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Break Microsoft Up
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Tom Worstall writes in Forbes that the only way to get around the entrenched culture that has made Microsoft a graveyard for the kind of big ideas that have inspired companies like Apple, Google, and Amazon is to split the company up so as to remove conflicts between new and old products. With Ballmer's departure, instead of finding someone new to run the company, bring in experts to handle the legal side and find suitable CEOs for the new companies. 'The underlying problem for Microsoft is that the computing market has rapidly left behind the company's basic strategy of controlling the machines that people use with operating-system software,' says Erik Sherman. 'The combination of mobile devices that broke Microsoft's grip on the client end, and cloud computing that didn't necessarily need the company in data centers, shattered this form of control.' Anyone can see how easily you could split off the gaming folks, business division, retail stores, and hardware division says John Dvorak. Each entity would have agreements in place for long-term supply of software and services. 'This sort of shake up would ferret out all the empire builders and allow for new and more creative structures to emerge. And since everyone will have to be in a semi-startup mode, the dead wood will be eliminated by actual hard work.'"
Well, they bought the Kinect ... so if the extent of Microsoft's 'innovation' is technology they buy, then yes. But in terms of a single really ground breaking piece of technology Microsoft developed in-house, it's much harder to think of recent examples.
Yes, the Kinect is a pretty good system, but let's not lose sight of the fact that it was purchased technology. All this means is Microsoft is still rich enough and occasionally observant enough to pick up technology other people have created.
In terms of their own creation of products from scratch -- I don't think their recent track record is all that impressive. Sure, they've got bazillions of dollars and can keep buying stuff, but as an innovative technology company goes, they've proven a little stagnant recently. Their tablets, phones, Windows 8 ... none of those are doing anywhere near as well as a company the size of Microsoft would expect, and Microsoft s bordering on being a bit player in the mobile market.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
At one point, so was Enron and the Roman Empire ... that doesn't mean Microsoft hasn't put out some dogs lately, and that they couldn't be making even more money if the division which makes Office wasn't using their strange hold on the company to make sure nothing cuts into their profits.
Are you seriously thinking Windows phone, their tablets, or Windows 8 are hugely successful products?
Microsoft's strategy the last bunch of years has been to prop up unprofitable products until they become successful (XBox) or cancelled (Zune) -- and with the hardware makers pulling back from their tablets and phones to focus on things, it's going to hurt even more.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
"If you look at the numbers, they are clearly fucking it up."
Revenues for FY 2013 for MSFT were $77.8B, up 5.6% over FY2012. If that's evidence of "fucking it up" then I know of a lot of businesses who'd really like to be fucked up like MSFT -- Canonical, for example is in Mark Knopfler territory financially speaking, Sony's been losing money year on year for a while but is still regarded as successful, same with a bunch of other tech companies large and small.
MS' innovation and expansion days are over, they moved (like IBM did in the 90s) to being a services company several years back instead of pushing for growth because in part they had nowhere left to grow into since they owned 90% of the market for business desktop software and a large chunk of the server OS market too. They don't do hardware like Apple and Samsung because they've got customers who do hardware for them (Dell, HP, the various mobo manufacturers). Even the Surface machines are a tiny part of the MS oeuvre, more technology demonstrators than real products. The only mass-market hardware product line is the Xbox and that's not core to what MS does.
Because Microsoft has been creating illegal and unethical barriers to fair trade by abusing its monopoly position.
1996 called, it wants its "Year of the Linux Desktop" T-shirt back.
Sorry - but that is not 100% correct. Being a former MS employee, they were working in their research division on Project Natal in the 90's, which became the backbone of the Kinect. I saw it at many research fairs at the Redmond campus.
Imagine if the Apple Mac department had blocked the iPhone and/or iPad because it could eat into the Mac market share (which I'm sure it did). I guess Apple would by far not be as profitable as it is now.
The iPhone is indeed killing iPod sales. The iPad is destroying all growth in Mac sales. And Apple is quite happy with that. Steve Jobs himself said (and I'm quite sure he quoted someone else) that "if you don't cannibalise your products, someone else will".
Splitting Microsoft along business/consumer lines:
MicrosoftBusiness:
*WindowsDesktop (Profitable)
*WindowsServer (Profitable)
*WindowsServerApplications (Profitable)
*WindowsCloud (Profitable)
*WindowsMouseAndKeyboardWhatnots (Profitable)
MicorsoftConsumer:
*Bing (Lossy)
*Xbox (BreakEvens)
*WindowsPhone (Lossy)
*WindowsTablets (Lossy)
I predict that MicrosoftConsumer would quickly cease trading in the wake of this split, leaving only Microsoft standing.