Microsoft to spend over $500m to catch up to iPhone, Android - Page 4

he was talking about competition. then i added what i added. wasn't fishing for big mouth bass, but one grabbed the hook anyway....

The division has been profitable for 2 years not an isolated qtr or two (they did have a qtr or two of losses in those years). They did spend billions to get into the game but who in 2001 thought that Microsoft would be beating Sony the next generation?

And they did it against Sony's strengths (hard core gaming) vs its weaknesses (casual gaming) which is how the Wii won. Today Microsoft is the incumbent and Sony the challenger.

MS will likely make that money back and sunk costs are just that. Sunk. They purchased a revenue stream in a highly competitive industry they had very little real experience in and beat the 500lb gorilla at it's own game.

I am happy I do not own MS stock. If I were a stockholder, I would be a bit miffed that MS wants to spend a half a billion dollars in a futile effort to catch up with iPhone. MS is acting like the federal government ... let's just spend money to solve the problem. The problem is not a marketing issue, it's a product issue, an end user experience issue, a quality issue.

How does this contribute to the discussion at hand?

what is so hard about this? he talked about competition. i said there was competition and will be even more competition because i didn't think the iphone 4 brought a lot of big selling points.
all i am going to say on it so if that isn't enough i can't help you.

I promised an interesting read anonymouse, nothing more.


I think that's been done. Failure has many fingers pointed in its direction, but I won't be convinced lack of funding is the problem. Many public schools do well with meager funding. Many more do phenomenally poorly given three and four times the revenue.

I used to live in an area with some of the highest school budgets in the country. My school taxes quadrupled over a decade. I left. The district's performance remains mediocre, despite numerous attempts at improvement by the state to redistribute tax revenue "fairly".


Not a joke. It's been pernicious. So many decisions have been taken away from local control. Federal control is a disaster:


Agreed. We're sooo good at patting ourselves on the back. We continue to graduate functional illiterates, but hey - we're number one!!!

The rest of the world is laughing at us.

ditch 'Windows'? the name? the name that made them a 200 billion dollar company? i don't use it unless i have to but i like it better than the name IOS. not punching at apple here but at your notion. thats the best apple could come up with 'ios'? wasn't that cisco's?

what does 'windows' mean? are you for real?

Many of the comments here remind me of MS way back, when they dismissed Apple. Most people here completely dismiss MS out of hand. I understand this is an Apple fansite, and there are plenty of reasons not to like MS, but being dismissive might be a mistake.

Many have rightfully pointed out that much of Apple's recent success is due to its ecosystem. I love the way my iPhone and Mac computers seemlessly integrate, and present a unified experience.

Many also rightfully point out that Android does not have that ecosystem.

However, MS does. As I posted before, they have Productivity (Office), Exchange/Enterprise, Media (Zune Marketplace), Games (Xbox Live), and quite possibly apps, with 300K downloads of the SDK. You may not like the ecosystem, and you may think it stinks, but they have one, where neither RIM nor Android do. So, on paper, and given the videos, they have a compelling product for Windows users.

If MS can make WP7 truly plug and play like the iOS, then they have a shot.

Quite a few people have said that MS is not creative, and they do nothing but copy. Well, in the case of the metro interface, this is dead wrong. You may not like it, heck, consumers may not like it, but it is a new and creative UI for the mobile phone, even if it is not particularly groundbreaking.

I write this, not as an MS shill, but more as a "history" lesson, so that neither Apple, nor their fans, make the mistakes that MS made.

There is no royal road to geometry.- Menaechmus to Alexander the Great

I would point out that no test left behind was basically a strategy to "fix" the schools without actually having to adequately fund fixing them. Generally, when people who don't think government should do anything are in charge, government isn't likely to do anything productive.

I believe that was Euclid, although, I can't prove it.

Was there something I wrote you didn't understand?
By the way neither "iphone" nor "ipad" were originally Apple trademarks either.


Let me check... yes, I'm quite real. I have no idea what "windows" is supposed to mean any more. I suggest you ask someone older - check the retirement home.

uh....yeah....sure.....John Galt? no that name isn't dated....not at all. at least i stole my moniker from the 80's...
oh i need to add some of these to. evidently its all the rage with you youngsters

Apple launches the iPod. Remember the commercials? Right. Great music, graphics, stars -- very memorable ads. Scarcely said anything about the, you know, iPod. Never said, it's now 30 Gigabytes! And we've increased the bitrate to 256. No, you got this fantastic girl dancing around, to high energy rock or pop, with the tiny little white wires around her neck. Then the black, with "iPod" in Apple Palatino.

Or a Microsoft ad. The Windows 7 ones aren't horrible, but there's just something wrong about it.

Since it grew up in the business world where you buy into a platform based on executives' orders, the Microsoft culture never developed its consumer advertising. They believe that Apple's success, of course, is nothing but advertising. So, they've tried the weird Seinfeld ads. And the price ads. And the whining about the Apple tax. None of them worked. The Windows 7 ads do make a point, but ONLY because the OS is finally not too bad.

...said the tortoise to the hare.

If Windows Phone 7 really does best the iPhone in every way important to iPhone fans, then I expect people to switch. However, note the clause, "in every way important to iPhone fans". Therein lies the rub: has Microsoft ever out-Appled Apple?

Never underestimate your opponent, Microsoft or the power of a good marketing campaign.

The iPhone's main weaknesses:

1- Only one model for sale;

2- Only one form factor and shape;

3- No options besides storage capacity;

4- No new model or features for one year;

5- No choice of cell phone carrier in the United States;

6- No possibility to listen to FM radio;

7- No possibility to listen to music encoded with modern lossless audio codecs such as .ape, .flac or .wv;

8- No possibility to install third party software outside of software and features approved by Apple to be included in the App Store (which negates the right of property of iPhone owners and their right to choose which software to install on the iPhone they buy);

9- A 200% or 250% profit margin on iPhone units costing $200 to build and sold for $600 or $700 to cell phone carriers;

10- No real competition in smartphones until now, so no incentive for Apple to address the iPhone's shortcomings.


Apple made a fortune in a monopoly situation. Let's see how well it will do for itself once consumers have a choice of models, makers and carriers.

The other companies are copying the iPhone look and feel. M$ is actually creating something new. That's what all the buzz is about and what I call "real competition"

The iPhone's main strengths:

1- Only one model for sale;

2- Only one form factor and shape;

3- No wading through confusing options besides storage capacity;

4- No new model or features for one year, so you know exactly when the one you just bought will be obsoleted;

5- No wading through confusing carrier plans in the United States;

6- No crappy FM radio, listen to what you want to, when you want to;

7- No fussing with arcane audio codecs such as .ape, .flac or .wv, it just works;

8- No worries about software that trashes your phone, software and features reviewed by Apple to be included in the App Store;

9- Apple does well financially, so you know they'll be there when you need them for support, and there will always be an improved model in the future, protecting your app investment;

10- No real competition in smartphones, other phones just don't compare to the iPhone.


Apple revolutionized the smartphone. Let's see how it will continue to do so in the future.

Looking at the mobile phone market. In what way can you distort the word monopoly to describe the iPhone a monopolistic situation?

All the other phones copy the look & feel of the iPhone. WP7 created a whole new way to use your phone. Like it or not, that's the definition of groundbreaking. In fact, I'd be very surprised if IOS5 didn't incorporate some of these elements because they are more useful than pages and pages of apps.

11) No themes or customization of the UI.

It's sad that I have to jailbreak my phone just so I can get GrooveShark, random ringtones, and an itinerary on my lock screen.

These things force people to jailbreak their phones.

11. Consistent UI

How about if we stick to facts?

It would be hard to find anyone who disagrees with the first part of your statement. Clearly, our public education system is a mess.

HOWEVER, the statement that this is because of chronic underfunding is pure speculation (mostly fostered by the teachers' unions). My daughter's private school spends far less per student than the local public school. The public school struggles to get 60% of its students to 'satisfactory' on standardized tests while my daughter's school always has >> 95% rated as satisfactory.

There are major problems in the public school system that have nothing to do with money. Simply throwing money at the problem is unlikely to have an impact on them. So far, no one has demonstrated that more money = better education.

Man, where to start.

Simple question though, have you ever been a teacher?

Profit is strength, more is better

"$200 to build" is a dubious figure but even if it's true, I suppose engineering, R&D, marketing costs nothing

Yes. But what does that have to do with anything?

Oh, I get it - you don't have a rational response, so you resort to an ad hominem attack. Got it.


I really hate it when people insist on babbling about things they don't comprehend. EVEN IF your costs were correct, that would be a 65-70% gross margin, not 300-350%. And that is not the PROFIT margin. Profit is what is left after ALL costs have been subtracted (marketing, R&D, admin, etc).

Please stick to thing you comprehend.


That is one of the stupidest statements I've ever seen here. Apple has a monopoly? Since when? Apple launched the iPhone a little over 3 years ago. They had ZERO market share before that date. Even today, their market share is less than 20% of all smart phones and about 3% of all phones. What monopoly are you referring to?

Sheesh.

Not at all. On the other hand, someone who has not spent time teaching might not want to hear a rational response to your comments, especially since you "blame" the teacher's union for propagating what you consider a falsehood


I find it odd that a teacher would say that most of the school's problems are not money related (not to say they all are), given the poor physical condition of a large percentage of schools, old/outdated textbooks, old or lacking technology present in a large percentage of schools, and having teachers buy supplies out of their own pocket. Many teachers could/would do quite a bit more if there were more money.

Seriously, you're comparing the performance of students in private schools to those in public and think that proves some point about the requirements of school funding? How do you think those private schools would do if they had to take in a representative sample of students that matches the demographic profile of public school students? There's no valid comparison between the two.

No there is not a valid comparison. However, if you believe that money is largely irrelevant in education, and it is the "teacher's union" causing problem, your point does not really matter.

Have you not learned from every prior debacle? Does Zune ring a bell?
Put that money to good use like making AD Mac friendly. Feeding the poor. Buying a sports franchise. Curing the Microsoft Stupid epidemic...

Although you might yet be right about Windows 7 Mobile (which has an almost impossible job to catch up to the iPhone), XBox is now in profit and is most definitely a Microsoft success. In fact, it could be a good analogy of what Microsoft is trying to do in the mobile space now - come from no where (Windows Mobile 6 is as good as no where) and become a real player in the market.

Vista was also not a waste of money - it was profitable, and Windows 7, which has been very successful, is built on it.

There are plenty of Microsoft failures, but the two you mentioned are not good examples.

Your points are basically all nonsense. Your first points relate to having a very limited choice as a good thing. It is not. No crappy FM radio? I'd rather have one than not. No arcane codecs, it just works? Like hell, nothing except Apple sanctioned formats work. You seem to really like restrictions a lot. And no real competion in the market is not a plus point for the iPhone, it's just the way it is.

The iPhone is currently, without a doubt, the best smartphone on the market. But the reason it is, is because it has a huge software library that is easily accessible. That is something that Microsoft are truly going to stuggle to catch up on.

Because it is. That's why Mac is so successful or iPhone for that matter.

There. Fixed that for you.

I didn't say that I'm a teacher. I said that I've taught before.

It doesn't matter. I know enough teachers well (and have family members who are teachers) and they confirm my belief.

Note that I never said that more money wouldn't help. Teachers shouldn't have to buy supplies out of their own pockets. And they could probably do more if there was more money. But that's not the PRIMARY problem.

The biggest problem with education is simply that most kids just don't care. They come from homes where education is not valued, they place no priority on education, and the students have no reason to work hard. Why do you think that there's such a huge disparity between, say, black students and white students' scores in the same district? (or, on the other extreme, why do second generation Asian students typically do better than either group - in spite of language difficulties?) They all get the same amount of money (actually, under some formulas, the minority students get MORE money), yet black students typically (not always, but usually) score far lower than whites and Asians typically score higher. It's because of things that are beyond the school's control.

Or ignore the racial differences. There's an enormous difference in scores between family income groups. Those who have higher family incomes always score far higher (on average) than those with lower family incomes. Studies consistently show that it's largely a matter of parental involvement in education and a commitment to education that accounts for the difference.

On top of that are the government mandates which contribute nothing to education, but detract from the real purpose. Every teacher I know grumbles about all the things they have to do so satisfy the government but which take time from real education.

Or, look at the comparison I made earlier - which you conveniently ignored. My daughter's private school has a >95% passing rate on standardized "No school left behind" tests. Our local public schools run around 60% (some as low as 40%, a few as high as 80%). Yet the private school has less money per student than the public school.

Or, look at it on a macro scale. Countries which spend only a fraction of what we spend on education do better than we do in some cases.

Clearly, money isn't everything. It's just the easiest one for legislators to pretend to do something about. Until the underlying problems are addressed, more money doesn't solve anything. At best, it might help to slow the rotting.

Well, I disagree, although, clearly my post was a parody of sort. But, let's have a look at your criticisms.

Choice: What you really mean is choices -- i.e., options. So, this isn't about freedom of choice, it's about a multiplicity of options, not the same thing at all. Besides, research indicates that having a multitude of options is overrated and you haven't given us any reason how more options would improve the iPhone or its user experience. More likely it would just dilute the quality of the device, you know, like with all those Android "feature phones".

FM Radio and Codecs: Yeah, ok, FM radio might be nice, or maybe not. Except for NPR it's mostly crap, but there's an app for that. There are probably a station here or there worth listening to, but it's not really essential, and it's just more stuff to cram inside a phone, stuff that most people won't use most of the time. And, seriously, dude, I hate to tell you this, but no one cares about audio codecs, they just want to listen to their music. If it's that important to you, you should probably just stay home with your vibration isolated, clean power supplied turntable listening to your vintage LPs. It's a portable music player and you the available codecs are just fine for what it is, and there isn't a better solution in this regard on the planet. Sometimes picky is a good thing, and sometimes it's just a distraction.

And, the reason it's the best phone on the market is not because it has the best software library, although it does, it's because it's the best designed and built hardware and OS available.

He didn't ignore it, we both commented that it was an entirely invalid comparison.

Don't forget the tube amp

LOL. Now where's my old Walkman... Sorry guys, I only go back *that far*

I'd love to get a JP8080 though. Had to sell my Juno60 several years ago *sniff*

To anonymouse point and the reason the iPhone is the most popular phone on the market is because Apple has crafted something that is simple and straight forward to use. You can look at that as being restricted. But from the standpoint of the average mobile phone user simple is always better than confusing.