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How Does Microsoft Avoid Being the Next IBM? (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: For fans of the platform, the official confirmation that Windows on phones isn't under active development any longer -- security bugs will be fixed, but new features and new hardware aren't on the cards -- isn't a big surprise. This is merely a sad acknowledgement of what we already knew. Last week, Microsoft also announced that it was getting out of the music business, signaling another small retreat from the consumer space. It's tempting to shrug and dismiss each of these instances, pointing to Microsoft's continued enterprise strength as evidence that the company's position remains strong. And certainly, sticking to the enterprise space is a thing that Microsoft could do. Become the next IBM: a stable, dull, multibillion dollar business. But IBM probably doesn't want to be IBM right now -- it has had five straight years of falling revenue amid declining relevance of its legacy businesses -- and Microsoft probably shouldn't want to be the next IBM, either. Today, Microsoft is facing similar pressures -- Windows, though still critical, isn't as essential to people's lives as it was a decade ago -- and risks a similar fate. Dropping consumer ambitions and retreating to the enterprise is a mistake. Microsoft's failure in smartphones is bad for Windows, and it's bad for Microsoft's position in the enterprise as a whole.
official confirmation that Windows on phones isn't under active development any longer -- security bugs will be fixed, but new features and new hardware aren't on the cards -- isn't a big surprise
So they tried something, and it didn't work out for them. What's the big deal? I don't see people lining up to bash Apple over the Newton.
Last week, Microsoft also announced that it was getting out of the music business, signaling another small retreat from the consumer space
How many people even knew Microsoft was in the music business? The top companies for purchasing music are Apple, Google, and Amazon. It's highly unlikely there could have been space for a fourth.
pointing to Microsoft's continued enterprise strength as evidence that the company's position remains strong
Good job, you found where the money is. They make more money in a month selling licenses for Windows Server than they likely ever made in music.
Windows, though still critical, isn't as essential to people's lives as it was a decade ago -- and risks a similar fate.
You're simply wrong on the notion of it not being as essential. The vast overwhelming majority of all PCs sold at retail come with Windows on them. The vast overwhelming majority of PCs sold to businesses do as well. It is as relevant to the average person as a refrigerator, only with a vastly shorter life span. As long as they get vendors of relevant software to keep pushing users to newer versions of Windows, they're set for the rest of nearly forever.
Dropping consumer ambitions and retreating to the enterprise is a mistake.
This is also ignoring one enormous cash cow for Microsoft - Office. Yeah, for the majority of consumers the free office suites are more than sufficient, but you cannot convince them of that. And now Microsoft, for all intents and purposes, only sells consumer subscriptions to Office, that users have to renew every year. This is absolutely not abandoning consumer for enterprise.
This also is ignoring all the efforts that go in to XBox development. The Microsoft - Sony duopoly has all but killed Nintendo from the most profitable segments of the gaming market. Why would Microsoft retreat from that - especially when they keep telling us how great the next (strangely-named) XBox console will be?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Microsoft is already the new IBM (old and staid). Apple is the new Microsoft (embrace and extend with proprietary stuff to ensure lock-in). Google is the new Apple.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
It doesn't. Thanks for playing.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
why?
that's when Microsoft is in real trouble. My generation grew up on Windows/Mac/Linux OSs. Its what we are used to. The young generation that lives with a smartphone in one hand and a tablet computer in the other on the other hand may reject Windows completely. That generation may want to continue to use Android or iOS as their OS of choice, except on far more powerful hardware - laptops, desktops and even graphics workstations. That, in my opinion, is where it all falls apart for MS - when Windows simply isn't the big desktop OS of choice anymore, not even in the workplace.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
IBM is still selling mainframes. Microsoft is still selling software. Both are making money.
If it survives as an ibm it should consider itself lucky.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Since the early '90s, I've been predicting Microsoft's future: it will follow the same trajectory as IBM -- meaning Microsoft will never go away, but will become increasingly less important until it can reasonably be ignored if you wish.
My reasoning is that their corporate behavior pretty solidly mirrors that of IBM's through its various phases. There is nearly no chance that Microsoft (or any other company of its size) could pull off such a complete reinvention of themselves as to change that behavior.
I see no reason to modify my prediction yet.
The anonymous coward that posted that summary seems to feel nostalgic about the time when MS was the 800 lbs gorilla bullying everybody.
... killed IBM and Microsoft and Mobil Oil.
I worked for Mobil. They bought their own insurance company and became self-insured and got into the business/consumer insurance business. They also got into real estate. They built Reston, Va. from the ground up.
They also bought Montgomery Ward and stuff.
Now they are gone, absorbed by Exxon.
--
Too much money causes businesses to look for ways to spend the cash in pursuit of CEO and shareholder greed.
Today's capitalism calls for asymptotic growth in periods measured in nanosecomds.
In this regard, Apple is next.
Apple has more ash than God and has no visionary (Jobs) to guide them as to how to spend it.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
(ducks)
Look, the problem is how the market exists, and how it will change, not in how it used to be.
IBM rolled into services, having initially come from services.
MSFT started with OS and apps, but is fighting three different wars:
1. Tiny tech. Stuff that is so small nobody will ever pay for an OS for it. It's in the background. Do you ever think "oh, my new fridge and toaster need a fancy Kenmore OS, not some Braun OS". Nope. Wearables don't care. Only Apple (which amounted to a large share of MSFT apps market share, originally) has managed to make people pay for that.
2. Ubiquitous Linux blade servers. Nobody cares what your database and AI runs on. Oh, at trade shows they pretend they do, but IRL they don't. Cheap fast quick reliable wins every day.
3. Cell/mobile vs Desktop/Server. MSFT has never grokked cell or mobile. Ever. Still don't. They keep trying to chrome it up, and they aren't Apple, so it never works.
Thing is, you think MSFT gets most of their money from stuff and services they sell. They don't. They get it from all the bits and pieces of companies they own.
(caveat: many of my friends got rich off of MSFT or Apple or IBM, and my first house was from selling MSFT stock I bought below book value on Black Friday stock crash)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
They can't.
that's when Microsoft is in real trouble. My generation grew up on Windows/Mac/Linux OSs. Its what we are used to. The young generation that lives with a smartphone in one hand and a tablet computer in the other on the other hand may reject Windows completely. That generation may want to continue to use Android or iOS as their OS of choice, except on far more powerful hardware - laptops, desktops and even graphics workstations. That, in my opinion, is where it all falls apart for MS - when Windows simply isn't the big desktop OS of choice anymore, not even in the workplace.
You're assuming that they want a Desktop. My teenage kids have no interest in a laptop. They want a high power gaming system (Xbox/Playstation), they want an iphone, they want an ipad, they might want a keyboard for their ipad so they can take notes but they have no desire for a desktop or even a laptop.
You're right that if they picked up a laptop, they would likely choose an android based one so it would have all their apps but they really have no desire for a powerful PC. Even for things like graphic design and video editing, most teenagers seem to be opting for an ipad over a PC.
The Young Ones
Ah, I really liked that Britcom.
Many years ago, when I was working for a large company dominant in the mobile business, I was discussing my ideas for a new mobile device with a potential venture capitalist. I explained that I could handle the design just fine, I just needed someone to go sell it to the large consumer electronics distributors. His reply floored me:
"Yes, but I don't know any telecom guys..."
Here was someone who, because I worked for a telecom, could not grasp that I could work in any other field. He had a degree in MIS, and had hired consultants, yet couldn't get it out of his head that I could/would work in any field other than the one I was currently employed. I had even done mobile device development for other companies, I just wasn't doing it now.
I then realized that this is part of the reason why large companies ossify and die. The venture capitalists and business types honestly cannot even conceive of doing business in any way differently than they do today. For them, Microsoft will always be a PC company, and as the PC market goes, so goes Microsoft. It's a rule, XBOX notwithstanding.
Even should the executives at Microsoft come up with a revolutionary new idea, the best they'll get from the finance guys is a blank stare when they try to get funding for it. Since they've been so successful with PC operating systems and office, why would they invest in anything else?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Too late, soooo too late. Next generation will probably ask "How does IBM avoid being the next Microsoft?"
Not sure this is a meaningful comparison. IBM is an extremely diverse company with very successful R&D that has generated many patents and new products, and they already staged a major comeback in the late 90s when many had written them off. My impression is that Microsoft's efforts to diversify in some fundamental, meaningful way have largely failed, keeping the vast majority of their eggs in one basket and making them far more susceptible to loss of relevance and revenue.
They're still pretty much a monopoly but now with OSes and applications that downright spy on people.
Source of income?
Government contracts.
I used to work exclusively with WM on industrial (rugged) devices and it was huge in a lot of enterprise scale applications like mail service, warehousing, point of sale, etc. Everything was great until MS started flapping around trying to decide if they wanted to have Windows Embedded or Phone or Handheld or whatever the fuck. One thing enterprise customers DO NOT LIKE is uncertainty.
So they started switching to Android because at least they know what they are getting and that it will be supported in the future. Microsoft did NOT understand their market for Windows Mobile. Or maybe they did when they started and forgot, or new blood came in and bollocks-ed up the works.
It looks like I'm going to be able to go my whole career without learning MS Office Anything.
how does IBM avoid becoming the next Microsoft?
if apple opens mac os x to any pc and app store sand boxing is toned down then M$ is in deep shit.
Not sure how lucrative it actually is, but considering Windows is the go-to platform for gaming on computer for most people and Xbox is a big player in the console space, it seems like Microsoft should put a lot of effort into gaming, at least enough to grow their influence and not eventually lose it like they have with other things.
Repairing the Xbox brand would probably be a good start. Investing in some new decent franchises and being somewhat hands-off with it, considering it sounds like they tend to meddle a little too much currently. (Just let people who know what they're doing do their jobs!) Maybe try doing some things with Windows to keep it appealing as a platform for gaming.
Mobile gaming is apparently very big too, so maybe Microsoft needs to focus more in this space too. Make a couple Halo games for mobile devices, give benefits for having an Xbox Live Gold account and tie games together across mobile and Windows/Xbox to give more of a reason to stick with Microsoft.
As I said, I'm not sure how lucrative gaming is (or could be) for Microsoft, so they shouldn't focus exclusively on gaming, but they should try to not lose the position they currently have.
Businesses follow the same patterns time and time again.
Although, the pattern can be reset - like in Apple's case. Apple was left for dead in the 90s, but Jobs came back and revitalized it. Now, it's back on track to the same old same old.
It's not a natural law per se, but it's social science - economics.
I hear some grandiose claims by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur about his car company and quite a few of us don't see how it could happen the way he states it. Competitors are coming in and established players who played it cool are coming in now.
The best he and his investors can hope for is a buyout at the current over-inflated prices.
But businesses follow a pattern because markets work the way they do.
First they need to invent time travel...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I don't even get the question. Microsoft is already—to a first and second approximation—Lotus Notes 2.0.
Their primary lock on the enterprise is their proprietary document format, and its extensive integration ecosystem—the many of COBOL-grade regoliths of Jericho—extending from BASIC to Visual Basic to Visual Studio to .NET to SharePoint and beyond.
Windows 10 these days is barely more than a cash register on a busy toll bridge (with a special, express lane for native DirectX 12).
Aside from a legacy investment lock-in (self-inflicted), the four surviving reasons to run Windows 10: you don't care (it came with the damn machine), you play immersive games, you work for a tired corporation, or you exchange documents with a tired corporation.
Make no mistake, this giant pile of dusty rock is built to last. But Microsoft's active relevance is already 80% in the rear-view mirror.
The one thing I will say, though it pains me, is that I've heard it said on more than one machine learning podcast that Microsoft Research is considered among the very best and most progressive of all giant, cutting-edge research labs.
MS Office Helper Not Dead Yet — April 2001
So we've seen this movie before.
How much of this generation's cutting-edge work coming out of Microsoft Research will also be Clippified?
Stay tune for the next soul-crushing chapter.
Or perhaps their new embrace of the Linux ecosystem portends that they've finally learned from their past mistakes (someone remind me to check back again in another five years).
IBM (for whom I workef for 20 years) became irrelevant by developing and promoting products that served their own interests, instead of customers’ interests (SNA, OS2, MVS, etc). Microsoft has done the same, with Windows Phone, Zune, Sharepoint, etc. The market couldn’t care less what is best for IBM or Microsoft, it only cares what is best for users. Apple is doing the same now, with Apple Music and iCloud, and risks becoming irrelevant..l
I don't get the idea of IBM being old and decrepit. They still do advanced nanotechnology research, their enterprise software business is top notch, and Watson is being deployed in numerous fields. Their products are not sexy in your face consumer products like Apple, but that doesn't mean they're not interesting. There's more exciting stuff in the R&D department of IBM than Apple or Google on any given day.
I'm talking about when they graduate from college and starting working a paid job. There is no way, currently, around using a laptop or desktop computer for serious 9 to 5 work. Much of what happens in an enterprise needs a mouse, keyboard and a screen larger than a tablet computer can provide. Especially if you are doing any kind of serious design, CAD or engineering work.
A future iPad with handwriting recognition, hand gesture recognition, a virtual keyboard that floats in front of your eyes and so forth may be usable in some situations.
Everything else? Nobody is running Linux on a day to day basis.
Yeah, nobody. ... all GNU/Linuxes. iOS (Darwin-like) and BlackBerry (QNX based) are the only exceptions).
Except people using smartphone running Android (still a Linux kernel, even if coupled with a weird non-GNU user-space) or nearly any other alternative system (Tizen, Sailfish,
Except people connecting to a modem/router to go online (Linux has a quasi-monopoly on home routers)
Except people using smartTVs, media players, set-top boxes
Except people having cars (although QNX is popular on the more critical processors CPUs in a car, the Linux kernel is more popular on the infotainment center)
Except people having ebooks (in Europe, the two most popular are Kobo [Linux + embed Qt] and Tolino [Android])
Except people using home NAS to backup their data (Linux is the most popular OS, see Synology for a concrete example)
Except people using a USB boot disk from an antivirus maker to scan an infected PC (lots of such recovery sticks actually run a GNU/Linux bootdisk. e.g.: Kaspersky).
Except people downloading photo from their camera over WiFi (there are even Wifi-enabled SD-Cards that feature a diminutive embed Linux webdav server)
Except people printing document (currently HP has switched to derivative of webOS on their printers)
Except people that use a high performance cluster, even for trivial reasons (hint: what did you think Youtube uses to re-compress videos to various formats ?)
Except people using SatNav (ever since the original Tomtom device that was Linux powered).
etc.
If a gadget has a CPU a little bit more powerful than a micro-controller, and it is not a desktop, chances are very high that it runs Linux.
The "year of Linux on pretty much every other fucking stuff except the desktop" has already passed for quite some time.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Fire all upper and middle management. Have department management report directly to the replacement 'executive staff', promoted from the most successful lower managers who have been in management less than 5 years.
From there provide a minimum and maximum per department account for the year, a list of ongoing projects, a list of microsoft research projects, and a list of submissions from the 'line staff'. Most of what has allowed Microsoft to become irrelevant is thinking they know better than the common man. While their dev staff isn't exactly the 'common man', many of them have more of a finger on the pulse of the industry than middle and upper management has.
Another major change to benefit their customers would be to start adding an even higher level of regression testing framework and provide QA positions both as 'temp' positions for people to move into other facets of the company, as well as a QA career path eventually specializing in specific high value projects for verifying and thoroughly testing around enterprise customer issues.
Microsoft will still choose to play it safe instead and eventually fall into irrelevancy, with one or two cool items along the way (that holotable thing seems pretty cool, but without integration with cell phones, tablets, and notebooks set on/near it, it seems far less useful overall than it should be.)
... one idea is calling it quits, closing shop, returning money to shareholders and writing a nice "I'm sorry" letter to users worldwide.
Additional points for directing clients to Linux.
That would partially convince me they love Linux.
Captcha: persist. I don't know, sometimes certain AI programs' comments seem too tongue-in-cheek to me...
Old, slow, and make complicated quirky engineering products.
IBM is better in that they listen and care about their customers and they actually drop products that still work. Microsoft keeps going until something is beyond dead to actually kill something.
Band, Kin, Project Spark, Windows Store, Surface RT, Continuum desktop, Xamarin, Zune, PDA, Phone... Anything outside of Office and Windows is not looking too hot at MS.
Come on guys who wants to go back to 1999 and have MSN, IE, Exchange, Office, Win32, MFC, and innovation like USB support being stunned due to what is best for Microsoft? Microsoft set the pace. Microsoft set the standards. Microsoft made life difficult for portability and tied everything into their stack.
Guess what? IE and Edge actually follow W3C standards now and work like every other browser?! We have options like Google Docs and Libreoffice if 100% compability are not too critical. We can use Java, Python, and C++ on all platforms EVEN WINDOWS with Visual Studio support. Hell, Microsoft even includes Android emulators and virtualization free if you have Windows 10 pro. They include Ubuntu if you have the home version.
If they fall behind Linux and MacOSX will kick them in the rear end ... look up USB and EFI support as an example? The USB with the iMAC finally made USB keyboards.
I like this new Microsoft. If you don't? Well who cares do not use it. We are finally breaking free and when competition kicks in we all benefit. I will even say I like Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code now.
IBM was good but is fading away.
I see Microsoft returning to it's pre-DOS roots. As a unique software development tool and business software shop. Microsoft has always made great development tools and business software. Their operating systems and web browsers have not been so great, but they did give us web 2.0 AJAX and CSS.
http://saveie6.com/
The troubling trend is not that Microsoft is abandoning the business it never had. It's that it is abandoning the business it still dominates in order to bet on the business in which they are a distant second. They are literally abandoning the desktop in order to benefit their cloud business. They are doing everything they can to make a Windows desktop just a heavy terminal to their cloud solutions. They overburden it with telemetry. They don't let desktop office caches to store templates downloaded from the net for more than a limited period. They are willing to give away MSVS as long as the help is only viewed online (the paid version has a local copy of help). They end of life systems which are less reliant on network and which are more local-media centered. It's all turning a Windows desktop into a Chromebook. Well, guess what? The market hates Chromebook. People like desktop as a self-contained autonomous serverless jack knife solution. If they use a Windows Desktop, they are not looking for an over performing client to the network. They are looking for a network-capable all-in-one solution. This is the niche which made Windows XP (and to a lesser extent Windows 7) the most successful consumer desktop operating system of all time. Windows XP survived for 15 years essentially unchanged. And that's an operating system used by end users. There is a golden middle between too much and too little and it can only be discovered through experimenting -- not through careful planning. Once you've discovered it, it is plainly arrogant to think you can outthink and out-plan the evolution.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
One pesky fact about this fading business...
Quarterly Revenue:
June 30, 2005 10.16B
June 30, 2011 17.37B
June 30, 2017 23.32B
The idea that Microsoft is dependent on Windows revenue at this point is laughably out of date. They gave the last version away!
Of course they still rely on the lock-in that comes from Windows huge software library.. but Microsoft is less dependent on the OS than at any time in its history since it got into the OS market. Unless you count Azure as an OS.. all the eggs are going in that basket now. Office 365 is hugely important as well.
Microsoft has several billion dollar a year products now. Get with the times, people.
Microsoft is very different from IBM. Much of what was IBM, in the early days was well Machines. They developed hardware and software to run on it. Sounds a little like Apple. Mainframes and custom hardware and software, and they were good at it. High profits, and consumers who were stuck with their product. Microsoft started the with well Software. They stepped by design or by luck into a market and made something the average user could understand, Windows. Yes they did start with DOS, but I believe Windows was the breakout, with the addition of the graphical version of Office. Now fast forward to today: Microsoft is slowly loosing it's PC market, but there is still not a good enterprise alternative to Windows/Active Directory/Office. This is where the businesses still buy PC's and most important licensing. Linux is very much in the backend of peoples lives in servers where it doesn't matter what OS it is, just as long as it can get to it's SQL (insert flavor) Web Server (insert flavor) and as someone else mentioned compute clustering. So, yes they are loosing some of their "market to the common user" in some aspects, but they still have plenty to milk for a while. (didn't mention XBox, can you be more in the market?) I believe when something the market shifts in the corporate side and move the Active Directory/Windows/Office side, then look out for Microsoft's fall. My 2 cents... ($10 adjusted by inflation)
MSFT needs to better understand why people choose Linux on their PC. No professional wants to use an inferior tool.
If Apple had opened up IOS to all manufacturers (for a fee) they would own mobile and tablets and Android would not exist and Apple could charge an extra $200 for their IPhones because Samsung would need to pay Apple $200 for their IOS license.
But they wont. It is against their DNA. They were born a hardware company, that is how they will die. Over time, iPhones will become a niche product. They had a huge lead technologically, but not any more, just expensive.
Same with most companies. When the internet came, and everybody was screaming about it, there were plenty of old companies that were well placed to capitalize upon it. Newspapers owned the classified ads, how simple for them to Webize them and become EBay and Real Estate.com etc? But they didn't. Or Yellow Pages to become Google. Or Nokia to produce a smart phone (heck they even had Java, just needed to treat it seriously.)
Management in large companies ossifies, particularly once the founders leave. They just keep doing whatever they were doing. There are very few exceptions. Google is trying to be an exception, but not succeeding yet.
Who can think of a company that actually changed course? The only one I can think of is Nokia, from timber to phones and now back to timber.
FASCIST!
They have held back computing for decades now. They have mostly killed diversity in computing. They have created a boring mono-culture where when they have a bad idea, everybody suffers. While they likely will go the way of IBM, if they dies faster, that would be even more beneficial all around.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
WTF? More for Morons with Bill Gates' balls in their mouths,
Mircosoft built out their Windows OS business by forcing OEMs like HP, Lenovo, Acer, ASUS and Dell to go their way using various incentives. So Microsoft never knew how to win consumers based on merit or providing something that the consumers liked. So Microsoft was never a true provider of services to consumers. They tried to muscle their way - OEM way - into mobile with the Nokia purchase - failed spectacularly. Microsoft is a company fundamentally built on evil intentions and symbolizes everything that is wrong with the American capitalism. Microsoft hurt consumers for decades until Apple and Google finally put a dagger through its heart.
Some of them are like hooray! Some of them are like "THAT SUCKS!" Yeah, there's not enough to think about here.
The young generation's preferences may be meaningless. When I was a kid, the other kids wanted their own private land lines and phones in their bedrooms. Only nerds wanted computers and modems. Only yuppies wanted cell phones.
It seems Azure is not mentioned much in comments. It is by all account a hit and new features are coming weekly if not daily. It is well on its way to be as big as AWS revenue wise. Secondly, I am an IT pro who switched to Mac nearly ten years ago and I am looking to switch back possibly to Windows 10 as I cannot justify spending so much on the latest MBPs (not mentioning the idotic lack of ports for "pro" machines). WSL is a bit of a game changer in the DevOps space.
> "Microsoft's continued enterprise strength as evidence that the company's position remains strong"
Is this still true? I work for a Fortune 150 company and the vast majority of the employees have Macs. We may be a bubble, but it is a bubble of 10,000+ people. Now that there are genuine alternatives to Office, Windows phone is dead, Edge and IE are no longer dominant browsers, Azure is not the only cloud platform in town by a long shot, xbox is not the only game system, far more servers use linux than a Windows OS, and, at least where I work, the majority of people don't use Windows desktop, I'm really confused about the MS revenue stream.
Where is the revenue stream is coming from? Its not like there are the only game in town in the cloud computer arena (aws, google cloud), console gaming, office suite (google docs, libreoffice, etc.), desktop gaming (steam), servers (linux), etc. I guess I'm in a bubble since I haven't used MS products in more than a decade.
I wish I had points to mod you up.
The Newton was discontinued twenty years ago. For the first five years after it was discontinued, Apple took a beating over it. It was actual innovation that took Apple out of the pit it was in. I see no evidence of impending innovation at Microsoft.
We all did. We just also knew that they didn't have the big stick to ram it down people's throats like they did with their OS, so nobody cared to jump on that bandwagon long enough to give them the stick. Fool me once and all that.
Well, that's relative since they continue to hemorrhage business. Did you ever drop one of those hard rubber super balls down a set of basement steps? It bounces back almost as high as you drop it from, sort of like Windows 10 did, but each bounce is lower than the previous one. That's the pattern we're seeing with Windows releases.
Oh puhlease. I did an actual doubletake at this one. You obviously tried to rub two thoughts together when penning your reply, so you can't be ignorant of how the PC market as a whole has taken a beating over phones and tablets. It doesn't matter that most laptops still have Windows when most people for their day-to-day interactions want nothing to do with laptops, and desktops are essentially non-existant outside the corporate environment where they survive only because they are easier to chain to a desk. It's for the very reason that Microsoft has been high-handedly trying to extinguish anything like true innovation for decades that people are moving away from the platform entirely. Microsoft's attempts at marrying tablet with the desktop have been received with derision for two reasons. One, every attempt has been universally terrible. And two, no one wants Microsoft foisting their embrace/enhance/extinguish mentatlity on that format, so everything they do there is viewed with suspicion. The number one Windows 10 install is still a classic start menu.
Basically people have put Microsoft in its own jail. We have reluctantly accepted they remain a necessary evil for certain things, but no one will let them into any other market or paradigm because, quite frankly, they have repeatedly demonstrated they simply cannot be trusted. So people in their heads have adopted an attitude of containment. We have to use Windows still for certain things, but no one wants to let that expand. Just as the internet moves to heal censorship, the computing world naturally moves to contain Microsoft. Their short and medium term strategies that were antagonistic to their consumers just can't create long term goodwill.
You don't need to be the only game in town to make money. For all the doomsaying on slashdot, Microsoft may be the most diversified tech company in terms of revenue streams.
Reading from their public earnings release, some big ones:
Office, Azure, LinkedIn, something called "Dynamics", Device sales, Search advertising, other advertising, games.
> So they tried something, and it didn't work out for them.
They tried mobile and failed and tried again and failed again and tried again and failed again for 21 years before giving up.
Why have they kept trying to get into mobile? Because most computing devices sold today are mobile, the market for corded computers has been falling for several years, and is expected to continue to fall.
> The vast overwhelming majority of all PCs sold at retail come with Windows on them.
In 2011, 365 million PCs were sold. In 2015, 288 million. In 2016, 269 million. When your market is dropping 8% per year, that's not good. It's also not good for Microsoft that the percentage of PCs sold with Linux pre-installed increases every year. They are doing okay today - 269 million is a lot less than 365 million, but it's still a lot of computers. Have a look at what that curve looks like 10 years from now, though, as sales keep dropping 10% each year. There's a reason Microsoft is trying to sell Linux on the cloud - it's because they see the curve, they know they won't keep selling Windows on PCs.
Heck, they've stopped even TRYING to sell new versions of Windows, upgrades. In the 1990s people lined up around the block to pay $200 for the latest Windows upgrade. Now nobody buys a new Windows version, literally nobody at all.
I had a typo. Sales of PCs each year are 8% less than the previous year. That's really bad news for Microsoft in 2027.
I don't want Microsoft to become the new IBM, barely surviving in a horcrux made of a pile of patents and feeding from other BigCorps snakes. What I want Microsoft to is to shrivel up and die. Perhaps taking with it big swaths of risk capital into its cold, moldy grave.
It would be the adequate end, given the damage it caused.
IBM, has at least a mixed record. For the corporate behemoth it was, and all the crap that goes with it, it contributed significantly to the advancement of things computer. Microsoft, OTOH, has always been a parasite, nothing more.
Just #fireNadella
Did they used to make operating systems last century or something ?
fire the guys with awesome haircuts and beautifull colored glasses, and hire people with very thick regular glasses and brutal levels of perspiration and they will be back
if they dont, they will ibm
the only good thing they release every year that im aware of is their regular non wireless mouse, that is literally their best product and the only one im interested in every year
Microsoft increased their prices every time...
Nothing really new there.
IBM is a stable, successful company. Giving up their monopolistic ambitions made them a better company, and the same is happening to Microsoft.
MS makes mistakes but as you point out are doing and will be- just fine!
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
Let's be honest here, Microsoft has had more failures then success stories of late. Sure Windows still rules the desktop, and Xbox is doing OK, and some things like Azure and Office still complement enterprise offerings. But on the consumer front, besides Windows phones, you have Zune, Groove Music, Windows 8, Edge browser, and even questions of Surface line going away. Other then Microsoft clinging to a handful of core products. They really don't do well keeping up with products and services and many they walk away from in failure. One has to wonder if Windows fails will Microsoft ne no more?
The question becomes, why is Microsoft even trying to reap revenue from Windows? They seem to now decide cloud services, are the way to make money, and Xbox and Windows are simply not their core interest for revenue anymore. I agree, Microsoft is not going away, but its clear they have made huge missteps that have costs them a lot of revenue. I have my doubts that Surface line and Windows will ever regain the level of dominance it once had. Other operating systems and platforms are slowly chipping away at that and when the OS platform goes, so does many of Microsoft's others avenues of revenue. One see's a relevance to what Apple is experiencing because Mac's are basically flat lined and iPods are dead, iPad's have significantly slowed and nobody see's iPhones as revolutionary anymore. Microsoft is sort of experiencing this same effect of past success not being replaced by future products to replace them.
Nobody needs you.
Damping absorbs vibrations. Dampening is caused by moisture.
The young generation's preferences may be meaningless. When I was a kid, the other kids wanted their own private land lines and phones in their bedrooms. Only nerds wanted computers and modems. Only yuppies wanted cell phones.
Not meaningless. When you were a kid, kids wanted their own phone lines. Now they want their own cell phone. What they wanted didn't really change just the technology behind it. In all 3 of the cases you listed, the demand increased over time. Yes the demand for landlines and modems decreased but only because the demand for something better increased. What we are seeing now with laptops and desktops is that the demand is falling because that "something better" is something portable and private that you can take with you. Just like with landlines and modems, I can't think of a single instance where demand for a technology is falling and suddenly switches direction and demand starts increasing again.
Yes, the early devices were too slow and underdeveloped. The 2000 solved these problems but then didn't have quite enough memory. But the 2100 was transcendentally spectacular. It was a quantum leap forward in personal computing. From the mid '90s through the mid '00s a Newton 2100 unit was my constant companion. I'd still be using them today in place of this naff smartphone/tablet stuff if Newton devices were able to meaningfully synchronize with anything any longer. As I wound down my Newton use in the mid-'00s, mine were outfitted with WiFi, MP3 playing, GPS, etc. Amazing for a device from essentially before the consumer internet era.
A decade+ ago when the iPhone and iPad were just rumors, each time I was crossing my fingers that Apple was about to resurrect the Newton OS and the Newton 2100, only now thinner and with color.
I still have two Newton 2100 devices here in my office. There is nothing out there that compares to them in terms of personal productivity and UX. That handwriting recognition that people made fun of in the early Newtons became absolutely perfect by the last model. There is not a single handwriting app on the app store that even comes close. The way that newton handled information and information objects was a revelation. We're still stuck with clunky files and indistinct "sharing" on current mobile devices.
The Newton wasn't just ahead of its time, its OS remains best-of-breed today and apart from things like color display and modern WiFi, the hardware remains highly usable, too. So far as I'm concerned, Newton still hasn't been reinvented. The iOS and Android experiences are superficially similar (slate form factor, touchscreen), but the actual usability and capabilities for *personal* computing lag far, far behind. Steve Jobs called the iPad "intimate" at launch, but in comparison to the Newton, the iPad is your stuffy boss.
Newton was a different kind of computing, one that was highly personal and highly integrated and integrate-able into your individual workflows and thinking habits. I miss it. I still use mine every now and then for brainstorming and certain personal record-keeping tasks (with the Notion database) as nothing else can duplicate the experience. The thing that comes closest is good old pen and paper, but pen and paper lack some key features in comparison.
Imagining a Newton OS with modern processing and memory, an iPad Mini-like form factor and display, and cloud support to synchronize and and socialize information across devices literally makes me want to fling current tablets against the wall and shatter them to smithereens. Having been a longtime Newton user, I literally hate iOS and Android.
For those who are not getting it, remember Windows CE and how out of place and clunky it feels in comparison to iOS on mobile devices? Well now imagine that same distance between iOS and Newton OS for mobile personal computing. Even now, even with all the missing modern features, when you use Newton OS for ten minutes and then have to return to iOS/Android, it's painful. You get that same feeling that on iOS/Android, the microminicomputing paradigm has been inappropriately shoehorned into a mobile personal device in comparison.
But it's all we've got.
*sigh*
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I think people want certain things to fail, like Windows specifically. You are correct that MS is highly diversified. They have solid revenue streams outside of windows. The OS and office appear to be holding steady currently, but that can primarily be attributed to increased milking of existing customers by moving them to subscription models. There is little growth in these areas to speak of, and they would be declining if it wasn't for these efforts. Office is being forced to be more open and less proprietary due to the number of non MS devices in use that need to be able to at least view those documents. Their mobile solution has completely failed, fortunately IMHO. The XBone, while providing what anyone would consider a healthy revenue, has failed to meet expectations for this release.
Are they failing like Sony? Obviously not. But they're not owning the market like they used to. This is a good thing, honestly.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
...don't forget about the money MS makes from Android
as a hybrid enterprise IT/cloud platform company. Slashdotters apparently haven't noticed, but everyone else in IT has.