard to replace the one that comes with their PCs. Microsoft's mice are also consistently more expensive than Logitech's... not sure about their keyboards. If you're a gamer, you're likely going to pick up a more expensive mouse and keyboard made by companies like Razor or SteelSeries.
To be honest, Microsoft only makes one product that people buy strictly because they want it: The Xbox 360. I can't exactly fault Redmond for making a touch interface... their second ever after WP7; all their previous phone OSes were clearly desktop OSes ported to a mobile device. However, trying to force-feed it to desktop users is a huge mistake. This is the one route where Apple definitely did things right: Making an entirely new version of the OS for phones/tablets. Although from what I've heard, newer OSX versions are having more iOS features sneaking into it despite users not wanting them... such as reversing the scrollbar direction in Lion last year.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
Microsoft has only been able to prosper through monopoly tactics and those won't work anymore.
They seem to do okay with the Xbox, which is in no way a monopoly. Hell, even their office suite was nowhere close to being a monopoly when it started. It's a monopoly now because people bought it more than the other available (but more functional/popular at the time) products, until the old products were gone. You get into a monopoly-like position by being better than your opposition (at any number of things). That's what Apple did with mp3 players. That's what Google did with search engines. That's what Facebook did with social media.
The may be down, but they are only out if they want to be. They have games, they have Skype, they have office apps, they have a cloud, etc... And they have deep pockets. Wish them away if you will. If they want part of this market, they will get it. I don't see how they can afford to not want the mobile market. Make your predictions now and look back in 5 years.
To say Microsoft is dragging Nokia down is to say they were at a better point before the Windows Phone adoption.
This argument for MSOffice is that the fact it is the world's least compatible Office product, that's the major selling feature. You simply cannot get your data out of it and into something else. No other office suite has this 'feature'. So yes, by all means if your goal is to become committed to a permanent relationship to a sole-source software vendor that holds your own documents hostage, go with Microsoft Office. Most rational people considering this issue would go the other way. The sad fact is that the vast majority of people just don't include this issue in their consideration at all.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Unlike Google, Microsoft's business model is to sell products (Cloud/Azure OS, Server OS, Datacenter OS, Desktop OS, XBox, Kinect) as opposed to sell YOU out, while Google provide *everything* for free but its not opensource friendly either! They just put their company logo on others/openosurce projects and inject their privacy profiling and data stealing modules.; Gmail, Chrome, YouTube, +1, Drive.. and every hit on Google redirects via their servers (hover over links on Google result pages).. Even RedHat provide services for profit but not rip you off!
I was watching a YouTube video and I was getting CCIE certifications ads all over it. Why? Because few hours earlier, I received the registration comformation email from CISCO on Gmail. They even parse my emails evn in my drafts and use the data! Did I sign for it? No I did not...
I would rather use Hotmail/Outlook/Bing or AOL stack on my Fedora box than let Google sell my footprints to the highest bidders, advertisers and location-based service providers. Besides SkyDrive webbased (FREE) office is much much better than Google docs.
If I would ever get a chance, I would take reviews from Linus Torvalds about both companies, how they operate and which one is more trustworthy service provider. Even MSFT is our main and very old rival from enterprise to home-user level, I am pretty sure he would have same reviews.
So, Microsoft are good guys for opensource communities. They are getting profit by selling their stuff in open market and providing free/competitive online services as well, rather conspiring against their own customers/users.
Oh, you're right. Maps sucks balls now. Thanks for reminding me.
iOS is worse now than it was in 2007. Suck on that.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Micro Soft began its rise based on their strong-arming OEMs into using their OS in the 80s and they could get away with such coercive tactics because the accountants of the world demanded multiple sources for the acquisition of the hardware (to the accountants of the world hardware and software came out of different accounts,) and that is why PCs got purchased. The illegality of the software's origin was "somebody else's problem."
Apple was a single source for uniquely designed hardware so it was NOT getting past a corporate accountant. Even IBM was forced to abandon touting their superior OS/2 as a selling point. Anything else at that time that anyone else was offering was going to be multi-source and therefore receive a pass from an accountant, after some justification for the expenditure at a board meeting or two.
The accountants NEVER cared about the OS or the software, hardware wasall that they were writing the purchase orders for. Its now 2012 and they STILL DONT CARE. (Bean-counters don't understand the synergy, they only understand the difference. Ask them and you'll see I'm right. [They teach entire seminars in medical schools about this blind-spot.])
All they know is that it better be perpetually cheaper to own and NOT get in the way of their firms' buying of hardware.
Now that tablets are sub $1K products, and accountants are NOT being consulted for such petty-cash expenditures, Apple's iPad is getting adopted (despite Apple's best efforts to remain a consumer electronics products company.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
That's a user interface.
The OS has gained the ability to perform firmware updates over the air, to sync over the air, to multi-task apps, and to share documents between apps.
Wow. Looking back at your posting history, all of your arguments end up with "You're dumb. You're ignorant. I'm right."
You are a dumb dumb and a bully. Eat shit and die, dumb dumb.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
At least Google lets you get A COPY OF your data out.
Can't be bothered to dohtml tags. Live with it.
--
Ahhh, I see the cock-up fairy has visited us again.
iOS is not the only product from Apple. Are you forgetting that Mac OS X is not walled-in?
The kernel is even Open Source (Darwin)!