Pondering the Future of a Re-Org'd Microsoft

puddingebola writes "This story from Forbes touches on Steve Ballmer's announcement that Microsoft will reorganize. From the article, 'Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer appears to be planning a major reorganization. His apparent objective is to help the company move toward becoming a "devices and services company," as presented in the company's annual shareholder letter last October.' What follows is an analysis of the current state of Microsoft's current ventures: shrinking PC sales, Nokia management calling for a change of course, Office 360 lagging, a $1 Billion investment in Nook, the losses on Xbox. Once again, if Microsoft starts to lose the revenue of Windows and Office, how long does the boat float? And what of the suggestion, on the verge of another update in the Xbox console, that Microsoft should sell the Xbox division?"

Comments

Better Idea

[Murdoch5]

How about just stopping the crappy product releases? Windows 8 is a joke, the Xbox 360 is over engineered, your server product make me laugh because Linux can do everything for free and better. When will Microsoft wake up the fact they release crap, users are getting fed up with it. They're losing market share because finally the average user is noticing that better, cheaper and more reliable software and hardware exist. The key to Microsoft becoming successful is to just reboot itself and start turning out high quality products.

Re:Better Idea

[DougOtto]

"Linux can do everything for free and better"

Linux brings in a substantial portion of my income but statements like that hurt its adoption, not help it. In an "real" corporate environment, Linux isn't free. I've never met a CEO who wanted to base his/her business on unsupported software. By supported, I mean when something goes down, they want a throat to grab (and sue if things get really bad). The result is something like RedHat or OUL, which has support, not definitely isn't free.

Also, if you come into my office and the best pitch you have for Linux on your project is "it's free", you'll be asked to leave.

Re:Better Idea

[jedidiah]

> I've never met a CEO who wanted to base his/her business on unsupported software

Then you've not been around much. Plenty of companies outside of a very small set of "glamourous" ones will happily trade a little risk for a really big discount.

Don't try to conflate the Fortune 100 with everyone because it's simply not the case.

Re:Get your resumes ready guys!

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing inhibiting Microsoft's growth is incompetence at the top.

MS Languages and platforms a dead end

[gestalt_n_pepper]

VB6 migration path to VB.net: Fuck you. Recode.
Winforms to Web: Fuck you. Recode.
Silverlight to WPF: Fuck you. Recode.
WPF to anything:Take a guess.
Microsoft Office interface: Fuck you. Retrain.
Windows interface: Fuck you. Retrain.
Old Windows phone: Fuck you.
New Windows phone: Maybe we'll let your app on our store, and by the way. Fuck you.

Why anybody, at this point, would invest *any* time in any windows language or platform is beyone me. Think Android. Think iOS.

Re:Never Heard of Office 360

[Frosty Piss]

Seriously, whats the gain by using Microsoft?

Phtoshop and PC gmaes.

Re:The circle of lifen

[rsborg]

Apple is sometimes described as a company that came back from the brink, but for the most part still do what they always did: upper-middle-end computer-driven consumer hardware. IBM went from mostly hardware to mostly services.

I'd disagree - I think Apple did essentially re-invent itself when it switched from Apple Computer to Apple back in '07.

It realized it's future was mobile devices, and despite it's massively profitable iPod franchise, effectively cannibalized it completely with the touch-based offerings, iPhone and iPad. Prior to this change Apple was a Mac/iPod company, afterwards it was the iPhone company (and still is).

Re:Never Heard of Office 360

[0123456]

I don't know about Photoshop, but Gimp also has the worst UI of any software I've used on a semi-regular basis.