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Don’t Count Microsoft Out of the Ultra-Mobile Computing Wars Just Yet
In anticipation of its renewed push into the ultra-mobile computing
fray (what most other sites call the smarth phone market), Microsoft has
decided to “prime the pump” to regenerate developer interest in its
platform. I have started covering this in detail, see:
- There Is Another Paradigm Shift Coming in Technology and Media: Apple, Microsoft and Google Know its Winner Takes All
- The Mobile Computing and Content Wars: Part 2, the Google Response to the Paradigm Shift
- An Introduction to How Apple Apple Will Compete With the Google/Android Onslaught
I recommend that my readers NOT underestimate Microsoft’s ability to
come from behind on this one. Out of the three competitors that I feel
have the most potential – Apple, Google/Android, and Microsoft –
Microsoft is the only company to have:
- A fully established and pedigreed cloud ecosystem for the enterprise
(Google’s Docs and Gmail apps are relatively new in comparison, and
Apple has only burgeoning consumer offerings that have been recently
launched). - The most advanced audio/video client side interface with both
streaming and subscription services, to be offered through the Zune
interface of Windows Mobile 7. For those who haven’t used it, the new
Zune software/hardware combo puts iTunes to shame. Google doesn’t have a
comparable offering of note. - The de facto standard Office productivity platform, which also
happens to be very, very difficult to replicate and/or reverse engineer.
It also happens to be, by far the most feature rich. One should expect
enhanced compatibility between Windows Phone 7 devices and Office apps. - A rich version of Office productivity apps that can run from the cloud (Office 2010, currently available for download).
- A steady stream of revenue derived from practically every smartphone
sold. Just like MSFT makes money on every PC sold, it also gets a
license fee for every smartphone that needs to interactive with Exchange
server, which is practically every phone that needs to interact with a
Fortune 500 mail server. This is a legacy benefit from being the de
facto standard in the enterprise. Whose product do you thing works best
with Exchange? Secret APIs? - The only major mobile OS vendor who also owns one of the top top
gaming platforms – the X-Box system. Expect rich, 3D/HD, cloud-based
X-box gaming to come to a Windows Mobile 7 phone/table near you.
Imagine X-Box Live (a killer app in its own right) with comparable
graphics on a Windows Phone with a 4 or 5 inch super AMOLED screen.
For these reasons and more, Microsoft will be a force to reckon with.
I’m not saying they will win the ultra-mobile computing wars, but it
will be most unwise to count them out due to their bumbling and
stumbling – all to be expected from a big company that has been on top
for so long, getting fat and losing touch with its true customers due to
an unfettered monopoly revenue and profit stream from its cash cow
products. If you look closely, Apple is
starting to exhibit similar attributes already in its arrogant and
unwise handling of the iPhone 4 issues, and the fact that they released
it in such a fashion in the first place (Windows Vista reminiscent).
Reference An iPhone 4 Recall Will Hurt Apple More By Opening Additional Opportunity for Android Devices Than Increased Expenses.
Share of 2010 Q1 smartphone sales to end users by operating system, according to Gartner.[1]
As you can see from the graphics above, Apple and Google are the
minority but are rapidly taking market share from the established
companies – Nokia/Symbian, RIM and Microsoft. Apple is growing quickly,
but Android is growing quicker, albeit off of a smaller installed base.
From Bloomberg: Microsoft Pays Mobile App Developers to Help It Catch Rivals Apple, Google
July 14 (Bloomberg) — Microsoft Corp.
is paying developers to build mobile applications for its Windows Phone
7 system to help it narrow a lead by rival products from Apple Inc. and
Google Inc.
The company is providing financial
incentives ranging from free tools and test handsets to funds for
software development and marketing, said Todd Brix, a senior director at
Microsoft who works with app developers. In some cases, Microsoft is
providing revenue guarantees, and will make up the difference if apps
don’t sell as well as expected, he said.
Microsoft revamped its flagship
mobile operating system to recoup market share lost to Google and Apple.
To win consumers, the world’s largest software maker needs an ample
supply of games, music and navigation apps when handsets with Windows
Phone 7 reach stores later this year. Some developers may be reluctant
to sign up before they know Windows Phone will lure enough customers,
said Kevin Burden, an analyst at ABI Research.
“In no way do they want to say,
‘Trust us, there will be apps at some point,’” said Burden, who is based
in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. “If that means paying developers, so be
it. It’s a good strategy for them.”
While Microsoft, based in Redmond,
Washington, has used similar compensation programs for previous versions
of its mobile operating system, it’s devoting a larger sum this time,
Brix said. He declined to say how much Microsoft will spend.
“We are investing a lot to attract
developers big and small to Windows Phone 7 to let them understand what
the opportunity is and provide as many resources as we can to help them
be successful on our platform,” Brix said. “We’re open for business and
we want to work with them.”
…
At least four app makers have been
approached by Microsoft and offered financial incentives in cash,
assistance with development costs or revenue guarantees in exchange for
having apps ready at or near the release of Windows Phone 7, said five
people with knowledge of the matter. The people declined to be named
because the incentive terms are confidential.
Other mobile software makers use
different approaches to entice programmers. Apple shares a portion of
the revenue generated when consumers buy apps from its online store. The
company, based in Cupertino, California, has sold more than 51 million
iPhones since its 2007 debut.
Fewer Apps Than Apple
Apple has about 225,000 apps available for the iPhone, while devices that run on Google’s Android operating system have access to some 65,000.
Microsoft is starting from scratch in
amassing apps for Windows Phone 7. Its overhaul of the operating system
was so complete that programs developed for older Windows-based phones
won’t work on the new one. At the end of last year, Microsoft had only
246 apps, according to ABI.
Microsoft rose 30 cents to $25.13 yesterday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The shares have declined 18 percent this year.
The company’s deep pockets
and the likelihood it will keep investing in Windows Phone 7 mean
Microsoft may have an easier time luring developers than a smaller
company, Burden said.
Developers expect Windows Phone 7 to
be successful, three of the people said. Yet it’s difficult to get
companies to build software for an operating system that doesn’t exist
yet.
- advertisements -
Good points reggie.
I put bread on the table coding inside the MS ecosystem.
One point from the development side is that to code for the new phones, all you need to know is Silverlight. From a programming perspective, the app you write for the web will just transfer naturally over to the phones, no big deal.
It will be TRIVIAL for people to code apps for the phone. Sharepoint (which everyone hates to use in the enterprise but has to use) even is using silverlight now.
This all ties back into the enterprise thing.
Of course you can have 10,000 apps out there but if MS screws up the whole 'getting the phones in people's hands' then I will be pretty pissed. (they messed up that Kin thing badly)
MS should take some of its ad money and just subsidize all the phones. If the new phones aren't equal to or less than the android phones they will fail.
You highlight the coming crisis for Microsoft.
Right now, it seems to me they are trying to sustain revenue by making a giant vertical software stack from the backend (mssql, server OS) through to desktop and mobile clients. It seems to me this is working okay for now. As parts of the stack become more irrelevant either through cost or non-compelling upgrades, the whole vertical software stack is weakened.
As other posts have shown, Microsoft is increasingly irrelevant to their end-users. You as a developer are okay for a good while because most businesses will just keep the systems around and need dev work done on them.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is NOT collecting new customers and squeezing the old ones harder. That'll work for a while too. But there's no new customers in the pipeline. They have BOTH a customer crisis brewing and a product strategy that will blow-up spectacularly when it becomes irrelevant all at once.
Fascinating. I could be drunk, or it could be really interesting, I'm not sure which.
http://www.debian.org
http://covert2.wordpress.com
Other than the limited iPhone, virtually all other phones are basically mini computers you can hack into and install whatever OS you wish. This is where Apple will fail while others like HTC, Samsung, etc will succeed.
virtually all other phones are basically mini computers you can hack into and install whatever OS you wish.
Bzzt. Try again. I can't load a Google OS onto my Nokia phone. I can't load a Sybian OS onto a Microsoft phone. I can't even load a Google OS from one hardware vendor onto another vendor's hardware. It simply doesn't work this way.
Embedded platforms are not general purpose computing platforms. As much as Nokia recognized this long ago, the OS (loaded on specific hardware) itself is wide-open. Google, Apple, and Microsoft? Not at all.
Apple will not 'fail' but will have some success at Microsoft's expense. Google's solution might take some action away from Nokia, but not much. Microsoft is so dead on the mobile front, HP bought their own embedded OS. Microsoft won't quit the mobile space, but it's long-ago irrelevant.
Bingo! At least to an extent. Apple will be able to overcharge for the "Lifestyle" option, but that is also a fickle and trendy crowd that needs to be held with vendor lock-in, read as iTunes, et. al.
Realize that Apple does not compete purely on technology and features. If that was the case, most of the iOS 3gs/4 is just reaching parity with Android and Windows Mobile 6.5, ex. mutli-tasking, video recording, cut and paste, etc.
Apple competes on lifestyle and ease of use, where it currently has its competitors beat hands down. The competitors are pushing features sets, since that is where Apple will not be able to compete.
The HTC Evo had many of the software issues that the iPhone 4 had at launch, and the development community fixed nearly all of them with weeks of launch and submitted them for free download. While not neat and pretty, there is no way Apple can compete with a unified open sourced movement on features and tech. That's why this site (Zerohedge), and mine (BoomBustBlog), run on php (LAMP) versus cold fusion, ASP, etc.
Apple competes on lifestyle and ease of use, where it currently has its competitors beat hands down.
Reggie, you don't know what you are talking about. It all sounds good, but it's outsider B.S.
Let's get some facts straight.
1. Nokia is the 600-lb gorilla in mobile. It fit customers lifestyle and has for a long time. Apple, Google and Microsoft together will put a tiny dent in Nokia's business, but that's it. Maybe you are American and suffer from the limited visibility Nokia has in the States?
2. Apple's products are not easier to use. A new iPhone user has the same learning curve as a new Google-based phone user. An Apple customer won't admit this, but it's true.
3. Where Apple excels is advertising. They advertise the most and when they do it's good. Google is the only company that has come close to Apple in advertising and Apple (and the industry) knows it.
Actually, I know and use these products extensively. I also know their business models, strategies and finances well. Apple is easier to use than Android, because Apple is limited and simpler. For instance, some very smart reviewers knocked the Evo (the reigning super phone champion if one were to be objective) for short battery life as compared to the iPhone which is pretty much "cut on" and (try) to talk.
The problem with the Evo at launch is it allowed all of the 3rd party apps to access all of the system radios at will for background updating which drained the batter in 4 to 6 hours. This went past experts as well as newbies. A simple system tweak in the settings menu allows you to tell the OS either prevent background updating, limit it to certain apps, or have those apps request permission. I know get 12 to 16 hours of real use with some radios turned on and off.
Long story short, these options aren't even available in iOS4 so you will not have these problems of freedoms.
Google comes nowhere near the advertising efforts of Apple. Do you have a Google retail tore on 5th Ave, NYC, Tokyo or LA? Billboards at every urban center?
Nokia has the largest market share, but they are an atrophying gorilla. Who do you think all of the marketshare gains of Android and Apple are coming from? They are not primarily new users.
Nokia makes good hardware, but their software will not be able to compete with Android et. al., despite the fact it went full opensource last year.
Actually, I know and use these products extensively....
You entirely avoid refuting my claim that the iPhone has a learning curve. Then you go on to describe 'cool phone tricks.' iPhone is as hard to learn as the next phone. Period.
Billboards at every urban center?
Yes. I see them every day. I hear their ads on the radio. Maybe you aren't in one of their target markets.
Who do you think all of the marketshare gains of Android and Apple are coming from?
They are coming from the declining price (real or financed) of smart phones. Reggie, if you weren't such an amateur, you'd know this.
Nokia makes good hardware, but their software will not be able to compete with Android et. al.,
Bad news Reggie, some version of that statement has been uttered by every pretender entering the mobile space in the last 5+ years with varying and minor results.
"Unified open source movement" is an oxymoron. It doesn't exist and it never will. The closest thing we can point to was the Open Office development team funded by Sun. Come on Reggie, you know that people, even dweeb developers, don't work for free.
Open source is amazingly unified. In fact, it's almost self-organizing. When a bug needs fixed, it's like a flash mob descends and gets the job done. Look at the projects online that you can participate in. They are as organized if not more than the dev teams of major companies, right down to checking out source code and checking it back in. And, it's highly peer-reviewed, which is perhaps the biggest strength. One person's bug fix may be modded the next day by a performance junkie who wants to speed it up.
Open source is not generally about money. Any dweeb will work for free if frustrated enough with a bug. But even if they won't, they sometimes get paid in fame. It's like the first round draft for geeks. Every geek wants to hit the bigtime, and get a byline on some cool project. Or, they are bored, and they get paid in excitement.
Incidentally, I've seen companies ask for open source projects as part of a portfolio for hiring. It demonstrates you can be part of a team, and vets skills for them.
"Any dweeb will work for free if frustrated enough with a bug. But even if they won't, they sometimes get paid in fame. It's like the first round draft for geeks. Every geek wants to hit the bigtime, and get a byline on some cool project. Or, they are bored, and they get paid in excitement."
I have a full staff of these dweebs. I recruit nothing but this type of individual-- but these traits typically generate value far beyond computers.
Never said it was "over for Microsoft". Just saying it's over for Microsoft in the mobile space. Microsoft will keep maintaining a dominant position in desktop OSs, servers and even gaming systems for a long time. The problem people make is they assume that a company that is successful in one market segment can use the same strategy to then dominate another market segment or adjacency. It does not work that way. I'm simply saying is that Windows Mobile is a lost market. When you have to pay developers to build tools for your environment because that market dynamics alone can't justify the time and energy to do this, you know it's a loosing battle.
So, if MSFT finds a way for you to easily create and share Office documents on your cell phone while no other vendor can, and allows your son to play Xbox live games in HD 3D, you don't believe this will give them an unprecedented edge?
I can guarantee you touched at least 3 MSFT products just to make this post, whether it be IE, server, exchange, Windows and/or office. Microsoft has the tech and the users, their management got to complacent, and allowed smaller companies to get the edge. This happens to ALL big companies, particularly in industries without massive barriers to entry (ex. Intel and semiconductors) to keep the entrepenurial, yet quick, small fry with shallow pockets out of the fray.
Just look at how Apple is handling its iPhone 4 affair.
by Reggie Middleton on Wed, 07/14/2010 - 17:39 #468387
Just look at how Apple is handling its iPhone 4 affair.
Apple will get away with it, because most of their customers are blindly loyal. Just look at the iPad - $800 for a fad. The Mac is the same at $1500. The first iPhones had all sorts of niggling problems (especially when they dropped the price $200). Apple know ho to make gadget porn, and their customers "fall in lust". In the electronics industry open source is by far the most common O/S. All those cheap rubbish gadgets from China don't run Windows od Symbian or Apples - it's all "free" Linux.
yeah but as you said good cheap and rubbish. the ipad is actually very good product, borderline revolutionary in its form factor and battery life that diminishes significantly in heat
First-hand experience with MS Mobile from development perspective:
A literal-Hell of branding-variations, SKUs and versioning. Similar to experiencing a house-of-mirrors on LSD.
Then you get to match-up SDK versions with the above matrix and then figure out what is and is not going to work with the version of Visual Studio that you currently have installed. If you're lucky there is no churn in this area.
Then you go to the bookstore and get $150 worth of books on the subject because while the MS docs are copious they are nearly worthless in the electronic form that they are in. The search engines would have maybe been sufficient if it weren't for the version-SKU-matrix mentioned above.
AND NOW, NOW, FINALLY, we are ready to write a "Hello World" test for our SmartPhone. Ah, sweet, its works first try on the emulator. Now for the real test.
Ok, push the app to the phone. WTF?
The version of MS ActiveSync is not compatible with the version of MS Mobile...Oh I need a new version of MS ActiveSync. NO?!?! Oh, I see I need MS SyncCenter, which is a replacement for ActiveSync. What do you mean there is no 64bit version of MS SyncCenter available--I have a 64 bit Windows Operating System that was released over two years ago?
Oh, I see. There's MSDN European originated patch that I can apply to get the 32bit MS ActiveSync to work with my OS. Cool. Now what was I working on?
Imagine a junior coming to me and asking if they can do some sandbox experimentation with MS Mobile to get up-to-speed. What a joke...
Sorry -- I'm frustrated with MS right now.
That gets a ROFL.
It used to be DLL hell, now it's SKU hell.
And that's precisely MS's achiles hill: complexity. They tightly couple their products together, but don't tell anyone how they work together. And leave the developer hanging when it breaks. Like I said in a previous post, they have waaayyy to many versions of products. I pine for Windows 95 days when everyone bought the same version, for the same price, whether or not each user leveraged all the features. The array of versions of all their products is nauseating. MS has lost any "elegance" they had in their products, that's for sure.
The average user doesn't create or share their thesis on their portable phone, they author and share text messages.
In terms of usability, why would a rational person squint at a 3" screen struggling with a tiny keyboard? This implies a larger device and the landscape immediately broadens. Google docs do everything you say, and you don't even need to carry your device.
Ill chalk any new unprecedented edges up with all of them past - *yawn*
Becuase they can't. This is exactly where the opportunity comes in. You may not create the doc on your phone, but it sure pays to be able to edit it and forward the edited version in a crunch. Trust me on that.
The screens of the real phone manufacturers are 4, 4.3 and 5" now - and you can get up to 5 inches without increasing the form factore of the actual phone. It's all about engineering and delivering what the people want, versus what the marketing team and the engineers want. I am replying to you on a 4.3" HTC Evo screen, and it is absolutely noproblem at all.
Google docs is a nice concept, but has limited functionality when compared to Office 2010, and is much slower. It does have better sharing functions, but MSFT can literally fixthat overnignt from a technical perspective. What they need is management foresight.
MSFT has more edges than both Google and Apple. It is MSFT managment that is holding MSFT back, not the tech.
All good points, the best of which you said, "need is management foresight."
Although many of the "younger" may be proficient at the "in a pinch" use of a mobile device, ask older folks with newly degenerating eyesight to be effective, and usage gets difficult. That leaves voice dictation (speech to text) which facilitates the "bulk input" quickly and easily. Perhaps it is a bit early to tell who is in front of this yet.
The primary reason I am not long MSFT (anymore) is that their historic execution model of relying much on others for the innovation so one can capitalize on their mistakes (the "3M" approach) is deteriorating in the technical realm (diminishing value for MSFT). When you say they can literally fix overnight, you illustrate a point that indeed that is the case, but it is the case for their competition too. It is my belief that MSFT has a vision problem, which is being perhaps [overly] compensated for by execution and marketing (broadly speaking).
Reading the comments on this post, one can see that MSFT is often still headed in the wrong direction by ADDING complexity and cost, rather than to marginalize or remove it. Whether or not tech vs. management would be leading who I don't know. It sounds like a vision problem to me.
Price wise it is tough to compete with free, and using MSFT's mistakes against them is typically what fires up the open source community (ironically same as above). Except now that community of volunteers is evolved, matured, and is far more cost effective than most people/businesses realize. Microsoft's price models are as skewed as their marketing and don't seem to reflect...
Reggie, do you know much about the massive data centers that MSFT is expanding into?
P.S. I have composed this response on a Blackberry and it is absurdly difficult Certainly a market here for someone.
android voice dictation system is the best that i know of.this entire post has indicated in my Android phone. notice the accuracy of the dictation. it would have been much better but i am in the playground the front of kids making a lot of noise in the background . In a quiet environment accuracy is about 95 to 97 percent.
so you think it is quite possible to use the cell phones to create long or short documents.
android voice dictation system is the best that i know of.this entire post has indicated in my Android phone. notice the accuracy of the dictation. it would have been much better but i am in the playground the front of kids making a lot of noise in the background . In a quiet environment accuracy is about 95 to 97 percent.
so you think it is quite possible to use the cell phones to create long or short documents.
oh yeah, open source is not free. Costs are shifted from upfront licensing to maintenance, customization and upkeep.
Reggie,
I've been able to open documents of all kinds on the Nokia platform since the Nokia 9500 communicator. People who get email on their phones don't open the attachments. They wait to get to the office or open their laptop and do the viewing there.
While I agree the feature has not been advertised to death yet, this feature is done and mostly irrelevant.
MSFT can literally fixthat overnignt from a technical perspective.
No, they can't. They have legions of coders to attack the problem, but the coders are constrained by layers of management and marketing. Management and Marketing are famously and consistently risk-adverse for the last decade.
Like other posts have described, even if something made it out of the bowels of the developing machine, Microsoft's Marketing would slice and dice the functionality into a mostly broken, featureless, licensing nightmare.
You can open it, but you can't edit it save it in the native format without damaging the integrity of the doc. Just because people haven't done things in the past doesn't mean they won't in the future if given the opportunity. Just look at smartphones... How many people thought you would never watch a full length movie on your phone. My Evo plays movies better than every portable CD player ever made and can match the viewable screen area of some.
You can open it, but you can't edit it save it in the native format without damaging the integrity of the doc.
1. Yes I can open, edit and save in the file extension/format that was sent to me. Then open it on a general purpose PC and the changes are there. It's magic!!
2. What is this 'itegrity' BS?
Reggie, you don't know what you are talking about. Learn from your many mistakes made in the article and comments, and then try again.
Actually, I know exactly what I am talking about. If I send you a fully formatted Excel abstract with multiple tabs, formulas, charts and cell formats, are you telling me you can open it in your Nokia phone, modify it and send it back to me in full fidelity? The same with a word or PowerPoint doc with headings, footers and table of contents? Saving to an extension is not the same as preserving the fidelity of a document, and youbwould know this if youbactually worked with this stuff.
Having used Microsoft's Azure cloud computing solution I will tell you it has a long way to go but Mr Softie has deep pockets and dominates the server operating system market globally and will quickly try to dominate the cloud computing space.
Look at the XBox 360 for staying power and success.
Mr Softie has deep pockets and dominates the server operating system market globally
Mr. Softie has deep pockets, but does not dominate server OS markets. Linux and BSD's do the dominating. You could argue they make some money at it. But I don't know what the numbers are like.
by Gimp on Wed, 07/14/2010 - 16:58 #468263
Look at the XBox 360 for staying power and success.
Are yolu real? Have you any idea how much money MSFT have lost on X-Box over the years. Google "MiniMicrosoft" (blog)
Reggie,
Microsoft has lost the leadership and mindshare war. It's over for them. Apple is currently king and everyone else is moving to Android to give Apple a run for the money. Companies are simply not willing to pay a premium for an second tier OS when they can get a in-demand first tier OS like Android for free. RIM will maintain the corporate market for a while and will have a niche in the consumer market. But, it's really a battle royale between Apple and Google now. Everyone else has to react to these 2 platforms.
The problem for Microsoft is that they only know how to execute on 1 strategy: copy the competition's best ideas and force is down their customers with new, questionable quality releases. Given their near monopoly in PC OSs, they can get away with that. But, they cannot be successful in a market where they are not the leaders. It will not work.
Rich
I've been 'attached' to MS products professionally (software development) for almost 20 years...
I was a cheerleader and defender at one point in time. Then I went silent. Then I became increasingly frustrated.
Now I am being shockingly frank with clients about the quality situation, particularly in relationship to rate-of-change (well, rate-of-release-schedules anyhoo) and excessive 'innovation.'
In my view the situation is untenable and there are a whole lot of people in REAL denial about it. That includes many MS employees and MS customers alike.
They've managed to pull some rabbits out the hat in the past to recover, from potentially-fatal blindspots...not too shabby for a behemoth. But REALLY, they've been lucky because they could have easily wound up on the dustheap more than once...
I tell my clients that my view is that MS is very vulnerable at this time in their history. I think there is strong likelihood that the on-going environmental changes in the computing universe will reach a threshhold and then rather suddenly the relevance of MS will evaporate.
I'm being intentionally vague -- but I'm not trying to trade around these issues.
Although, on second though maybe that isn't true. I'm dying to get out of a pure MS environment in favor of [almost anything else] so I guess it would be appropriate to say "I am SHORT my MS skillset."
Mostly agree. But I don't think the gig is up for gates. This is mostly a mgmt issue for them, and customer service. They're too bloated with mgmt levels, which makes them lumber along. They aren't agile enough in a market that changes so quickly.
Big company customer service generally sucks. In fact cust service in all sectors sucks so bad that the business world has room for thousands of traveling tutors who make big bucks giving seminars on better cust service and management. If MS can release Customer Service and Marketing 2012, they could dogpile everyone else. They do have a lot of good talent, and a huge share of the desktop market.
I do think that .net is a pretty good dev platform, and if you want to get out of MS, use mono and perl.net or something like that.
I disagree with it being over for Microsoft. Clearly they need a new CEO as well as a new executive team, but there are some smart people at Microsoft who understands what they need to do. Their biggest mistake, in my opinion, was not purchasing Sun Micro when they had the chance. Linux cannot compete with Solaris on the server side, and its stability/maturity would have been a nice challege to Apple's OSX. It also would have given then access to the largest development platform of them all (Java)
Linux cannot compete with Solaris on the server side
On big(ger) iron, I agree. But how is Oracle going to monetize it AND keep it relevant for big(ger) iron with Linux filling in big(ger) iron features?
Java is very enterprise-y dev work. Again, I wonder how Oracle will monetize it and keep it relevant at the same time.
I used to have respect for you Reggie.
Microsoft is history. They couldn't find a profitable strategy in a paper bag. Microsoft can pound sand as they have killed every golden goose they ever touched. My most recent favorite was raising the price of SQL Server 25% after a service pack (R2). "Yeah, we know a (typical) $60k purchase is for shit, but you better buy it now because when we actually get it working the price goes up..."
Microsoft's answer to profitability is war against their customers (on every front from business to video game consoles) - the customer is always last and if not, you light them on fire.
Disclaimer: Ubuntu (and the like) for thick clients and cloud for everything else thin and small.
I agree. There are plenty of people with long memories. Microsoft have screwed too many people over the years. Anyone who partners with MSFT need to understand they are supping with the devil.
Microsoft has become an irrelevance, their cash cow (Windows and Office) both have free alternatives. In fact you don't have to work hard to get their latest and greatest absolutely free.
It is only stupid companies whe pay full price for their bloatware!
It's true that WinCE and WinMobile were miserable failures feature-wise but regardless I think both you and Reggie miss some key aspects. The whole consumer market-share way of thinking misses entirely what's going on underneath the surface.
The core culture of Microsoft is to be a platform company. They built several new billion $ business lines in this way few consumers know. Most of MS managers are uncomfortable with PR and public speaking (they are all engineers). The management of Microsoft will get genuinely nervous only if their API:s do not cover every use case, that is what drives the company and made them successful. Release decisions are very much based on the ability to integrate a product with other stuff, not whether it shines on its own (think stuff in boxes). As far as applications are concerned, they usually fail to find the "sweet spot" of the users but instead overwhelm productivity-seeking players in the middle of the tech stack with libraries they can cherry pick and integrate. XNA is just one such technology.
I think Microsoft's strategy is frequently misunderstood because they play the game of go, not chess. Chess means to conquer and kill, but go means to coexist. They gradually and slowly conquer functional areas and then try to tie them together, even if they will need years to do it. They rarely go head-on with competitors. Microsoft prefers to let competitors co-exist and tie up with their ecosystem, or if they are incompatible, just push them off the board, but never directly. Look at Mono, it is a good example. They let it co-exist because of the synergistic effect with other O/S platforms. It is not possible to stop a competing offer from existing in the tech world, so you have to co-exist, it's that simple really. A platform company can live on more friendly terms with competitors than a product company as it can interoperate (B-schools rarely see such subtleties in tech).
When I look at Microsoft, what strikes me is how interconnected the ecosystem is becoming. C# and .NET can run on web servers. The same tech is in XNA. It can run on X-box and now WinMo7. Mobile devices can connect to the DB servers, which integrate with their caching tech. Etc, etc. Of course it's far from perfect but it is not a state of fact but a "mission". Take the mobile arena, for example. The interesting news to me with the new mobile O/S 7 is that it is a total paradigm shift to managed code which is of course what nobody can see and no journalist cares to follow up on. But when you look at the underlying technology stack of I-Phone, Apple actually looks really weak. They have nothing like the dev tools of VS and they have nothing like a multi-language support runtime that MS started more than 10 years ago with (.NET). All the talk from Steve Jobs about how bad these middle layers (on the surface, aimed at Flash) is a distraction that singals their nervousness of MS platforms.
Example, a serious application that can work in disconnected mode requires data replication with a business DB. Apple has no database offering whatsoever, and MS started this in the stone age with the Sybase code. And now they will enable it with merge replication on WinMo7. Apple has absolutely nothing to offer in this space and it's not like Apple can just start to think of a database stack in Q3 2010 and get the RTM out in Q4. MS is getting them very cornered (what about integration, reporting, etc).
Example 2, cool web dev's like dynamic languages, Ruby is sexy and MS had nothing useful there except the old ASP garbage. So their architect thinks hard and carefully and comes up with dynamic typing on a static type-safe runtime, which is a far more robust system than say PHP but very hard to appreciate outright as it is multi-paradigm. They keep choosing the hard way of doing things and thus they always fail to impress punters, but they fail "less and less" with every release. Same thing happend with IE, of course release 1-7 were terrible but 8 is OK and 9 should be good.
You can see it in marketing. Apple has a better product evangelist (Jobs), whereas MS has better platform evangelists, etc etc. Apple prefer to sell the back-end with front-ends, MS sells front-ends through back-ends.
It's not really about features. MS will never win the feature battle. They are quite content with providing an arsenal of API:s/servers/components and let other people do the vertical market frontline battles, while MS extracts back-end commonality and makes it modular and charges a decent fee for some of it.
You'll respect him if it turns out he's right. His track record is pretty good in finding companies that are being generally ignored. When "they've had their day", maybe it's time to buy. (Emphasis on maybe)
I don't think MS is history, but I agree they've ridden their horse into a swayback. SQL Server is ridiculously priced, so much so that we won't upgrade. Their dev + IT support is terrible and worse: their pre-sales support sucks. But still way better than Cisco's support. If they ever get their management and marketing act together, they will once again be on top.
On the sales side, the main prob with MS is they confuse the market with too many types for each version: professional, standard, enterprise, ultimate, ad nauseum. It confuses consumers, and professionals. If they would sell one version, and cost average, they could sell the same one to beginners and professionals and the prices would even out. Or not. But it would sure make it a lot easier. I hate teaser versions that cost less, because when I need a feature, I hate taking an upgrade path, and figuring out which one I need to get the feature(s) I want.
From a dev perspective though, .net is actually quite good, and you can even use mono for open source and program in lots of languages.
I won't use ubuntu much anymore - too many problems with it freezing up. I use puppy 'nix for thin stuff, and I can store the whole thing on an encrypted jump drive. Fedora has been really good for servers and desktops. For windows, XP is still the best I've used, but windows 7 is pretty good so far.
I was kidding, I still respect Reggie.
Your comment about SQL server illustrated my point. Customers last.
I recommend XP to this second (if it's already paid for), however once again MS got caught trying to gouge their customers and the recent extension makes twice.
I've been running my businesses on Fedora Core for many years.
Ubuntu Server is cleaning house, and use with VMServer (both free) is a holy grail option for many medium and small businesses, cash strapped and trapped by vendors (precisely like MS).
The real question is, why pay Microsoft what one can get for free (or have already paid for 6 times)? Thats the only reason to laugh to the bank.
MS: I love 'em and I hate 'em.
To me, SQL Server is good, but not "$10,000+ per license good". Hell, in most cases that's more than the server we put it on. I'm with you on the price page, but I admit I've been in a lot of tight spots with open source, where I never thought I'd see the dawn. Short of red hat (which as you know is essentially fedora), it's not like I can pick up the phone and call in a squad of experts.
That's why I usually buy dell or hp, because they are required by OEM to support the SW. So, I get HW and SW support bundled into my purchase, and at least I'm covered. Also, I've found dell and hp both to be much more accessible than MS, and I for the stuff I break, I almost always get an agent in the USA who I can understand, and almost always get it quickly. And, both vendors offer much more support for open source than they used to.