Consumers can react to market changes much faster than enterprises. We are seeing a rapid migration away from Microsoft's product in the consumer space. That must worry MS as this phenomenon seeps into their enterprise business over time.
Microsoft needs a new strategy that keeps it competitive in Consumer, Education, Small Business, AND Enterprise. Retreating to being JUST and Enterprise software company would be a very weak competitive position.
We are seeing a rapid migration away from Microsoft's product in the consumer space.
Are we? They have the fastest selling consumer electronics product in history, the Kinect. Windows 7 is selling faster than any version of Windows to date. Office 2010 is selling better than any version of Office.
Consumers never used MS phones. Consumers never used MS MP3 players. Consumers never bought MS tablets.
What we're really seeing is that as certain market segments move to the consumer space, MS hasn't been adopted. So there's no migration away from MS. Rather MS isn't finding as many new markets in the consumer space. But they haven't really lost ground in the consumer space.
Additionally, the predictions about people using a netbook as their only computer seem to have been mostly wrong. This is good for MS, as Windows' licensing fee was too large for a $300 computer. (MS helped this along by refusing to sell cheap Windows for netbooks that were actually capable.)
Microsoft needs a new strategy that keeps it competitive in Consumer, Education, Small Business, AND Enterprise. Retreating to being JUST and Enterprise software company would be a very weak competitive position.