Microsoft has an advantage that Apple and Google do not, in that business is smitten with them.
I'm sure if they released a half decent smartphone that integrated well with all their enterprise servers, business would prefer their employees to use these.
The trouble they have through, it that phones are very personal to people, and people would rather choose their own. Of course, faced with a choice of free Microsoft phone from the boss, or your own phone that you pay for, a lot of people might choose the former.
Which is why I have a Blackberry Bold, and not the iPhone.
"Helmsman, crank the engines to full throttle. And send somebody out there to move all the deck chairs from the port side onto the starboard side! We're unsinkable, you know!"
It seems like a really bad idea to re-org just as you are about to launch your new phone series, unless they have been operating under the new organization structure for a while and this is just a formal announcement. But I'm not sure how this is supposed to engender confidence in customers, carriers, or the developer community.
Lol Allard was the Only guy at Microsoft to introduce a (initially botched but overall) widely successful consumer device - the xbox. Everything else at MS is about the enterprise. I suggest MS exit the consumer market and focus on making enterprise products that it has been so successful at doing so far. Maybe compete with BlackBerry and focus on collaboration software. I think MS has lost the consumer market to Andoid and Apple in the phone department and netbooks will soon run Android/Chrome OS or iOS.
First and foremost Google just makes the Android OS. What hasn't been said is that LG, MOTO, HTC etc are competitors. But it has become the NORM to group all the Android phone carriers as ONE COMPANY. It ain't so.
Moreover, even when MS does release their new mobile OS later this year it won't be MS' hardware but that of, again, competing cell phone makers. MS' Ballmer already said he doesn't want to do hardware only software. I reckon hardware is just too darn expensive and complicated so let some other dooosh handle that.
Now, I'm so pissed that people have gotten so worked up over that courier device. What we all saw was a fantasy product where the folks that produced it just made a cartoon. And a cartoon ain't programming. however if you want a courier like device take the time to make a piece of software. hell, look at Halo and Bayonetta.
The point? They are interactive. So the technology is within reach to anybody with the time and talent at hand.
I would have loved to see what the Courier could do. Could be that they couldn't deliver on the concept...but it did look like a cool device and seems a poor decision by Microsoft to cancel it.
Looking carefully at the form factor numbers, we're talking about a folding device that opened up was almost an inch thick - so folded it was nearly two inches thick, and roughly 5x7 inches (closed) and a bit over a pound. Talk about a brick! And Nelly phone home! It was slated to run WinCE6 on Tegra 2.
The concepts were cool (like the Surface for example) but the execution and form factor were fails IMHO.
Microsoft has an advantage that Apple and Google do not, in that business is smitten with them.
I'm sure if they released a half decent smartphone that integrated well with all their enterprise servers, business would prefer their employees to use these.
The trouble they have through, it that phones are very personal to people, and people would rather choose their own. Of course, faced with a choice of free Microsoft phone from the boss, or your own phone that you pay for, a lot of people might choose the former.
the bean counters. Our Engineering Board has a frantic love/hate attitude about Redmond - love the fact that M/soft staffs a couple of fill-time high-level engineers to help manage the AD/.Net environments here, but hate the fact that the only thing keeping things going is having those senior engineers on-board at all times.
Ohhhh, but we saved billions in upfront costs - to spend later in support costs.
You are preaching the sort of "accepted wisdom" here, but I'm not so sure it will be true this time.
While not being aimed at business per se, the iPhone has already made significant inroads into enterprise. I think it likely that the new iPhone 4 will be hugely more successful in that market than the original was, given it's design and the new OS. If rumours are true of Apple going multi-carrier in the USA, then we can also assume they will take a huge bite out of the subscribers of all the other networks. That kind of momentum (on top of the momentum they already have) will be hard to beat.
Overall, I think that what we are looking at with iPhone and the iPad is an entirely new platform taking shape. To me, that makes a lot of your analysis wrong-headed to the degree that it's based on past trends. Platforms are usually defined by the early market and iPhone OS dominates the early market. It's the standard that all others are striving towards and will be judged by. IMO iPhone OS won't ever be the entire market like Windows was in the desktop years, but there is no reason it can't dominate. People are just used to Apple having the minority share, there is no good reason why it has to be true anymore, especially in this new market.
The comparisons being made by analysts today to market share arguments from the desktop years may be quite misleading. At least for the time being, the traditionally Apple-owned "premium" segment of this market is actually the main segment. No one is going to make much money right now pushing "good enough" technology in the mobile market IMO. They are just filling up customers pockets until those customers eventually and inevitably buy their iPhones at some point down the road.
I agree that the trend will be for Apple to increase its iPhone inroads into the enterprise. Most of the pieces necessary for IT acceptance and support are already present in the iPhone platform (or soon will be).
The thing I find interesting is that hardly anyone is talking about the iPad inroads into the enterprise. I mean everything from small enterprises (restaurants, shops) to large enterprises (business, medical, education, government).
With the iPad, not only can you consume content, but you can present content, be it a menu in a coffee shop or an image in a doctor's office.
The guy who says: "Let me show you..." will, likely, be wielding an iPad!
And, the "show-ee" will be just as comfortable manipulating the content as the "show-er".
When the first computer labs went into the classroom, it was amazing to see the difference in the kids. They were used to leaning back and watching a presenter display content (film, video, overhead, flipcharts, chalkboard, etc.). With the computer, they were leaning forward and participating!
When the presenter gets the participation of the audience, it's magic! And, he has, likely, closed the deal!
The salesman in an auto dealership, sees that you are interested in a car... He pulls up a [rotatable] 3D image and hands you the iPad so you design the car with your colors, fabrics, accessories... Gotcha!
Just think of the iPad's collaboration potential-- while sitting around the table in the board room, sitting in the classroom or around the world.
Microsoft is not dying any kind of death. Not slow and painful. Indeed, it is growing.
And the company that is best competing with Apple in the mobile space does NOT engineer hardware. Microsoft beat the pants off of Apple on the desktop, and they don't make computers. Android is starting to outsell the iPhone OS, and Google doesn't make phones.
In terms of ecosystem, Android has all the major apps, and many, many exclusive apps. Cases and accessories - The iPhone has everybody beat, but the Nexus One has better docks.
I don't think that anybody can predict which strategy will be best this time around, or whether any particular strategy is clearly a winner or a loser.
..I'll write according your paragraphs above..
Yes agree, Microsoft is not dying. Hell, it is a giant company with loads of cash piling in some corner of its office. Growing? Yes of course, but slowly perhaps. Because every business companies and enterprise out there are still, and perhaps will still in the future, use Windows OS and Office. But remember, people aren't exactly fully satisfied yet with Windows 7, many are still linger to the good old Windows XP.
Yes, Microsoft beats Apple in the desktop market, but not in term of user experience and GUI and ease of use, and other things that fall into that kind of criteria. Mac is better than Windows, but Mac's market share is not better than Windows. Why? It's a no brainer, just like you said it yourself.. Because Microsoft doesn't make computers, Microsoft only make softwares and then sell them all to every PC out there.
Android is starting to outsell iPhone OS, most probably true. Of course, because Android is an open mobile platform and many mobile manufacturers around the globe is adopting it, so yeah of course it'll outsell iPhone for sure.
Oh and by the way, are you sure Google doesn't make phone? Is Nexus not Google's? Yeah Nexus is made by HTC, not directly made by Google. But how does it not different from Apple who outsourced the making of iPhone to Foxconn??
Once again, yes I agree. Nobody can predict which strategy is the best to beat the iPhone, so what best to do is to shake up the tree so the ripen bad fruits fall and replaced with new fresh fruits, and that's what Microsoft is trying to do right now. Will it work? Who knows, maybe yes maybe not. But I guess that's what giant companies do when things don't go the way they wanted it to be.. \
Thanks for the post Stevie, that's a lot to talk about..
I'm just surprised the Courier was something that could have potentially come to market. I figured it was pure vapor from the get go, to distract from the iPad. Or maybe nobody told Allard that.
Oh and by the way, are you sure Google doesn't make phone? Is Nexus not Google's? Yeah Nexus is made by HTC, not directly made by Google. But how does it not different from Apple who outsourced the making of iPhone to Foxconn??
That depends on who designed the hardware. Apple outsources manufacturing but the design of the product is 100% Apple, so who assembles the product is irrelevant. Did Google do the same with the Nexus? (Just asking, I really don't know.)
As for Microsoft "dying" I think it's obvious that this not happening and that using extreme terms to describe where they are or are going is problematical. Microsoft is still a cash machine. They could do nothing else but supply Windows to OEMs and sell productivity apps and make money into the foreseeable future. But as Bill Joy said in the interview posted here today, Microsoft is lacking in passion and commitment to do anything else -- and this is one of the principal ways they differ from Apple. If this trend continues, it will lead to a gradual but steady erosion of Microsoft's relevance, not to mention, their profitability.
It was not just a joke to say that great companies deliver and mediocre companies reorganize. Deciding that a company's problems are organizational and not a function of what they deliver to customers is classic boneheaded management thinking.
Microsoft may not be dying, but they'll soon occupy the position being held by the likes of Yahoo and the sort. Apple will one day leap frog them in every aspect, possibly the enterprise, even though that may not happen for another 20+ years.
I agree with you. Comparing todays mobile device market to the desktop market from the past is complete fallacy. What happened in the past are because of the conditions and circumstances of the time. What is happening today are under entirely different conditions and circumstances.
Apple and Microsoft are very different companies today than they were 15 years ago. The technological landscape is completely different today than it was 15 years ago.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Prof. Peabody
Overall, I think that what we are looking at with iPhone and the iPad is an entirely new platform taking shape. To me, that makes a lot of your analysis wrong-headed to the degree that it's based on past trends.
The comparisons being made by analysts today to market share arguments from the desktop years may be quite misleading. At least for the time being, the traditionally Apple-owned "premium" segment of this market is actually the main segment. No one is going to make much money right now pushing "good enough" technology in the mobile market IMO. They are just filling up customers pockets until those customers eventually and inevitably buy their iPhones at some point down the road.
Comments
Microsoft has an advantage that Apple and Google do not, in that business is smitten with them.
I'm sure if they released a half decent smartphone that integrated well with all their enterprise servers, business would prefer their employees to use these.
The trouble they have through, it that phones are very personal to people, and people would rather choose their own. Of course, faced with a choice of free Microsoft phone from the boss, or your own phone that you pay for, a lot of people might choose the former.
Which is why I have a Blackberry Bold, and not the iPhone.
My kid's friend has a Zune. It is pretty slick.
Well, there's one .... now where in hell is the other one? .... Oh, almost missed it ... Gulf Coast.
It seems like a really bad idea to re-org just as you are about to launch your new phone series, unless they have been operating under the new organization structure for a while and this is just a formal announcement. But I'm not sure how this is supposed to engender confidence in customers, carriers, or the developer community.
First and foremost Google just makes the Android OS. What hasn't been said is that LG, MOTO, HTC etc are competitors. But it has become the NORM to group all the Android phone carriers as ONE COMPANY. It ain't so.
Moreover, even when MS does release their new mobile OS later this year it won't be MS' hardware but that of, again, competing cell phone makers. MS' Ballmer already said he doesn't want to do hardware only software. I reckon hardware is just too darn expensive and complicated so let some other dooosh handle that.
Now, I'm so pissed that people have gotten so worked up over that courier device. What we all saw was a fantasy product where the folks that produced it just made a cartoon. And a cartoon ain't programming. however if you want a courier like device take the time to make a piece of software. hell, look at Halo and Bayonetta.
The point? They are interactive. So the technology is within reach to anybody with the time and talent at hand.
I would have loved to see what the Courier could do. Could be that they couldn't deliver on the concept...but it did look like a cool device and seems a poor decision by Microsoft to cancel it.
Looking carefully at the form factor numbers, we're talking about a folding device that opened up was almost an inch thick - so folded it was nearly two inches thick, and roughly 5x7 inches (closed) and a bit over a pound. Talk about a brick! And Nelly phone home! It was slated to run WinCE6 on Tegra 2.
The concepts were cool (like the Surface for example) but the execution and form factor were fails IMHO.
Microsoft has an advantage that Apple and Google do not, in that business is smitten with them.
I'm sure if they released a half decent smartphone that integrated well with all their enterprise servers, business would prefer their employees to use these.
The trouble they have through, it that phones are very personal to people, and people would rather choose their own. Of course, faced with a choice of free Microsoft phone from the boss, or your own phone that you pay for, a lot of people might choose the former.
the bean counters. Our Engineering Board has a frantic love/hate attitude about Redmond - love the fact that M/soft staffs a couple of fill-time high-level engineers to help manage the AD/.Net environments here, but hate the fact that the only thing keeping things going is having those senior engineers on-board at all times.
Ohhhh, but we saved billions in upfront costs - to spend later in support costs.
My kid's friend has a Zune. It is pretty slick.
see, if you wipe it off once in a while it isn't so slick - or put it in one of those rubberized cases - makes it easier to hold in your hand...
You are preaching the sort of "accepted wisdom" here, but I'm not so sure it will be true this time.
While not being aimed at business per se, the iPhone has already made significant inroads into enterprise. I think it likely that the new iPhone 4 will be hugely more successful in that market than the original was, given it's design and the new OS. If rumours are true of Apple going multi-carrier in the USA, then we can also assume they will take a huge bite out of the subscribers of all the other networks. That kind of momentum (on top of the momentum they already have) will be hard to beat.
Overall, I think that what we are looking at with iPhone and the iPad is an entirely new platform taking shape. To me, that makes a lot of your analysis wrong-headed to the degree that it's based on past trends. Platforms are usually defined by the early market and iPhone OS dominates the early market. It's the standard that all others are striving towards and will be judged by. IMO iPhone OS won't ever be the entire market like Windows was in the desktop years, but there is no reason it can't dominate. People are just used to Apple having the minority share, there is no good reason why it has to be true anymore, especially in this new market.
The comparisons being made by analysts today to market share arguments from the desktop years may be quite misleading. At least for the time being, the traditionally Apple-owned "premium" segment of this market is actually the main segment. No one is going to make much money right now pushing "good enough" technology in the mobile market IMO. They are just filling up customers pockets until those customers eventually and inevitably buy their iPhones at some point down the road.
I agree that the trend will be for Apple to increase its iPhone inroads into the enterprise. Most of the pieces necessary for IT acceptance and support are already present in the iPhone platform (or soon will be).
The thing I find interesting is that hardly anyone is talking about the iPad inroads into the enterprise. I mean everything from small enterprises (restaurants, shops) to large enterprises (business, medical, education, government).
With the iPad, not only can you consume content, but you can present content, be it a menu in a coffee shop or an image in a doctor's office.
The guy who says: "Let me show you..." will, likely, be wielding an iPad!
And, the "show-ee" will be just as comfortable manipulating the content as the "show-er".
When the first computer labs went into the classroom, it was amazing to see the difference in the kids. They were used to leaning back and watching a presenter display content (film, video, overhead, flipcharts, chalkboard, etc.). With the computer, they were leaning forward and participating!
When the presenter gets the participation of the audience, it's magic! And, he has, likely, closed the deal!
The salesman in an auto dealership, sees that you are interested in a car... He pulls up a [rotatable] 3D image and hands you the iPad so you design the car with your colors, fabrics, accessories... Gotcha!
Just think of the iPad's collaboration potential-- while sitting around the table in the board room, sitting in the classroom or around the world.
It ain't there yet, but it's comin'
.
Microsoft even copied Jonathan Ive!
J Allard.
Did you mean exciting prune, or exiting prune?
.
Thats a meaning of life question, isn't it?
if you fall and forget to hit the ground are you flying?
If there was no poo would there be a zune?
Is not an exiting prune more then likely an exciting prune?
Especially when standing in line and no rest room in sight? ;-)
Microsoft is not dying any kind of death. Not slow and painful. Indeed, it is growing.
And the company that is best competing with Apple in the mobile space does NOT engineer hardware. Microsoft beat the pants off of Apple on the desktop, and they don't make computers. Android is starting to outsell the iPhone OS, and Google doesn't make phones.
In terms of ecosystem, Android has all the major apps, and many, many exclusive apps. Cases and accessories - The iPhone has everybody beat, but the Nexus One has better docks.
I don't think that anybody can predict which strategy will be best this time around, or whether any particular strategy is clearly a winner or a loser.
..I'll write according your paragraphs above..
Yes agree, Microsoft is not dying. Hell, it is a giant company with loads of cash piling in some corner of its office. Growing? Yes of course, but slowly perhaps. Because every business companies and enterprise out there are still, and perhaps will still in the future, use Windows OS and Office. But remember, people aren't exactly fully satisfied yet with Windows 7, many are still linger to the good old Windows XP.
Yes, Microsoft beats Apple in the desktop market, but not in term of user experience and GUI and ease of use, and other things that fall into that kind of criteria. Mac is better than Windows, but Mac's market share is not better than Windows. Why? It's a no brainer, just like you said it yourself.. Because Microsoft doesn't make computers, Microsoft only make softwares and then sell them all to every PC out there.
Android is starting to outsell iPhone OS, most probably true. Of course, because Android is an open mobile platform and many mobile manufacturers around the globe is adopting it, so yeah of course it'll outsell iPhone for sure.
Oh and by the way, are you sure Google doesn't make phone? Is Nexus not Google's? Yeah Nexus is made by HTC, not directly made by Google. But how does it not different from Apple who outsourced the making of iPhone to Foxconn??
Once again, yes I agree. Nobody can predict which strategy is the best to beat the iPhone, so what best to do is to shake up the tree so the ripen bad fruits fall and replaced with new fresh fruits, and that's what Microsoft is trying to do right now. Will it work? Who knows, maybe yes maybe not. But I guess that's what giant companies do when things don't go the way they wanted it to be..
Thanks for the post Stevie, that's a lot to talk about..
Great companies produce; mediocre companies reorganize.
... you're right and then there's Google, producing mediocrity through organized.... ahh i got nothing.. .
OMG!!!
Microsoft even copied Jonathan Ive!
J Allard.
OMG!
Oh and by the way, are you sure Google doesn't make phone? Is Nexus not Google's? Yeah Nexus is made by HTC, not directly made by Google. But how does it not different from Apple who outsourced the making of iPhone to Foxconn??
That depends on who designed the hardware. Apple outsources manufacturing but the design of the product is 100% Apple, so who assembles the product is irrelevant. Did Google do the same with the Nexus? (Just asking, I really don't know.)
As for Microsoft "dying" I think it's obvious that this not happening and that using extreme terms to describe where they are or are going is problematical. Microsoft is still a cash machine. They could do nothing else but supply Windows to OEMs and sell productivity apps and make money into the foreseeable future. But as Bill Joy said in the interview posted here today, Microsoft is lacking in passion and commitment to do anything else -- and this is one of the principal ways they differ from Apple. If this trend continues, it will lead to a gradual but steady erosion of Microsoft's relevance, not to mention, their profitability.
It was not just a joke to say that great companies deliver and mediocre companies reorganize. Deciding that a company's problems are organizational and not a function of what they deliver to customers is classic boneheaded management thinking.
GAMES DIVISION TO-DO LIST
- Game mash-up Nascar vs. Professional Wrestling.
- A wii-mote like device embedded in your bellybutton called project navel.
- A Halo gun controller that doubles as a super-soaker so you can really squirt your friends.
- A CEO simulator in which you control a multi-billion dollar company through incompetence.
MOBILE DIVISION TO-DO LISTBalmer heading the entertainment division? This is delightful news, now Balmer can make his tasteless harebrained schemes a reality!
GAMES DIVISION TO-DO LIST
- Game mash-up Nascar vs. Professional Wrestling.
- A wii-mote like device embedded in your bellybutton called project navel.
- A Halo gun controller that doubles as a super-soaker so you can really squirt your friends.
- A CEO simulator in which you control a multi-billion dollar company through incompetence.
MOBILE DIVISION TO-DO LISTLOL
Don't forget a music player that ejaculates songs... oh, wait!
.
Apple and Microsoft are very different companies today than they were 15 years ago. The technological landscape is completely different today than it was 15 years ago.
Overall, I think that what we are looking at with iPhone and the iPad is an entirely new platform taking shape. To me, that makes a lot of your analysis wrong-headed to the degree that it's based on past trends.
The comparisons being made by analysts today to market share arguments from the desktop years may be quite misleading. At least for the time being, the traditionally Apple-owned "premium" segment of this market is actually the main segment. No one is going to make much money right now pushing "good enough" technology in the mobile market IMO. They are just filling up customers pockets until those customers eventually and inevitably buy their iPhones at some point down the road.