Microsoft isn't nuts. They simply missed mobile. Microsoft almost missed the Internet, and retained some of their dominance only after decisive top-down action and investment. By the time Microsoft understood what was happening in mobile, it was too late. The fiasco was compounded by Ballmer's indecisive reaction, but it was already set in motion.
Anything Microsoft does with mobile, perhaps short of something that literally and clearly bets the company on it, is going to seem comical: Microsoft is a gigantic company that has no power in the mobile market. All their moves are big (because of their size) and pointless (because of their market position). Big pointless moves look crazy.
Yep. Their spectacular mediocrity is only now being revealed, that's all.
Look, they've been great simply by virtue of being in the right place at the right time. There was an incredibly TREMENDOUS hidden demand for a PC and an operating system for it, and MS happened to be there at the time. A half-blind monkey in the same place at the same time would have made a truckload of money too. It was impossible to avoid being dragged up to (at least financial) greatness by that gigantic wave of history - if you happened to hang around in the right neighborhood at the time.
And that was a market that worked well if unified on a single standard. As luck would have had it, that was Windows. Okay, not entirely luck, Bill Gates is also a shrewd businessman. But from a technical perspective, MS has always been mind-numbingly mediocre and uninspired and anti-visionary. Remember how they got dragged kicking and screaming into the Internet era? That's the real Microsoft.
Well, now the tremendous hurricane lifting MS up is dying down, and it's becoming apparent that it really takes gale-force winds to keep flying an object with all the graceful aerodynamics of a brick.
With the tides of history turning against them, it's now obvious to everyone that they are really inept at innovation. What's funny is that this is considered "news".
Good riddance, MS. You've kept the whole industry back far too long. You've probably cost us all perhaps a decade of progress. Nobody of consequence is going to miss you.
> It was impossible to avoid being dragged up to (at least financial) greatness by that gigantic wave of history - if you happened to hang around in the right neighborhood at the time
> "Their spectacular mediocrity is only now being revealed"
me·di·o·cre
adjective
1. of only moderate quality; not very good.
I beg your pardon, but there are people out there who think that Visual Studio, Office and even WP8 are vastly superior in comparison with the alternatives. Quality not always guarantee success (You can ask Apple with the original Macintosh but there are several examples of that in history)
Remember how they got dragged kicking and screaming into the Internet era? That's the real Microsoft.
Kicking and screaming? This myth has developed that Microsoft completely missed the Internet bus, and only billg's belated realization and just-in-time gamble saved them from market disaster.
Except billg's famous "Internet Tidal Wave" memo was written in May of 1995! Netscape Navigator 1.0 had been released a whole five months earlier. Essentially nobody from the old PC guard saw and acted on the web's potential before Microsoft did.
They aren't really inept. Its just that they want to do everything themselves, disregarding others. "It runs on our Microsoft platform, works well with our Microsoft tools and you can even store your stuff on our Microsoft cloud, provided that you run the Microsoft sync tool on your Microsoft operating system"
They really need to learn to stop doing that, because they're not able to afford it anymore.
Microsoft / nokia are still likely to exceed iOS phone market share globally within two years as they are growing much faster. Nokia has been growing the market at the low end where there is no iOS and where android is a poor experience (and Windows Phone surprisingly is quite good). The US market is locked into high end phones due to the carrier subsidy model, but in the rest of the world the story is very different.
Microsoft's current moves are about the tablet space. They think the dominant device form factor will be tablets, not laptops, so they're trying to reposition windows to be a tablet-friendly OS, but have the problem that people don't care about win32 on a tablet, but they do want apps and those apps must be designed for mobile. A lot of what they're doing makes sense from the perspective of wanting to be a player in the tablet space : the unified OS and app store strategy which they are working on now, windows 8, windows rt, surface, the Nokia buyout, and so on.
Nokia has done a great job of building marketshare on the back of extremely-low-margin phones like the 52x series, but I would hesitate to declare it a victory for Microsoft/Nokia just yet, it might just be a dead-cat bounce.
Not to mention that "market" share will be much lower on those low-end phones, as surely the kind of people buying them are not splashing out tons of cash on the appstore. That's what Apple has always gotten right - looked at things in terms of margin and value of the customer, rather than just shipping the most widgets.
I am sure they are very nice, but quality is not a differentiator in that market. It's part of the entrance fee.
Microsoft has crazy amounts of money and influence, so we can all say "don't count them out yet". The point is they are huge and have no power in the most important market in the industry.
While WM7 may be quite fine (I heard this multiple times from real users), it would take long time and much effort to acquire enough mindshare.
What WM devices lack is a killer feature. They are just another fine smartphone line, unfortunately incompatible with software for market leaders, Android and iOS.
With this regard, Jolla looks about as good, and it runs Android apps, too.
>>>> What WM devices lack is a killer feature. They are just another fine smartphone line.
This is pretty much the case for any smartphone. A "killer feature" for me is something other than taking pictures and video, running apps, making calls and texting. I have yet to find a phone that has something besides these 5 basic features.
Microsoft has always been dominant in the enterprise market so the retail game is not where they're going to win and they know it. It looks like they're going to go after the more lucrative enterprise market:
"The new feature pack includes VPN functionality that will automatically trigger when protected resources are accessed, Microsoft said, plus S/MIME to sign and encrypt email and EAP-TLS enterprise Wi-Fi support. The pack will be released in the first half of 2014, Microsoft said in a blog post on Wednesday."
"A "killer feature" for me is something other than taking pictures and video, running apps, making calls and texting. I have yet to find a phone that has something besides these 5 basic features."
The phone that slides into a clamshell laptop unit and becomes my laptop, with appropriate blended features. Acer has prototyped it, and a couple of others, I think, but the time may have come. Tablets are doing it, but there's probably still room for this to work.
'Course, Apple's probably got this already prototyped out somewhere and will be dropping the iPhoneMac on the world about two years before Microsoft can react....
If you need the "clamshell laptop unit" around to make this work, doesn't it just make more sense to carry an actual laptop? Motorola did this with the Atrix I believe, and that was piece of garbage.
1) Let's start with the interface which didn't completely copy iOS like Android and BB did.
2) Live Tiles - which neither Android or iOS have
3) Nevermind Android or iOS don't have live tiles, you can also make the tiles small, med, or lg depending on the app. Again, something neither platform has.
4) Built in feature Data Sense which conserves your data usage and lets you know which apps are using the most data. Not available on Android or iOS
5) Built in support for Office. Available on both android and iOS - but for a fee though.
6) 41 megapixel camera? Oh yeah, only available on a Nokia WP8 handset.
So yeah, if you actually look at the features and benefits of WP8, you'd see that stuff too. Most people just write it off, but I give them cred since they didn't just jump on the iOS bandwagon. They really built a separate, independent OS that stands on its own. You can't say that about Android.
1) "Different" is insufficient. The UI on my cable company's DVRs is much different from my TiVo DVRs, but that makes it "stand out" in much the same way a rusty nail sticks out of an old board on the ground ready to stab your foot.
2&3) An anti-feature. One Android actually has, unfortunately, adopted to some degree.
4) I don't know how it "conserves" data usage, but both iOS and Android absolutely do tell you how much data each app uses, and iOS at least lets you disable cellular data usage for specific apps.
5) An increasingly irrelevant office suite. Couldn't care less.
6) A marketing gimmick for the uninformed. Packing more pixels into a smaller sensor only goes so far when your optics are hamstrung by a fixed aperture and the need to fit in a pocket.
This all are nice-to-haves, except for the impressive camera.
See.
iPhone: a sleek, compact, highly integrated, fashionable-statement smartphone vs large clumsy geeky devices.
BB: corporate-controlled employee smartphone vs employee-controlled smarthpone.
Android: $300 smartphone vs $700 smartphone (and if you fancy to produce your own, you can join for free).
Each is a solid, obvious deal for some large market segment. For efficient adoption, WM needs a deal like these, large and unique. Yes, good MSO integration, and other types of (MS-centric) corporate integration, security features, etc might be it. The niche of corporate-friendly smartphone is a bit vacant with BB's demise.
I don't think even a killer feature would help that much at this point, due to the lock-in iOS and Android have at this point, in the form of enormous app catalogs. If they had the current Windows Phone with a killer feature or 2 around when the Verizon Droid came out, then they might have taken the market instead of Android, but I think it's too late now. They're doomed to a ~10% or so market share for the foreseeable future, much like Apple was in the 90s, and for pretty much the same reason, interestingly enough.
I seem to recall that Kantar does consumer surveys to generate their marketshare estimate, so it wouldn't be a direct measure of sales and there might be distortions depending on their methodology.
I think this is true, but before they missed mobile, they conquered it.
The main mobile computing vendor in the early 2000s was Palm. Microsoft destroyed the existing entrenched competitor with genuinely better products and a wider ecosystem.
And then forgot to innovate. Then got out innovated by competitors.
It's a pattern I see over and over unfortunately. As soon as something is dominant, they put focus into something else allowing competition to eclipse their lead. Suddenly they are in a position of having to become relevant in the market again. I see the same thing happening now with Skype. Skype is/was the dominant voip platform, but it's stagnating under Microsoft. The mobile applications are terrible. The only "innovation" I've seen around Skype is the inclusion in Xbox One which is is actually very good in limited scenarios.
I think Surface Pro is an excellent device for enterprise, much better than the iPad. Problem with Microsoft is always their marketing and branding. They're making a huge push for consumers when they should instead be doing enterprise and education.
The problem with Surface Pro isn't just marketing and branding. It's a poor point in the design space. It's as expensive as an ultrabook, but makes major compromises in screen size and keyboard quality in order to be able to pinch-hit as a tablet. Enterprise and education aren't the kind of forward-looking places where you want to be pushing a novel form-factor.
What Microsoft should have done was release a single Surface product based on an x86 Atom processor at the $500 price point, along with accessories like a mobile dock. That would've been a product they might've gotten Enterprises to buy into.
Of course, they're continuing the failed dichotomy to this day. The mantra behind Surface is "a tablet that can run your legacy apps!" but they still ignore the processor that's best-suited for hitting that design point: Bay Trail. You can run "real windows" in a tablet device that can retail for $400! They're leaving that whole market to HP, Dell, etc, who've proven over and over they don't have an innovative chromosome in their entire DNA.
I used to agree with you until I talked to people who own a Surface. IMHO Surface Pro's point in the design space is, in order, (1) a powerful Win8 tablet for most corporate work, (2) a good computer when docked to a big screen and keyboard, and (3) a small laptop when you need it (11" Air). That's actually a pretty good idea. I won't buy a Surface because (3) is the most important thing for me, so I require a 13"-14" laptop. Most HNers don't need (1) because they aren't in a MS IT environment. But for the bulk of non-tech Fortune 500 employees a Surface is pretty good, though expensive.
The same goes for Win Phone. They could be the new Blackberry if they stop chasing consumers. They will always be behind on apps, but they can succeed by having corporate apps deeply integrated with MS IT infrastructure. Neither iOS nor Android can do that.
Finally, MS is not known for getting things right in the first few releases. They ship crap and iterate towards adequate.
The problem there is that the IT department may love Surface, but if all the VPs insist on bringing their iPads into the office, IT is gonna have to support the iPad. Then it's a question of "do we support iPad and Surface, or just iPad?" Because "IT says so" isn't much of an argument when it regards telling someone with power in the corporate hierarchy they can't do what they want to do.
In a way this mirrors the early days of the PC business, when people lugging their Apple IIs and Trash-80s into the office so they could run VisiCalc...
If we are talking enterprise, Microsoft is doing just fine. VPs will soon see that a Surface does most of what the iPad does, and everything their desktop does. Unless you can live without Office the Surface is a great device.
The problem for Microsoft is the enterprise is where they currently dominate, so maintaining that market is nice, but doesn't do much for their problem of the mobile market as a whole.
That would be rather hilarious given that they were always touted as better marketers than anyone else in the market. At least that was the blame in every community I was involved in (OS/2 & Linux).
This might be a bit premature. Mobile isn't done yet. There's still plenty of time for Microsoft to develop a successful strategy. I don't think we'll ever see Microsoft as dominant in the mobile space, but I doubt there was ever a strategy that would have led to long term mobile domination by Microsoft.
Yes, but as we've seen with Linux VMs on Azure and Microsoft Office for other platforms, it's better to service the competition than to miss out completely on that market.
Microsoft should split up the company into smaller ones. This is something that should have happened with the anti-trust case a decade ago, but unfortunately it didn't happen. I said to myself at the time, it would have been the best thing for the software industry if we saw Microsoft split up into an OS company and an applications company.
Now, I think they should split off Windows, Applications, X-box, and Mobile. There are a lot of very smart people at Microsoft still, but they are all stymied with the culture of everything having to center around Windows. X-box was best when it didn't have Windows shoved down it's throat and the same goes for Mobile. Now, Windows is having Mobile shoved down its throat by an increasingly desperate and frenetic management that is drowning in incompetence, and they're taking everyone down around them.
What they need to do is just admit that the industry is changing on too many fronts too quickly, and this idea of having horizontal integration across multiple products is unfeasible. Having integration of Internet Explorer into Windows, or the same with Office worked. But they keep going back to the same well too many times. They need to let each market grow organically, and let their good PMs and engineers make the best products they can, not the best products that will keep selling Windows.
I disagree completely. That's essentially the way things were a few years ago. A big part of Microsoft's problems, both internal and external, come from the fiefdoms that sprung up around the different divisions. They were effectively different companies with the same CEO. They rarely communicated well and this lead to a lot of unnecessary duplication of work. Microsoft is now on a path to unifying the ecosystem and this is fantastic from a developer perspective. I can write an app for Windows 8, and the vast majority of code for it can be reused directly on a Windows Phone or Xbox app. That is significant. As much as people complain about Windows 8, unifying the UX across the platforms is a Good Thing. Using a Windows Phone, Windows Tablet and Xbox all feel very similar. None of that happens with different companies.
It's great for people who want to be in the Windows ecosystem. The problem is, almost no one wants a completely Windows experience anymore. Microsoft is great at strategically leveraging their monopoly and creating a forced marriage between two separate experiences, and making both of them worse, much like forcing IE into Windows, Windows Mobile into Windows 8, etc. The problem for Microsoft is that this is no longer 1997. People have legitimate choices and are spurning Microsoft like never before. Their monopoly no longer buys them any strategic advantage anymore except in enterprise software.
They can keep trying to create a unifying UX experience, but no one cares. Their Metro UX in Windows 8 has been a disaster. The inertia that Microsoft counted on to make IE the #1 browser no longer works anymore.
The best thing to do for the engineers and for shareholders is to break the company apart and let each division fend for themselves. Let them make the best product they can, not stymied with one hand tied behind their back because they have to maintain this terrible lineage back to Windows.
Whether a person wants a completely Windows experience or not has no bearing on unification being beneficial overall.
I personally don't believe that they are worse experiences. The Windows Phone UI is loved by pretty much everyone who uses it. It's a similar story with Windows 8. Read reviews from people who are actually using the operating system and not just reacting out of fear of change.
One of Microsoft's strengths is how diverse their portfolio is. Adding to that the fact that Microsoft products are working together now better than they ever have before. Breaking the company apart is simply ridiculous.
You are free to believe what you want. However, Windows 8 is an unmitigated disaster. Surface is an unmitigated disaster. Windows Phone is absolutely ignored. Bing is largely ignored. Internet Explorer has lost large swaths of marketshare.
Microsoft is trying to unify an experience that no one cares about. They're building products that no one wants to use. And the reason no one wants to use them is because they are being stymied by this ridiculous notion that they would have a common experience, but an experience that no one wants to use because they are stymied.
When Surface came out, I very much wanted to buy one for my parents, because it looked like exactly what they needed. I spent 45 mins at the Microsoft Store, and I didn't end up getting it. It was terrible. Sometimes, I didn't understand which way to swipe, I didn't understand why there was Flash but some websites wouldn't work, and then sometimes I would get the Windows task bar, and didn't know why. Compare this to the iPad which is almost a perfect experience, because it's so much easier to use.
Microsoft has stymied themselves by trying to take the core Windows experience, and then hammering it into the tablet experience. And then they take this really shitty experience, and then hammer that back into the desktop experience. It's like taking a photocopy of a photocopy.
If they allowed their teams to make the best product they could, they might succeed in the same way Google has succeeded. But forcing everyone to pray at the temple of Windows is what is ruining Microsoft in 2013 and beyond. They need to split up and forget this unification delusion.
Windows 8 has more users than all versions of OS X combined. If that's an "unmitigated disaster", what does that make OS X?
Windows Phone has overtaken iOS in Latin America and holds the number two spot for mobile devices. Windows Phone has also overtaken iOS in Italy, and is less than a percentage point away from taking over in Germany as well. Across Europe Windows Phone market share has doubled from this time last year, while iOS continues to decline. Windows Phone is the fastest growing mobile OS worldwide. Nokia's customer satisfaction has surpassed all Android manufacturers and is right on the heels of Apple. None of this evidence supports your claim that Windows Phone is "absolutely ignored".
Bing handles roughly 30% (Bing + Yahoo) of internet search traffic in the US. A far cry from being "largely ignored".
None of this paints a picture of "an experience that no one cares about". Your statements show clear bias with no evidence to support it. You're certainly entitled to your opinions, but the sweeping statements you are making are simply wrong.
First off, you are getting the wrong impression about me. I'm a Windows user. I have some Apple products, like an iPhone, but I tried using Mac OSX for a year and hated it. I have a MacBook Pro at work, but I bootcamped it and run Windows 7 solely. I've been a Microsoft user since MS-DOS 3.3, so I don't care what OSX's install numbers are. I started my career programming for Windows 3.1 SDK, using MFC, etc, so I've been with Microsoft every step of the way.
Windows 7 was a great OS after a disastrous Windows Vista. Windows 8 is again an unmitigated disaster. 88M users out of 1 billion install base?
No one wants to upgrade to Windows 8. That's why they are backing away from their Metro strategy. Yet another integration attempt that has completely blown up in their face.
You are also wrong about Bing's search traffic. It's 18%. As I said, largely ignored. 4 out of 5 people ignore Bing. Bundling Yahoo as disingenuous since most people don't know it's Bing. I worked at Yahoo. I know how inertia works, and given that their search share hasn't changed much since they had their own search engine, it's being used by people that just don't care. You could switch Yahoo's backend to Google and no one would know the difference, because they don't care.
Sure, Windows Phone may be a small success in Latin America, if you consider selling dirt cheap phones with no margin a success. It's still the #2 phone to Android and Windows Phone is still 3-6% marketshare worldwide. 94 people in the world out of 100 ignore Windows Phone. It's absolutely ignored. That may change in the future, if Microsoft gives away their phones for free. But as of right now, they are absolutely ignored.
Microsoft is unable to create a single experience on any of their platforms that bring happiness to their users, except for X-box. I don't have an X-box one, but many of my coworkers are complaining like hell about Microsoft's need to change the X-box one's experience to more like Metro's. I can't speak to how accurate this statement is. If they were smart, they would be battling PS4 and trying to make the best gaming console they can, instead of having another agenda of some failed integration that is unnecessary.
And I'm an avid Mac user. My primary machine is a Retina Macbook Pro. I just converted my wife from yet another Thinkpad, which fell apart after two years, to a Macbook Air. I've got my whole house connected via an Airport Extreme and a couple Airports used as access points. I have my Apple TV as the HDMI IN source on my Xbox One. The only time I open Parallels is for Visual Studio or the occasional PC only game.
I was an early adopter of Android tablets. I bought the Xoom when it first came out, and then the Asus Transformer as soon as it was available. I have bought and returned three iPads (iPad 2, 4 and mini retina) because of just how limited the OS actually is. The hardware was beautiful, but I still can't do simple things like create a separate account for my kids to use? Now I own two Surface tablets (Pro and RT) because I find the experience to be simply better than iOS and Android. The other platforms have a lot more apps available, but the Windows store has what I want.
I now also own Windows Phones across the family because I was tired of the fragmentation issues on Android. I was also tired of having to flash the ROM every few months because performance and battery life got worse and worse over time.
You will probably find similar stories if you just look at the people using Windows Phones and Windows 8 (on touch devices). Pretty much all user reviews I have read on the systems are incredibly positive and it is only getting better.
Edit: Yes, there are hundreds of millions of Windows 7 users not upgrading to Windows 8. I think that's to be expected as Windows 8 is best experienced on a touch device, not with a keyboard and mouse. If you look at all of the new devices running Windows 8, they pretty much all have a touchscreen (tablet, laptop or convertible). I have used a laptop exclusively for the last five years now. The only time I ever touch a mouse is to play first person shooters. I believe Microsoft sees that there are fewer and fewer new dedicated desktop setups, and it makes more sense to build your operating system towards where the market is going than to where it was. For once they are trying to be ahead of the curve, and we will have to see if it pays off in the long run.
If OSX were coasting on a worldwide monopoly, where simply executing competently yielded hundreds of millions of automatic sales, you would actually have a point.
Microsoft is not a startup. They were on top of the world, and they've only been going down.
As to "fasted growing mobile OS", it's easy to achieve that when you have low single digit marketshare. For anyone else who read that and were surprised, note that Microsoft went from 2 to 4% marketshare. Android went from 75 to 81 (3x more absolute market growth, but from a relative perspective, no Android couldn't grow from 75% to 150%). It is the sort of skewed and misrepresented statistics that make the whole debate so odd.
Using a Windows Phone, Windows Tablet and Xbox all feel very similar. None of that happens with different companies.
Why should a game machine, controlled by a gamepad, operate anything like a touchscreen smartphone, or a keyboard and mouse controlled desktop? There is absolutely no value to that, and it is exactly what is being pointed out as the problem with Microsoft: Everything hinges on trying to leverage and push other parts of Microsoft's empire (Windows 8 has been a relative disaster commercially because of this misdirected unifying vision, just as it would be if Honda gave their cars motorcycle handlebars to unify the product line), and the end result is that the few products that should do well are diminished because of it.
Microsoft is now on a path to unifying the ecosystem and this is fantastic from a developer perspective.
Microsoft has always been unifying the ecosystem, to largely disastrous results. DNA. OLE. WinFS. And on and on. Longhorn was a total disaster for exactly this reason, someone declaring "You know what would be cool -- if one single technology foundation served every one of our products. Let's call everyone into a meeting!", where suddenly the only superficially similar needs of Exchange, Access, Windows NT, and so on all have to try to come to some consensus (hint - it never happened. It was a disaster from top to bottom). Metro is more of the same, though Microsoft became committed to pushing it through. It was a gimmick for a short while, but is there anyone who says "Boy, I should would like an Xbox One because it works like the desktop I no longer use and is like the Microsoft tablet I will never own"?
A game machine controlled by a gamepad is almost identical to a touchscreen smartphone (Windows Phone 8) or a touchscreen tablet (Windows 8) with the exception of lack of gestures. You essentially move the pointing device (finger or selection box) over the tile you want to activate and press it. They aren't as radically different as you imply. The Windows Phone, Windows 8 Metro (on touch screens and tablets) and Xbox One UI are all great and very information dense compared to what you see on competing devices.
For the second part, only DNA from your list is an effort to unify the platform and it has been superseded by .NET. Are you seriously going to argue that .NET hasn't been successful in unifying development across the ecosystem? There are still a number of API differences between Windows Phone and Windows 8, but they are converging. The same with Xbox. Are you going to argue that being able to reuse all of the code behind an app's user interface across all of Microsoft's products isn't a good direction to move?
You essentially move the pointing device (finger or selection box) over the tile you want to activate
So a game controller is a (rather terrible) mouse? Do you understand that Metro was made for touch because such a move the cursor interface is entirely unlike a touch interface? There is a discord here that I don't think you are understanding.
The Windows Phone, Windows 8 Metro (on touch screens and tablets) and Xbox One UI are all great and very information dense compared to what you see on competing devices.
This information density thing comes up a lot, with absolutely nothing to demonstrate or prove it. Personally I find the Metro interface to be very information poor, and I cannot comprehend how such a claim could even be considered. That dearth of information (form far before function) has been one of the primary complaints about Metro.
only DNA from your list
Are you talking from a marketing perspective or something? Because no, my list is precise for its intended purpose: Those are cases where Microsoft thought that "unifying" was going to save the day, and the end result was anything but. Where divisions were essentially forced into a vision that didn't match the actual needs of their products because synergy or something.
As to .NET, it was the primary reason SQL Server went five years between versions of 2000 and 2005, coming out with little changed but for added .NET integration, to find that close to no one actually uses, and a "built in .NET" management studio that had far less features than the version before it, while using dramatically more resources. All so they could talk about unifying.
XNA Studio is yet another example of unifying technologies in poorly considered ways, and that alone close to killed independent game creation on the Xbox.
Are you going to argue that being able to reuse all of the code behind an app's user interface across all of Microsoft's products isn't a good direction to move?
If it's for dogma, or if it's trying to mash together highly dissimilar products, yes, it's a demonstrably terrible direction to move. The single and only group that cares at all about this overlap are lazy amateur Microsoft-world developers, and the result of their ill considered efforts does absolutely nothing to advance Windows Mobile, Windows Desktop, or the Xbox. I mean seriously, Windows Phone remains a death pile of largely terrible apps, and the few decent apps Microsoft had to essentially pay the developers to make. Where is this great advantage yielded? As for the Xbox, 0% of professional game developers care one iota that there is anything in common between platforms. They really don't. Hell, they care more about abstractions that make it easier to port between the Xbox One and PS4, and eventually to iOS and Android.
So a game controller is a (rather terrible) mouse?
Who said anything about a mouse? I haven't use a mouse to interact with my computer (out side of games) in years. Windows 8 "modern" apps are designed to work well in touch environments, and they succeed at that. And yes, there is a lot of overlap between how you use a touchscreen device and how you use a controller. Many UX concepts are the same when using either input method.
This information density thing comes up a lot, with absolutely nothing to demonstrate or prove it.
Perhaps we have a different definition of information density. The Windows Phone home screens can provide you with a lot of information without launching a single app. iOS provides a wall of icons to launch apps. Android has widgets, and some of them are beautiful and work well. Live tiles are much more consistent though and trivial to add to your application which means they are included more often.
XNA Studio is yet another example of unifying technologies in poorly considered ways, and that alone close to killed independent game creation on the Xbox.
No, Microsoft policies and practices are what almost killed independent game creation on the Xbox. XNA was a great engine for building games and that should be evident by the interest and support around MonoGame. MonoGame is probably the best engine to build a cross platform game at this point. Using MonoGame you can support iOS, Android, Windows, OS X, Linux, Windows 8 Store, Windows Phone 8, PlayStation Mobile, and OUYA. I wouldn't be surprised if Xbox One and Playstation 4 were added to that list soon.
Hell, they care more about abstractions that make it easier to port between the Xbox One and PS4, and eventually to iOS and Android.
The abstractions already exist for iOS and Android. Using Xamarin you can use C# to build apps for iOS, Android, Windows (desktop and mobile) and OS X. As I said above, MonoGame will likely fill a gap enabling you to write a game that targets both PS4 and Xbox One. Granted, AAA titles aren't going to be interested in MonoGame because they are trying to squeeze every last drop of performance out of the system, but it's a fantastic option for more causal or indie games.
Because Android achieved dominance, it's now starting to lock down how much its OS can be modified by other vendors and locking manufacturers into using either Google's services or having to make their own from scratch on top of an outdated OS shell. Microsoft is probably wondering how much appetite there is for vendors to make a break with Android and try to replicate their past successes with a new, more modern mobile OS.
At the same time, it's trying to take care of its legacy users and giving them what they want and what they ask rather than simply dictating to them "here's how you will be using your computers." Also, not what you'd call nuts, just listening to consumers and learning from their experiments.
"But that’s not the roadmap we’re hearing from the Microsoft OS team. Instead, they’re talking about creating a single Windows code base that runs across all types of devices, something that’s technically appealing if you’re a Microsoft engineer but thoroughly uninteresting to customers."
If I wanted an Android phone, I'd go buy one of the bazillions of Android phones. If you're someone who isn't just going to buy go a Samsung phone, you're probably, like me, not invested in Google's ecosystem. You don't want a phone that plugs into Google's "cloud" but rather a phone that runs Outlook and Office, and can interface with your company's Exchange Server, Windows-based CMS, etc. That has value; being yet another crappy Android vendor does not.
Microsoft's strategy is just fine, it's their execution that sucks. Windows on Phones and Tablets should have featured tight integration with the Microsoft ecosystem from Day 1. Instead, they botched Surface RT by releasing it with a half-baked buggy version of Office on a tablet that didn't integrate with Active Directory. Windows Phone 8 has no synergy with Windows on a tablet or a Windows PC, and oh, the roadmap to a proper touch-optimized version of Office includes the phrase "when pigs fly." Microsoft comes consistently late to the party with products that are little better than MVPs, and that's sinking them.
How is this nuts? These are all smart moves as the personal pc landscape is changing and moving toward mobile devices.
Making your desktop users happy with ye olde start menu and giving away WP are very smart moves. MS still will make a lot of money of its patent portfolio via android and its own WP app store. Selling an OS is an outdated concept and everyone knows it.
I wouldn't say they are smart moves as such, bearing in mind they are reversals of direction. Yes they are the right thing to do, but only because they did the wrong thing in the first place.
MS still makes plenty of money selling Windows licenses to PC manufacturers, so charging for an OS isn't going away just yet. Arguably the other dominant OS in the desktop space - OSX - isn't free either. Upgrades are now free, but you (well, certainly 'I' anyway) pay a big chunk of cash over the hardware costs when you buy a Mac, for the privilege of running OSX and the iApps.
MS isn't going to make much money on the WP App store though. Even Apple barely breaks even on the iOS App Store. Digital stores are essential to maintaining a viable ecosystem, but they're not profit centers. So if you have to give away your OS, barely break even on content sales (if that) and don't sell the hardware either where do you make your money?
Well, MS is trying to answer that by selling the hardware as well, but the problem is the main reason they're doing that is because otherwise nobody would be making hardware to run their mobile OS at all. That is how bad things are.
Even so, what are MS#s alternatives? They simply cannot afford to remain irrelevant in mobile. IMHO their best shot now is to go all-out with mobile versions of Office on WP, WinRT, Android and iOS. If they can manage to become relevant in mobile apps, there's a reasonable chance they might be able to leverage that into relevance in other areas.
Why do people repeat saying that "the personal pc landscape is […] moving toward mobile devices"?
I don't know anyone who stopped using their PC just because they got a tablet or smartphone.
Sure there is a decline in sales for PCs because the market is saturated and for the most people, unless they are gamers, their 5 year old computer will do just fine.
Yet people keep shouting that the days of the desktop computer are over and everyone soon will write their eMails on their smartphone only.
I got an iPhone and suddenly about 40% of my Internet consumption went to the iPhone. Now, in that case most of the 40% was incremental, but it did supplant about 10% of my desktop browsing.
I got a tablet and suddenly about 30% of my Internet consumption is on the tablet, stealing about 10% from the iPhone, 10% incremental, and 10% from desktop.
I've reduced my desktop Internet use by only about 20%, but now desktop only makes up about 40% of my internet activity.
What sane mega-corp would sit there and say "well, we still dominate the desktop 40% so lets not worry about the other 60% that is now consumed by related products."
Computing is moving to mobile doesn't mean the mobile use has to come from cannibalization.
For Microsoft, it doesn't matter how many people are using PCs, it's how many are buying them. If usage is down, replacement time is up and OS price is down, how is that anything but bad for Microsoft? There are still a lot of XP users that have given Microsoft no money since at least 2006 and have still costed them money in support.
> I don't know anyone who stopped using their PC just because they got a tablet or smartphone.
Sounds like a highly biased sample set. I know several people who barely touch their PCs since getting a tablet, and there are an increasing number of children for whom PCs are just these weird things they see in school that, for some unfathomable reason, don't do anything when you touch the screen.
There already aren't a lot of reasons left for non-techies to not stick to tablets. Those reasons will continue to recede.
My dad hasn't touched his laptop in well over a year, since getting his iPhone and iPad. I know several other people who use tablets and don't even own computers.
"the “computing” market in Q3 2008 was 92 million units of which Windows[3] was 90% whereas in Q3 2013 it was 269 million units of which Windows was 32%."
> I don't know anyone who stopped using their PC just because they got a tablet or smartphone.
My mom did. Switched to using her iPad last year. Occasionally tries to make her ancient PC retrofitted with Win8 work for her, then shrugs and goes back to her iPad.
I tried a couple of times, so I wouldn't make a dumb comment, but it never did show up... I may stand corrected, assuming a white background ever actually loads. :)
I actually find it very interesting in a good way that metro apps will be able to run in a desktop mode. This can be a great reply to google chrome desktop apps.
I've been using ModernMix [1] for a while to do exactly that. It's a bit janky at times, but I find it much more useful than having metro apps stuck outside of the traditional desktop.
I don't know guys, I just picked up dell venue 8 pro. this thing is nice. the whole Metro things works really well and it is fast and smooth. The quality of games/apps I am seeing is already better than my kid's Nexus 7 (long way from ipad tho). If they market this thing right, I can see it(windows tablets in general) gain some hold in pure tablet world.
Isn't this just a continuation of Microsoft's recent-years strategy of waiting until other peoples' innovations created a market, and then trying to drop their entry into it? Zune, Xbox, Windows Phone, Windows Tablet, etc.. hell, didn't Ballmer explicitly state that was his strategy?
I don't think that's true at all. Zune, Windows Phone, Windows Tablets and Xbox are all more innovative than the competition. The phone and tablet are suffering from being so late to the game, and Xbox is "suffering" from grossly incompetent marketing and PR. All of those products get fantastic reviews from people who actually own them.
They have so much money and are well-entrenched enough in various ways that I expect they will flail around until they hit on something that can sustain their business long-term. Though I admit I have absolutely no idea what that will be.
What has been frustrating for me is how this way forward was missing for years now, but criticism of MS management was always shrugged off with references to Windows and Office. Criticism of Ballmer was met with "profits are up", and a sprinkling of "MS is a huge company, you think you could do better?" Mmmm, so helpful. Then the industry they depend on as the source of those profits is registering double-digit declines YOY and all of a sudden it's a crisis. So aggravating.
Would Microsoft benefit from Nokia building an Android phone to help their argument in the EU over the android patent? They could argue that they are indeed using the patent in their own android devices and thus have a compelling argument to keep receiving royalties from other manufactures.
Hopefully when MS and Nokia make an Android fork they put up an Android port of Internet Explorer on Google Play. Firefox on android is a great browser (better than chrome), but it would be nice to have more choice.
Since the recent death of Opera there are only two browsers on Android.
If Nokia's going to continue to exist they need to sell phones. Windows phones aren't selling. An Android one might. They have to take the shot.
Giving away Windows Phone/RT might encourage other hardware vendors to try it. Maybe they won't. But they definitely won't if Microsoft tries to charge them for it. Again, worth the shot when they have nothing to lose. It might be crazy if Windows Phone/RT were runaway successes, but they aren't.
Windows 8 is also a huge failure. Trying to go back and make it more like 7, which most people continue to prefer, is probably for the best.
This article is as poor as the design of the blog it's featured on.
> Microsoft nonetheless has to be happy that Nokia has blown past Motorola to become America’s No. 4 smartphone vendor. According to new data from Counterpoint Research, Nokia’s share of the American smartphone market has surged from a mere 1.4% in the second quarter of 2013 to 4.1% in the third quarter.
Luckily Windows 8.1 is just barely capable enough for me to run virtualbox with an ubuntu image.
How people can get by using Windows 8.1 as their main OS (beyond using it merely as a shell to launch virtual machines) is beyond me. Microsoft deserves to lose big time in the marketplace for their half-assed attempt to glue a phone interface onto desktop PCs.
I installed Windows 8.1 on my laptop (2008 model so no touchscreen) and the experience has been great so far. I do spend more time on the desktop side than in Metro side but even then in overall is faster, more reliable and with nicer features (i.e win+x, universal search, etc.) than windows 7.
> "I think a more interesting licensing strategy for Microsoft would be forking Android"
Sure, what we really need is having another flavour of Android. That wouldn't be confusing to users at all and will make developers happy (specially because it will be ditching the easier development environment for mobiles )[/sarcasm]
But today, Android has huge market momentum, so a phone vendor switching off it would be abandoning most of the available customers, something they are extremely reluctant to do
Wrong, consumers aren't attached to phone OS's like they are to windows on the desktop.
You'll be betting wrong, if you bet that windows mobile is just "going to go away".
Anything Microsoft does with mobile, perhaps short of something that literally and clearly bets the company on it, is going to seem comical: Microsoft is a gigantic company that has no power in the mobile market. All their moves are big (because of their size) and pointless (because of their market position). Big pointless moves look crazy.