Can Microsoft Survive If Windows Doesn't Dominate?

Nerval's Lobster writes "In his latest Asymco blog post, analyst Horace Dediu suggested that Windows' share of the personal-computing market is declining at a faster rate than many believe, once Microsoft's cash cow is put in direct competition with Android, iOS, and other platforms built for tablets. In that context, Windows' share of the personal-computing market has dipped past 60 percent on its way to 50 percent. The big question is whether it'll keep plunging. 'If Windows tablets start growing as fast as the tablet market overall then Windows could stabilize in share,' Dediu wrote. 'But if Android and iOS tablets follow their phone brethren in growth then it will be far harder for Microsoft to maintain share.' Yet despite that gloomy scenario, Dediu doesn't necessarily see a market-share dip as a cause for concern on Microsoft's part: 'Even if Windows dips to only 20 [percent] of the world's computing market it will still be perfectly 'viable' for some time to come,' he wrote. But even if Windows can perpetuate, will its decline fatally undermine Microsoft as a company? All that Windows (and Office) money also allows Microsoft to launch projects that lose money for years before they gain traction. Without that monetary base, for example, it's possible that the Xbox (which bled money for the first few years of its existence) wouldn't have survived long enough to become a viable platform from a financial perspective—much less the center of Microsoft's future plans for living room domination."

Comments

Microsoft Can't Port Their Software

[Greyfox]

They'd be completely lost without the modal dialog box, an invention they must hold the patent to because I've never seen it on any other operating system. Tell their programmers they can't use a modal dialog and the Star Trek fight music would cue up immediately. A couple hours later, the entire city of Redmond would be in flames. Software engineers would attempt to construct post-apocalyptic vehicles to roam the barren cityscape but being software engineers they'd all be destroyed in their first encounter with a Nissan Stanza. The few survivors would have to go on to work at Accenture, giving lectures on why you should pay them six digits to come into your organization and convert all your dev teams to Agile.

Coincidentally this was also to be the plot of Titan. Whoops. Sorry. Gave it away.