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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.
What? The Nintendo Wii absolutely destroyed the XBOX and PS competition in total sales. Sony straight up stopped making handhelds because Nintendo was so dominant.
Now the Nintendo Switch is so popular the supply can't even meet demand. Combine its sales with the WiiU and Nintendo is right there with PS4 and XBONE in total sales.
Exactly. Servers, Linux still has no answer for the reasons people run a Microsoft server.
Huh?
It's hard to nail down precise numbers (for obvious reasons), but all of the various statistics I could find say roughly the same thing -- there are more Linux servers than Windows servers.
Some studies give Linux a 10% edge over Windows, and some put Linux and Windows at about parity. So it's not an overwhelming edge, but it's pretty clear that Windows is not more popular than Linux in that space.
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.