Slashdot Mirror
Stephen Elop Would Pull a Nokia On Microsoft
Nerval's Lobster writes "A new Bloomberg report suggests that Stephen Elop, who's apparently on the short list of candidates to replace Steve Ballmer as Microsoft's CEO, would eliminate company projects such as Xbox and Bing while focusing resources on Office. Before he left Microsoft to join Nokia, Elop headed Microsoft's Business Division, so it's no surprise he'd want to focus on Office and the company's other, highly profitable enterprise software. But as head of Nokia, Elop made similarly bold strategic realignments that, while they probably looked good on paper, didn't quite work out. Specifically, Elop decided to abandon Nokia's popular homegrown operating systems, including Symbian, in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone. That caused Nokia's share of the overall mobile-device market to dive into the single digits. At the time, Elop insisted he made the decision because Symbian and its ilk were incapable of competing in the broader market against Android and iOS; revelations by the Finnish media over the past few months, however, suggest that he'd been offered a generous cash incentive for selling off the company, which gives his 'strategic realignment' (which everyone knew would initially collapse Nokia's market-share, as its product pipeline emptied out) a whiff of self-interest. So while it's likely that a Microsoft run by Elop would make some decisive moves, his previous attempt at game-changing quickly transformed Nokia from a communications powerhouse into a second-tier competitor and (eventually) a Microsoft subsidiary. And by eliminating Bing and Xbox, Microsoft would be giving up completely on the search and gaming markets in favor of becoming more of an enterprise-centric company—something that could please analysts mostly interested in the company's bottom line, but basically an admission of defeat in the consumer realm."
Yes! Let's watch him do to Microsoft what he did to Nokia!
But, that said, maybe a breakup and spin-off of non-core divisions is exactly what Microsoft needs. This whole 'chasing Apple/Sony/{$newTechMarket}' thing is slowly killing them.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
So the plan is he'll gain stewardship of Microsoft and hand it over to... Microsoft?
Seems a bit redundant
Oh right we're going to pretend Elop wasn't an infiltrator sent to hasten the ripening of a patent laden company down on it's luck
Let me get my violin tuned up to play them some sorrowful music.
He sinked his own company once, he could do it again. But why? I mean, even slashdot had realized Elop was working for microsoft all along, whom would he work for now? Is google planning to buy microsoft? apple? the NSA?
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
To "pull a Nokia on Microsoft" sounds like a fancy way of putting on a condom.
That moron completely destroyed Nokia, he will do the same to Microsoft.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Blackberry stuck with their own stuff, which was even relatively entrenched in the enterprise... a lot of good it did them.
Absolutely. If Microsoft wants to survive, it needs to get back to basics, focus on the proven Money Makers, Windows and Office. Release Versions for every platform you can, license your tech to other companies.
He is a double agent! He tricked Microsoft into believing that he was their agent working for them to run down Nokia, all the while he was really working for Google! This could be the plot of a new Mission Impossible movie, Tom Cruise playing Elop?
Anyone who thinks Symbian was a decent alternative OS and that abandoning it for virtually ANYTHING else was a mistake needs to have their head examined. In fact I'd credit sticking to Symbian for too long with as much of Nokias problems as anything else.
Xbone and Bing are horrible.
Article: ... they probably looked good on paper, didn't quite work out. Specifically, Elop decided to abandon Nokia's popular homegrown operating systems, including Symbian, in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone.
Depends on what you mean by "didn't work out."
That decision didn't work out for Nokia but apparently worked out real well for Elop himself.
His plan to take over the world says different.
In it the only tech anyone would ever need has an MS Symbol on it.
Granted that it has taken a bit of a hammering in recent years but Elop clearly does not have the vision that BillyBoy has.
Trimming the fat would probably be better for Microsoft at this point. They are trying to dance in too many rodeos, and it's starting to show. Focus on Enterprise, Windows, and Office products. That's a really strong foundation for them. If they want to stay in the mobile phone industry, buy rights to the Blackberry name and focus on the Enterprise and professional markets with solid phones built around security rather than entertainment.
Something like that would free up all kinds of funds for R&D projects into potential technologies, while playing to their strengths. Microsoft is not -- and never will be -- the entertainment company it seems to desire. Yes, there's potential money in it, but it simply doesn't align with their core business.
To bring down the market value of Nokia by both releasing new products (Elop) and then not buying them (consumers), all so that Microsoft could snap up a dead-end company like Nokia on the cheap and Elop could get a big, fat cash bonus for orchestrating it all.
Nokia's OS work was absolutely terrible, in fact it was so bad that it made what Microsoft had look good. The one thing Elop couldn't do was stick with the old Nokia way of doing things, it simply wasn't relevant in this time and age. The mistake Elop made was not in getting rid of Nokia's homegrown OS developments, it was in choosing Microsoft's developments to replace them.
Elop should have chosen to go with Android for the killer platform of the their OS with Nokia's hardware. Unfortunately for Nokia he went for the lethal platform of the Microsoft OS with Nokia's hardware. The result was the choosing of industry contacts that Elop had at Microsoft instead of going with Android and systematic destruction of billions of dollars in equity.
Elop can be counted on to make hard choices and get rid of losing platforms. Unfortunately he can also be counted on to make foolish choices to fill the void. Inevitably he will therefore be the next Microsoft CEO...
Wouldn't that mean that the next gen Playstation would be more expensive?
Getting rid of the XBOX would not be the end of their consumer line. They would still have consumer windows, mobile phones and tablets. Which is great, because consumer windows, tablets and even mobile phones will affect the use and purchasing of enterprise systems ... being in these markets can help their core business.
The only thing the XBOX ever did for Microsoft is make them lose money (overall) and weaken their support for the PC. DirectX is basically deprecated at this point, it saw a small update to bring it to feature parity with XBOX One and that was it ... regardless of how profitable XBOX can be, Microsoft should not be running that business since it conflicts with their own. Microsoft has a yearly song and dance routine how they are committed to PC gaming when some executive notices how Valve is making loads of cash and realize that could have been them if they hadn't screwed it up, but it never lasts.
I really hope he becomes microsoft's CEO. Then he sinks it just as fast as he sank Nokia.
Elop said he will abandon Microsoft's failed attempt to create a modern operating system and simply bet the whole company on getting in bed with Nokia and use their Symbian operating system. Either that or Meego.
The long term strategy is that after the company craters, Nokia can purchase it for a song, and he can then be tapped to be CEO of Nokia.
He noted that this strategy has worked in the past. "Nokia's cratered stock price doubled after they sold me off of Microsoft, And I can confidently predict that after I crater microsoft, it's price will double when they sell me back to Nokia."
He also pointed out that essentially the same strategy was used by Gil Amelio when Apple abandoned it's OS developement and bought Steve's Jobs and his Next OS, shedding Gil in the process.
"it's proven. Buy another company's OS and bet on it. That's what I know how to do better than anyone."
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Somehow, they need to get Ford's Mulally and EMC's Maritz (ex-MSFT) as a tag team, with Mulally being the CEO/Operations/Mr Outside and Maritz being the product roadmap guy.
That makes sense to me. Of course, they'd have to get Mulally and Maritz to sign on first.
The XBox unit is profitable. The entire first generation of the XBox was financial lose, but in the last few years, the business finally started to make money.
Bing, not so much. Bing seems to be a dumping ground for Microsoft managers. Every year or so, there's a new management team at Bing. Their business strategy is "copy Google". To some extent, they have to - for a while, their ad system was completely different from Google's, and advertisers wouldn't bother to use it. Something like 80% of Bing users use Internet Explorer. Those are the people who don't know how to change the default search engine.
Google as the only major search engine, though, is scary. The remaining competition in web search is tiny in the US - IAC, InfoSeek, Yandex, and Baidu. (DuckDuckGo and Bleeko are resellers of Bing and Yandex, respectively.) With no competition, Google could charge much more for ads and become even more intrusive.
Elop ... would eliminate company projects such as Xbox and Bing while focusing resources on Office.
Yes, because putting all your eggs into one basket is always a good idea. I'm not a Microsoft fan, but this seems like a stupid business decision. Good thing there aren't any free alternatives to Office so Microsoft can keep milking their Office cash cow forever...
Elop decided to abandon Nokia's popular homegrown operating systems, including Symbian, in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone.
.
Hmm... Microsoft exec gets hired by Nokia, kills in-house OS products in favor of Microsoft OS, company's market share tanks, gets considered for CEO at Microsoft. Nope, nothing fishy here. [/sarcasm]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
as in, "Marissa Meyer is going to 'Elop' Yahoo if it kills her"
or "J.J. Abrahms had better not 'Elop' the franchise..."
yep...
TFA headline actually made me LOL: "Stephen Elop Would Pull a Nokia On Microsoft"
Right?
I think M$ is going to undergo even more headline grabbing changes and someone spinning off a major division or brand (like Xbox) is exactly the kind of way this would happen.
Did you see the article on Playstation 4? I have never bought a PS (from the beginning IMHO it was a lesser nintendo but i'm old school like that...) and I'm not any kind of gamer fanboi but the PS4 looks badass all the way around. It's going to be $100 cheaper on launch and the 3rd Party game situation will be killer
Xbox is M$'s next casualty...seriously...
But yeah, to get back off-topic...let's make "Elop" a verb meaning to abandon a company's popular proven products in favor of an over-designed unusable system, which causes the company to lose sales & eventually be purchased by a competing interest.
Thank you Dave Raggett
After thinking about it, as someone who worked at Microsoft and has friends who work there, I think Elon has a very good idea there.
Going off mission like Ballmer did the last decade may feel good, but it's the wrong direction.
I may prefer LibreOffice or some other solution other friends are working on, but they really need to shake up the doom spiral that Microsoft is in, and get their heads back in gear.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Evaluating Elop with respect to good/bad done to Nokia:
-Good: ditching Symbian
-Bad: Picking MS, the last place platform
-Bad: Focusing on higher end, North American market and neglecting Nokia's thriving global market.
Basically, the only measure by which Elop was 'good' would be microsoft's measurement of loyalty, willingness to sink his company for the sake of giving microsoft more of a chance.
Just imagine if Nokia had been the provider of things like Lumia 520 but with Android on it....
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Open VS to other platforms, provide a decent .NET implementation on those platforms, and support languages that weren't invented at MS. This, along with selling their enterprise software on other platforms, could make MS a lot of money.
He was and always will work for himself - most CEOs are pathological sociopaths, and have interest in no-ones benefit but their own.
Thorsten Heins is free at the moment. Not being entirely funny by thinking he'd do a good job, he'd inherited a problem and his actions, though ultimately futile, probably helped extend BBs life and put them in a better position to recover.
By eliminating Bing and Xbox, Microsoft would [admit defeat] in the consumer realm.
And you'd prefer them to not admit it and continue to pour money in bottomless pits ?
Thinking about it, that sounds like a brilliant plan to get rid of Microsoft, but I'm not sure anyone of importance comes to SlashBI for the insight.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Putting all your eggs in the Office camp seems very dangerous. Our office recently
migrated to openoffice and never looked back. I use google docs at home. Both
are currently weak and can only get better. Google has recently added office tools
to android. I see standalone high dollar office suites as a dying breed. I personally
would not double down on them. Same with high-end computer OSes, another one
of Microsoft's cash cows. If microsoft wants to exist in 20 years they need to be in
the tablet, smartphone, tv console, and other growing markets that continue to reduce
the need for a full blown desktop at home. I know a lot of people who no longer have
a desktop computer or see no need for one. This number will probably continue to
grow as tablets/smartphones and roku/xbox type devices continue to add features.
I wouldn't trust Elop to keep a popsicle frozen. He'd sell off the freezer to save on energy and make his only product, a popsicle, more profitable.
It is a steaming pile
...which gives his 'strategic realignment' ... a whiff of self-interest.
I'm shocked - shocked! - that any CEO would operate in his self-interest.
Purg Bing and X 'Box
It used to be that MicroSoft defeated WordPerfect and they had the only usable office suite available, running on what at least 95% of potentially paying customers had as their only means to do office stuff on.
These days, potentially paying customers use a plethora of devices, over half of which are totally not under control of MicroSoft, neither architecture or operating system, let alone business model. Many of these already offer quite capable alternatives to the MicroSoft office products, or free alternatives are readily available. With current document interoperability standards being forced by large groups of customers, vendor lock in using proprietary formats isn't much of an option for MicroSoft any more.
Office software suites haven't really changed much in the last 10 years or so. You can type a letter, make up a document in a unique way that almost totally not looks like it will come out of a printer in infinite ways, pivot your tables in a spreadsheet, hook it up to a database and make boring presentations with the same sort of spiffy animations that we stopped using long ago. It's a dead horse, there's nothing exciting to build left and even your fridge has an office suite available for it in some app store.
TL;DR, Office software is a hard market to compete in, even if you have a large user base. Betting the family fortune on maintaining that user base and milking lots of money out of them without having the benefits of alternative business models like google does, is at best a high risk bet and most likely a guarantee to fail.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Even if Elop was staying loyal to Microsoft while working at Nokia, he failed them big time. Microsoft expected him to drive Windows Phone market share up, not to burn Nokia down.
I find it hard to imagine the Microsoft board is dumb enough to view such an underachiever as a serious candidate for the CEO job. All these stories leaking to the media telling the contrary might just be made up to give the impression that the whole Elop / Nokia / Windows Phone story was not the tragic failure it really is, and that the current Nokia buyout plan is not a desperate move where they don't get anything of value, but have to do it because there is no other choice.
Until more carriers start offering bargain-basement plans for Android phones, there will still be a market niche for dumbphones. Currently I pay $7 per month for a Virgin Mobile dumbphone; if I were to switch to a smartphone on the same carrier, my bill would rise to $35.
Sounds like a wonderfully horrendous plan. Certain aspects, such as those designed to allow Microsoft to compete in non-Windows environments (if implemented properly) are definitely good ideas. Killing off divisions like the xBox division... not so much.
It makes it seem like he's trying to both hurt them and save them at the same time - sadly, I don't think it'll get them anywhere.
That's of course assuming that the speculation is more than just speculation (and he actually plans on doing such things).
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
Let's put Windows in the line of fire
> A new Bloomberg report suggests that Stephen Elop, who's apparently on the short list of candidates to replace Steve Ballmer as Microsoft's CEO, would eliminate company projects such as Xbox and Bing while focusing resources on Office.
Firstly this seems like wild conjecture to me, but let's say for the sake of argument that this is actually Elop's plan, and that he'd have the authority, personal power, and get the buy-in necessary to do all of this. (A huge leap of faith, but let's say it all happens.)
Is this necessarily a bad thing, moving forward? The time where you could make huge amounts of money selling operating systems is past. We can all see that. The practice of tying all products irrevocably together to, I dunno, circle the wagons, and make other Microsoft income streams mandatory in order to participate in any other Microsoft income stream, also appears to becoming less and less effective.
So, if you're going to sell software, what software is there left to sell? Why not drop (or spin off) the side products that aren't part of the company's core comptency, and also drop the infrastructure and operating system stuff (let other people do that for free) and concentrate on applications? I've felt for a long time that Microsoft's attempt to own everything is a conceit from a time that doesn't exist anymore, and will ultimately result in owning nothing. As an app developer, they could eck out a long term existence, although perhaps as a somewhat smaller company. But a smaller company that has long term survival prospects is a heck of a lot better than a huge company approaching a wall at speed.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If Xbox One were the last Xbox, that wouldn't necessarily hand PlayStation 5 the entire ninth-generation hardcore console market and allow Sony Computer Entertainment to extract monopoly rents from end users and game developers. The PlayStation 5 would still have to compete against SteamOS boxes with their deeply discounted games that run on both the TV and the desktop.
Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales to End Users by
Vendor in 2012 (Thousands of Units)
Samsung 384,631.2 22.0%
Nokia 333,938.0 19.1%
Apple 130,133.2 7.5%
ZTE 67,344.4
on my Android phone, I have installed Bing
A couple months ago, I tried to install the Bing app on my Nexus 7 tablet, and Google Play Store said my carrier wasn't supported. It's a Wi-Fi tablet, and my carrier is Xfinity. At the time, I ended up installing DuckDuckGo instead, which tended to force stop after five minutes of use. I checked again today, and Bing was available. Go figure.
Microsoft doesn't need to concentrate on Office. Microsoft needs to concentrate on integrating all these many pieces of the puzzle that they already have.
They could do some kick ass stuff if they could make it easy to do all the things people would like to by having settings / media ownership and compatibility between all the different platforms and form factors.
No one else has all the pieces that they do right now. If they could just stop infighting and head towards a common goal they could accomplish really cool stuff.
I've had a dislike for the company since the 90's. But I'm thankful to them for the job security I enjoyed supporting and maintaining their products in enterprises. But I come home at night to Mac and Linux systems.
But seriously, Long term, Office and Windows are doomed. There is some interesting tech in Xbox Connect that could create some game changing product categories in enterprises such as Medical Tech etc. Bing, is the only thing that I can see that could even approach giving Google a ride but it's way too far behind. These 2 divisions should be spun off or at least unleashed (e.g. MSFT retains an ownership stake but takes them public) and run on a profitable basis (if they can). The bureaucracy at MSFT is killing innovation.
The other interesting things MSFT is doing are their Azure platform and universal identity management. But a mistrustful tech community will hamper adoption of these products.
There was an interesting piece a few months back, What if Microsoft exited the search business?, arguing that the abandonment of Bing would lead to a near-immediate antitrust action against Google, either from the FTC or as a private action undertaken by Microsoft itself.
It may be that Google needs Bing to hang around as plausible competition the same way that Microsoft needed Mac OS to soldier on in the late 90's as a putative competitor to Windows (and remember, Microsoft was still found to have engaged in illegal monopolistic practices anyways, something that Microsoft arguably never recovered from).
Seems to me like he never left Microsoft. In the game of chess this pawn has just become a queen.
If Windows dies off then what happens to the pc?
Think your tablet that requires signed binaries and is drmed to the roof will boot linux?
Nope its android time with playstore only with spyware.
http://saveie6.com/
Good point. Windows computers keep the free-to-tinker PC ecosystem alive which in turn allows setting up any kind of Linux installations that one wants.
I hear you RE: Xbox live competitive advantage
see, my dad is an old electronics guy from the Navy and he **loves** playing the Tiger Woods golf video game on the internet w/ his buddies all over the world...
he doesn't give a shit about what plaform, what system, w/e...he just wants to play Tiger Woods Golf in co/op mode...
I had to set him up w/ an Xbox Live account and teach him now to navigate around M$'s bullshit marketing on the Xbox Live Marketplace
He would hate to have to switch systems and would endure a fair ammount of bother to avoid it...
however, if the majority of his friends switch to PS4 then it's a foregone conclusion he will get a PS4 as well!!!!
Thank you Dave Raggett
I like it and wish it was still being developed. Still using a symbian phone and with all the privacy crap with IOS and android I'm not looking to move away from the platform anytime soon even though the apps are now dated and not supported.
I know we can't go around coining phrases willy-nilly but I think that article is right on...
I can't stand Brett Ratner or his films but if he is iconic enough to warrant naming the Effect of [damaging sales by disparaging own products] after him, them I think we should consider "Abrams Effect"
He screwed up Trek films & now he's set to screw of Star Wars too
I'm a 'trekkie' i guess secretly, but i can appreciate Star Wars camp factor/space opera thing for what it is (and pretend George Lucas doesn't exist) /. tends towards Star Wars fans, but even if you hate Trek you can see how Abrams ruined Gene Roddenberry's concept of futurism. It was indeed revolutionary (& if he wanted to Roddenberry could have started a Scientology-like cult that ppl would buy into, IMHO) because of how he used a silly sci-fi program to expose very relevant problems in society...
Star Wars isn't like that...but understand my point is that **the appeal** of Star Wars, beyond the effects and cool space battles, is something complex and not easily replicated. It's a fine esoteric line that the film has to walk, given Lucas's legacy, but it can be done, and done well IMHO. J.J. Abrams is definitely not the one to do it.
Abram's M.O. is to take a beloved cult concept and remove all the uniqueness from it while simultaneously using high-level marketing to give the impression that his is a 'fan's filmmaker' who will preserve the unique complexities of a work while making it new visually.
J.J. Abrams is a hack.
I believe his filthy way is deserving of its own 'Effect' moniker. What do you think?
Thank you Dave Raggett
Although selling the phone division to Microsoft is a bit wild, there isn't anybody here in Finland suggesting that Nokia would have been better off keeping Symbian alive. In fact, it is completely surprising how long the market remained interested in Symbian, the general opinion was that the sales decline of Symbian phones would have occurred a full year earlier. Surely, Elop did not make that decision by himself. There are those who think Meego would have been a hit, and killing that is attributed to Elop. Whether Meego would have brought better results is pure speculation.
If their OS work was terrible, then why did the N9 win design awards, and receive overwhelmingly positive reviews? Agreed that Symbian was showing its age (in spite of not being the dog of a seller that MS reputation mgmt drones imply - it still was growing in sales when Elop axe-murdered it), but MeeGo was in-house as well, and took the N9 to a position that Windows Phones have never matched, in terms of critical acclaim.
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
Here's what they should do. Sell off the XBox division for a pretty good price. Then, after a few years, arrange for a former Microsoft Executive to be put in charge of the new company. He would then drive that company into the ground and arrange for Microsoft to re-buy the company for pennies on the dollar.
Somehow, I just know that would work.
If Windows dies off then what happens to the pc?
...we end up with operating system variants that are worth a damn (mainly because it'd be too effing expensive and time-consuming to start from scratch, so most would simply adapt Linux. Well, except one case where they'll just keep selling theirs with OSX...)
Think your tablet that requires signed binaries and is drmed to the roof will boot linux?
Tablet? I thought you were talking about the PC. Hell, in the tablet world, Windows is already a non-player at best.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
"Secure" Boot says hello.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I can imagine the wonderful goodwill Microsoft will engender when their loyal XBox customers get suddenly left out in the cold. Microsoft won't sell XBox. They can't. There are too many windows OS and other intellectual property crucial to the Microsoft that they won't give up to a potential competitor. It's crazy to give up the XBox. Yes, it loses money. So does advertising. No one suggests that Microsoft cut advertising and marketing, yet the XBox is their biggest marketing tool available to them. Dumb. How do CEO's get these types of jobs. So many of them, like Elop, stink at what they do, yet they never have trouble finding work.
Can Gigabyte and Asus still make motherboards without Windows? Linux is too small.
Tablets would take over then. The pc ecosystem you run Linux on was created for dos clones. Without a windows OSX will turn into ios
http://saveie6.com/
there's also IronPython and IronRuby, which were started externally but are now pretty official under MS.
Let me know when Python can be used in Xbox 360 games or apps for downlevel Windows Phone handsets. Right now, XNA on Xbox 360 and all third-party apps on Windows Phone 7 use the .NET Compact Framework, which lacks support for the Reflection.Emit module that all DLR languages use.
Come on, you know better than that. It's pretty clear Microsoft will pick some dark-horse candidate with little to no experience to help them collapse the company in the most dramatic fashion possible.
Clearly, then, the only possible choice is Lady Gaga.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I would have thought (as a non-owner) that the X-BOX represents one of MS' victories in the consumer space. I wonder sometimes if MS hadn't just made their phone UI more like X-BOX they would have had a highly successful product.
And X-BOX represents an excellent PR opportunity through-out MS' range of products. It introduces consumers to a working, easy to use computer system that builds confidence in their product line and makes them relevant in every living room. I don't understand why companies keep hiring the same bad decision makers.
Just make sure someone gets the lights on the way out.
How many people use Windows, I guess still > 80% of computer users. If MS can leverage the fact that people are familiar with their OS/UI, and use this to gain market share in other areas (home entertainment center - Xbox, smartphones and tablets), they could easily recover significantly. All is not lost. This is the direction they have taken with Windows 8, sure it sucks, they might get it right eventually. It could still work out for them..
I think Microsoft needs to drop the baggage that is holding it back. Stop trying to chase Google and Apple on very late and losing projects like Bing, Internet Explorer, Surface tablet and focus on successful ones that actually make money. Bing will never make you money and IE is free and why waste money on free? After all, I never heard anyone say they bought Windows because of Internet Explorer. Except maybe those enterprise people stuck with IE and XP. Xbox should be spun off as the entertainment arm of Microsoft. Unfortunately Elop fails at realizing that Windows phones are going nowhere too and needs to stop the act like one day Windows phones will have more then single digit market share.
with a lot less words. should i sue?
And make the world a better place!
Microsoft can only compete under an monopoly! Perhaps not Windows anymore but most business applications is still Windows only, for now.
If Windows dies off right now, then for a few years we'll be using old versions of Windows or modern Linux version with compatibility and usability issues.
After those few years, all the extra money that's now going into Linux (driver) development will have paid off and Linux (and probably BSD and some others) will be as mature as Windows was a few years back.
Just my prediction; I don't think we'll get a chance to find out if it's correct.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Because it sure does smell like, taste like, and act like feudalism. How can a corporation be so stupid and incompetent that it only has one "heir" to the throne?