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There Is Another Paradigm Shift Coming in Technology and Media: Apple, Microsoft and Google Know its Winner Takes All
With the cult-like adherence to Everything Apple, cultivated by the
viral marketing engine that is Apple, it is very, very difficult to get
objective comparisons and reviews of practically anything in a product
category that Apple is present in. Yes, even the stalwart geeky tech
site’s have bitten the Apple, so to speak. Cnet, Wired, etc. are so
Apple biased as to be borderline embarrassing. I know they report on
what (and how whatever) brings the page views, but come on fellas!!!
BoomBustblog thrives because it tells the truth in the financial and
economic space, not matter how unpopular or controversial. Is it time to
open up a BoomBustBlog, Technology edition????
What this abject bias does, despite irritating the hell out of those
of us who are not plugged into the Matrix, is mask the exciting
technical revolution that is occurring due to the intense competition
borne from the weakening of the Wintel hegemony, the advent of a slew of
new technologies across the telecomm, media, semiconductor and software
industries and the new business models cropping up as the world finally
embraces the World Wide Web as an actual permanent and primary platform
for basic business, social and economic transactions.
This post will surmise the qualitative aspects of the companies and
products listed below. I will follow up with full forensic analyses of
not only the companies, but the business model and market share
potential of each, as well as a thorough valuation scenario analysis.
One of these companies will probably take over portable computing, and I
think it will pay to hitch onto the right one. The next Microsoft is in
the making. Hey, Microsoft may even be the next Microsoft. Don’t sleep
on them, although it does appear that they have been asleep themselves.
We won’t know until the Windows Mobile 7 OS is released. I recommend all
who are interested in this tech, media or investments send the link to
this article around the web, for it is one of the few (if not the only)
truly unbiased reviews of the products that compete with Apple in the
ultra portable and handheld space.
An Overview of the New Windows to the Web
From the top left hand corner, clockwise: The Amazon Kindle 2,
Asus EEE PC, Apple IPad, Archos 5 Internet tablet, HTC Touch Pro2, Apple
Itouch 3rd Generation, Archos 9 Internet Tablet, Sony Vaio. The paper
under the Apple product is a testament to the viral marketing ability of
Apple. My son did not want his ITouch to touch the floor!!!
What do all of these devices have in common?
They all allow you to consume very high end BoomBustBlog content, nearly
in its entirety, on the go. Most of them actually allow you to produce
said content and compute as well. Many people are unaware that the
computer and telecomm world is now changing at the fastest pace in the
history of said industries. Exciting things are happening, and investors
are well served to stay abreast. I am a tech geek (and actually own and
use a lot of this stuff daily), ex-owner of a small tech company,
investor, analyst, and distributed media company owner: I feel I am well
versed in describing what is happening. Let’s get a run down from
Reggie’s perspective…
First, lets take a look at the state of portable computing and media
consumption/production. Below I identify the devices in the pic above,
starting from the upper left hand corner, going clockwise:
Amazon Kindle 2
A significant improvement over the first Kindle, both of which have
claimed (and rightfully so) the mantle of the premier e-book readers,
mostly due to wireless connectivity, practical reading screens and on
demand book purchasing, they still suffer from usability issues. Though
you do have access to the web and Internet, said access is limited and
rudimentary, for this is a focused ebook reader. The gossip is that the
Apple IPad will bring about the demise of this hardware, but truth be
told the Kindle2 is simply a better (black and white) ebook reader than
the IPad. If you are a die hard book reader, the IPad will not replace
the Kindle but if you are an occasional reader or enjoy color or
graphics, the IPad will probably be your choice. Amazon has hedged
against this possibility by creating cross platform Kindle readers (as
software) to allow you to access your Kindle content via the IPad (a
very nice app, BTW), IPhone, PC, Mac, and Blackberry.
|
Kindle
(Global
Wireless)
|
Kindle DX
(Global
Wireless)
|
|
|
Display
|
6″ diagonal E Ink | 9.7″ diagonal E Ink |
|
Size
|
8″ x 5.3″ x 0.36″ | 10.4″ x 7.2″ x 0.38″ |
|
Storage
|
1,500 books | 3,500 books |
|
Books in Under 60 Seconds
|
 |
|
|
3G Wireless
|
|
|
|
Wireless Coverage
|
Global | Global |
|
Native PDF Support
|
|
|
|
Text-to-Speech
|
|
|
|
Whispersync
|
|
|
|
Rotating Display
|
Manual Rotation | Auto-Rotation |
|
Price
|
$259.00 | $489.00 |
| This page | See details |
Read Your Kindle Books on All Your Devices
Asus Eee PC
Although lacking the slick, sexy, cult-like marketing prowess of
Apple, this Asian manufacturer is producing bleeding edge products and
not only single handedly defined the net book category, but has upped
the ante creating a fully capable (runs Windows, office apps, full
connectivity and full HD Flash), ultra portable computer with a usable
keyboard that can last 11 hours playing full HD video. At a $400 price
point, 2.8 lbs, and 250GB of storage, it will make many think twice
about the purchase of a an IPad! I can tell you from experience, this
device is more of a work horse than the IPad, for you can blog and run
spreadsheets directly off of it, and it is not Flash crippled. The
IPad’s touch interface is more intuitive for web browsing, though. All
in all, this little device is the second most
Apple IPad
This is a difficult product to accurately describe. When it was first
announced, I said to myself, “Yeah right, this sounds like a flop in
the making, but one should not underestimate Apple”. Many people who
know that I am a tech geek were shocked that I wasn’t willing to look
into it. They fail to realize that a) I’m not that enthused by most
Apple products (although the IPhone and IPod Touch were quite
innovative), and b) I didn’t really see a practical use for this
product. Apples strengths are, aside from killer marketing and viral
cult status, that it controls both the software and hardware platforms –
enabling it to create and ease of use, compatibility and integration
level that is not capable in much more diverse environments, ex. Wintel.
The problem is you give up pricing advantages through the channel
(which is directly translated in to Apple margin, may I add) as well as
flexibility and extensibility. The average user will opt for
simplicity, while the power user will opt for flexibility. This is a
very important concept that will both help and hinder the release of the
new IPhone 4 (more on that later) and define the user base for both
Apple and its competitors as the market develops. Apple’s next advantage
is that they are damn good at engineering the user experience. Smart,
sexy products combined with pretty UIs and a hell of a marketing machine
make a deadly combination. This is what has landed Apple at the top of
the pile. Of course, there is no free lunch though. Apple apparently
subsidizes much of the hardware costs with Itunes revenue and phone
carrier contracts. The connectivity and call quality problems and lack
of actual profit associated with AT&T’s IPhone relationship is well
documented, as well as these problems being a deterrent to an even wider
adoption of the IPhone. The question remains, how does Apple remedy
this? Apple has blocked the killer Internet app of the year from the
Apple store (more on this later as well), and has done so to appease the
margin challenged carrier AT&T (this is not how it was reported in
the media, though). Google Voice is a game changer, and could
significantly boost the appeal of the IPhone, yet Apple has to push it
away to avoid true beef with AT&T who relies on the beefier margins
embedded in its voice business. The same with the ubiquitous Flash video
from Adobe (Apple does not want Adobe getting too much control and
decries efficiency and security deficiencies in Flash, despite the fact
it can stream Flash through Youtube (which is too ubiquitous to diss),
debunking the technical reasons given for limiting flash content in the
first place), and streaming music, ala Rhapsody (at all you can eat at
$10 per month, who will buy songs for 99 cents each from ITunes???? –
Apple has very recently allowed this to stream to their products due to
market pressure and the impending introduction of their own product
which will probably hurt margins some). These are all weaknesses in the
Apple business model that stem from the fact that it is now king of the
hill and has to overcharge for (or prevent the use of) certain products
that should flow freely and relatively inexpensively through the
ecosystem. This is the problem that Microsoft had and why it never sold
its own computers and cell phones, at least until very recently after
having their lunch money taken by Apple (see the Kin).
My feelings toward the IPad changed significantly once I had the
opportunity to actually spend some time with one. It is quick, sharp,
very portable, easy to use and it lasts all day long. This is quite the
endorsement, coming from a PC man. Of course, it’s three main weaknesses
are its lack of flash compatibility (except Youtube), it is awkard to
use with office productivity apps (and impossible to use with the
ubiquitious Microsoft Office) and the fact that the browser cannot fully
render rich text boxes used in nearly every blogging platform. That’s
right, you can’t even blog from an IPad. This (relatively minor
technical) drawback in the lightweight browser leads to a very detriment
to mobile content producers such as myself. The office productivity
issue is also a major drawback, albeit one that is expected. Without
fixing these issues, the IPad is more of content consumption device in
lieu of being a true computer that is flexible and powerful enough to be
both production and consumption device. It is just not as practical as
the Asus above.
Even despite these limitations, I really thought this device was a
game changer (and it was, until I experienced the device expounded upon
in detail below). It’s only real serious competition was the Asus (adn
similar products) above. The Asus is much more practical for work, while
the IPad is more practical for media consumption, although they both do
a pretty good job of the other’s core task. The always on Web access of
the IPad and the 12 hour battery life (during full use, yes – its true)
is a big plus. The raison d’ etre for the appeal of this device,
notwithstanding sexy design and viral marketing is the ITunes app store.
This will be very difficult for the competition to counter, although
not impossible (see the cell phone reviews below). It is also ironic
that the number one app maker and marketplace for the last 30 years has
been so quickly subsumed in the mobile phone space by Apple. This is
much more a case of Microsoft dropping the ball and succumbing to big
company-itis (the exact same disease that allowed them to eat IBM’s
lunch, thus becoming one of the most powerful companies in the world
from a two person start up). With that being said, the new mobile OS
coming from Microsoft looks to probably be superior to nearly all else
offered (Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS, Palm’s WebOS, Symbian, etc.) if
there implementation of the Zune HD OS is indication of things to come.
The problem is that the delay is killing them in both market awareness
and market share. What the hell are the guys over at Microsoft doing as
these other companies eat their lunch? As we all have experienced, the
best product is not necessarily the most widely adopted product (ex. the
Zune HD).
Go to "There Is Another Paradigm Shift Coming in Technology and Media:
Apple, Microsoft and Google Better Know its Winner Takes All" on BoomBustBlog to read the remainder of this post, including a detailed review of what I consider to be an all out IPhone killer and the device that actually causes me to leave the IPad AND the netbook at home much more often then I would have ever thought.
Next up, we attempt to sum this up in terms of business models, margins
and most importantly potential valuation scenarios.
»
- advertisements -
That's a very good way of putting it Cooter.
Very few people understand that Google has one stream of revenue, Adword. Granted the stream is gigantic but it allows them to test all sorta of weird ideas that don't always pan out.
Reggie I heard a rumor abour Android. Some places on the Internet are saying that Google is giving it away free to handset manufacturers.
You seem well connected, have you heard anything about this??
Errrr...
Three Pentagon controlled companies acting like they are competing...
Now that's what i call a National Security stategy.
For all you Apple fans, this is kind of scary
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/21/new-apple-terms-allo.html
New Apple terms allow them to collect and share your "precise, real-time location"
Cory Doctorow at 10:27 PM Monday, Jun 21, 2010
iPhone/iPad users: the new version of iTunes showing up on your computer right about now has new, non-negotiable terms of service. If you install it, you "agree" to allow Apple to collect precise information about your location in real time and use it, sell it, or give it away. Apple promises that its location data is "collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you." Of course, AOL thought that the search data it released was anonymous and didn't personally identify people, either. They were wrong.
Used PCs for 30 years - since the early 70's. Switched over to Apple several years back and haven't looked back once. If you like fucking with viruses, malware, de-fragging, firewalls, registry repairs, etc, etc. and think that's somehow more productive, and cost effective, then have at it. But let's be honest here: MS OS are born to crash both mind and machine.
I could do without Apple's antitrust-like control over their phones & Ipad; but I only use their laptops which are simply outstanding devices.
Short it now, it failed to take out a new high... And, I don't know about the RIMM being dead part. Let's not forget about the HUGE AAPL user base that consists of jobless teen/young adult pot smoking slacker hippies. They'll get crunched, and so will AAPL.
I actually bought myself the Archos 9 and I'm very content with it.
I like the windows 7 operating system and the USB ports so it's more easy to transfer data.
Getting stuff on or off a Ipad takes way to long! It's good for surfing and chatting and stuff like that, but that's it.
http://www.archos.com/products/nb/archos_9/index.html?country=us&lang=en
I bought an Imac to get away from Windows Vista and a HP laptop. Now I have a computer that works regularly. I think part of Apple's growth was due to this very reason.
say mr. reggie, do i use pc when i join your team? haha...waiting n sorry if i am starting to annoy you.
btw, i did buy pc notebook cos it does the same thing as mac with little less showoff. n also the fact that in my college only the liberal arts students r seen using mac in library,,...rest everyone got pc..
does beg to think wat would happen if msft didn'tt let apple have the mac word, excel n access....hmm
n yeah all the google fan,,,jus look around n see how many really uses google for anyother stuff then jus finiding a link for what ever they r trying to find,...
Microsoft has 10,000 people working on Windows, maybe a few thousand hard core programmers.
Apple has half that.
Linux has tens of millions. The results are not easy to predict on a 'release to release' basis, but the end result is: Apple and Microsoft are surrounded.
Google is going to tap into Linux, for a song.
YouGotIt, Google have the resources.... let Apple lead the way, invite Android developers to build extensions and leading hardware designers to work with software... give end users variety of ways to work with competitive open source market * SNAP * Google choo$e$ best apps from chaotic platform, laughs all the way to the bank, and Confucius sits in corner with big smile thanking 'leaders'.
Where's the google/andoid device? My Nexus 1 is jealous.
The androids are pretty cheap actually. They are called Iped's!
I was thinking of buying one for my son, he's only 12 so a Ipad is a bit to expensive to give to a 12 year old in my opinion.
He'll never notice the diference I think.
http://chinagrabber.com/800-x-480-7-hd-lcd-sceen-ebook---andriod-os-wifi-3g-ebook-reader---m759-1.aspx
http://chinagrabber.com/search.aspx?find=iped
My Laptop sits on my desk where it now belongs. Sometimes it moves to the kitchen table, sometime to the living room. Thats OK, it runs too hot for my lap and sucks power like there is no tomorrow. My IPAD follows me where ever I go. It sucks for content generation (its ok for email and text posting), but for content consumption it is superb and I charge once a day.
Anyone who thinks the success of this product is cult marketing is ill informed.
agreed, Ipad is practically as mobile as smartphone, easy to carry to restaurant. to meeting, in car, in train/plaen and my laptop clunky hot energy hog, compared to Ipad....but I do like a real keyboard, prefer to type text on my backflip phone keyboard that Ipad ekeyboard and would like something to keep pad at right angle for viewing....laptop hinge to keyboard does that nicely...
plus Ipad is fun for gaming with accerelometer and touch screen that laptops don't have
come to think of it, if I could have a Ipad size/weight backflip type tablet with fold away physical keyboard, and accelerometer, and touch screen, and latest android software, would be very happy
Another reason I am happy with my IPAD is I now have to screens accessible in mobile situations (ie lap top and Ipad). I don't have to keep flipping back and forth.
This is a tremendous convenience.
All in all, it's $500 well spent.
As for Windows based platforms. I gave MS 12 years of patience and finally had enough. It will be a tall order to convince me to ever go back.
Nice post Reggie
If you guys think the IPad is special, you should try the HTC Android Evo. As a cell phone it challenges the IPad, so I can just imagine what the Android tables will do. I have all of this tech and use it daily, and I'm quiet impartial. If you haven't read the full review on my site, I suggest you do so - http://boombustblog.com/reggie-middleton/2010/06/21/there-is-another-paradigm-shift-coming-in-technology-and-media-apple-microsoft-and-google-better-know-its-winner-takes-all/
Screen is too big, it is supposed to be a phone after all, and needs to be used one handed. Guess my thumbs aren't that long...be like holding a Moleskine up to your head.
I like Google, I use some of their products, I'll stick with Apple (for now at least).
There's no such thing as the "screen is too big" in touch screen phone. You probably mean the phone is too big. The fact of the matter is that it is not that much larger than the IPhone and has much, much more capability. Look at this pic from the comparison study on my site:
+100
Mine also fills that gap between iPhone and Macbook. At first I thought that it was just a big iTouch, and then I realized that the touchscreen size difference made all the difference. I have become one of the previously mentioned adherents.
Apple has create its religious following because they offer great products. Microsoft has created many haters because their products crash / painfully slow / ugly ie, Vistas, the masses are switching and it has only just begun.
Apple Bitches.
Those companies and their fan bois are in for a shock. The government, it's masters and their respective paranoia and need to control will see to it.
Now, if the real black hats were publicly traded companies...
The whole e-reader thing is silly. Computers are good for what they're good for when it comes to searching text, links, referencing and things like that but reading just sucks on a screen and that's all there is to it (except ZH and anything Reggie posts on-line of course).
Plus, sometimes it's easier to find what you're looking for flipping through a physical book than it is utilizing all the wiz-bang functionality of digitized text although it's hard to articulate how or why.
The bottom line is that people will just read much less than they already do.
Those mini Asus type laptops are way cool though and are a much better bang for the buck than an Ipad.
The killer app is going to be something that signals what you're doing on your I-whatever to others in the immediate area. Human nature hasn't changed since the day before yesterday and you know it just kills the hipsters that people can't tell what book you're reading or what tunes you're listening to when you're on the train or in the cafe. Unique ring-tones come close but just not big enough.
I used to fall exactly inline with your opinion (it was mine - literally). It *is* silly.
I then had a conversation with a gentleman that travelled internationally five days a week (or more) fixing specialized time-sensitive manufacturing equipment. I say time sensitive in the sense that as soon as the machine stops producing the owners freak out.
He *LOVES* this kind of product. He (hypothetically) kills for it. Can't live with out on the road.
Consider for a moment you are intelligent, highly trained, and your product is installed in pretty much every major metro area in the world. Air travel is your life. Constant internet access is not. This type of product is a time killer; books, movies, music, whatever. You load up before you leave the US and your set for hours of TV shows, movies, whatever.
This is why I upgraded my opinion from trash to niche. I realized this could easily fit umpteen billion buss riders (even in the US after gas goes to the moon) among many others.
Its not the personal PC, but its not a junk piece of crap that I thought it was.
Cooter
I read on screen about 12 hours a day between, work and leisure, books on Kindle or Ipad or blogs, websites....but I guess it sucks....your right, let me blow the dust off those paper things on shelves all around my house that I haven't touched in several years and see if I like it better...not...plus, my ereader, the Ipad, also allows me to play great games, watch beautiful videos, enter text, comment on blogs....my paper books can't do that...
Remember, Apple is a religion. Don't ever underestimate religion and it's adherents.
As one of the folks mentioned eariler about spell checker being broken, one of my favorite authors bruce sterling once mentioned in an interview 20 years ago in a show called "Prisoners of Gravity" (Sci Fi themed talk show on TV Ontario). I don't have an exact quote but it goes something like this.
(he appearently had surgery of some kind before making the rationale how incredibly stupid nano-tech and bio med is) I can't see why anyone would get technology implanted in themselves, when a toaster or a computer breaks it's painful enough trying to get it repaired. Now imagine when the technology breaks, goes bad and it requires surgery to fix.
In that situation I would say let the early adopters jump on the idiot train and destroy themselves for fashion. Little girls have been killing themselves for years trying to fit into a size one dress while being biologically designed for a size 10 dress
Your source is humorous for sure and I tease my coworkers along the very lines. They tend to be more … imaginative.
Bio integration, to any meaningful degree, will be a Jetson’s future for many, many decades. This sort of thing falls in the perpetual motion bucket for me.
The previous post I made (scroll up), covers some of the intricacies, at least as I understand them. This is precisely why I said there will be major innovations after I was dead.
Cooter
Look to the technology inside to discern what is driving the paradigm shift..
Almost every device you listed in your review shares some technology:
- They are all either ARM or Wintel Atom based. Low power CPUs. ARM is an IP company.
- Their graphics, to a one (except Kindle of course), are supplied by a company out of the UK called Imagination Technologies. Virtually all of them use a variant of Imagination's SGX IP core.
- Coming wave to challenge them both - NVidia's Tegra SoC. Tegra Android phones and tablets threaten to eclipse the IPAD, evo, Archos, and all these guys. The 'high' end' mobile media war will be fought out along this front among others.
If you look to the common denominators, you can discern where to put some investment/efforts. All of these devices share the capabilities to render graphics and video based on some common standards - made possible by an industry consortium called the Khronos Group. Look there for up and coming companies who are helping to drive this media revolution. Other trends to know:- WebKit is the browser technology to look out for.
- WebGL may well supplant Flash as a 3D UI technology. Its based on OpenGL ES 2.0, which is the graphics language used by all of these devices. Khronos, which counts as members almost every company in this space except Microsoft, basically ran Microsoft off of the mobile UI, gaming, and graphics battlefield for these devices.
- A parallel computing language called OpenCL will find a home enabling smarter processing on the parallel capable chipsets that are now driving these devices. Leveraging this technology will be key for things like 3D search on mobiles, augmented reality, etc, etc. Its easy to get started.
In a future of peak oil, increasing power costs, intermittent power grids, etc, low power computing is going to be a must. We may need out computers to run for 2 days at a time on a battery charge because power will be that scarce and precious. Food for thought.ex VRWC
willanystand.blogspot.com
Linux runs rings around Windows in the computations/watt department. A busy MS server will draw ~30% more power (idle servers draw more or less, the same amount).
As the devices get smaller, power consumption will become more important. Linux is up to it now, MS has some catching up to do. MS will eventually adopt Unix.
Ubuntu is the distro to watch.
A non techie explaining tech to more non techies. Pretty funny.
The Apple crap is for mom and dad. They believe ads.
Nearly all real techies are or will be running some version of Aderoid, it's Linux folks, and looking at devices that are unlocked.
Apple has already shot it's self and M$ is stumbling around trying to squeeze a pig into a cocktail dress.
Google wins.
It is not now, and never will be, about incrementally better technology. The technology either has to be orders of magnitude better, and attainably so for the 80 in 80/20, or it is not going to be a hit product.
For the crowd who cares about unlocking, tethering, computing, and getting best bang for buck in a single handset, HTC and Windows/Linux is better. For the other 90+% of the world who need an all-in-one solution, and who will never hack their phone in any case, the iPhone provides a much more intuitive interface. It does what they want, even if what they want is not very difficult to provide. It also does so with a friendly interface, not one which looks like a handset version of what they have on their PC at work, or the one non-users hunt and peck on at home.
And if you are so inclined, the iPhone and iPad can be hacked/tethered/etc to provide a much more complete experience than the ads will ever show. It is just a different way of getting there than the Windows Mobile or Linux/Android route.
I like ZH because its Fins explaining Fins to Non-Fins, but I digress.
Apple has a solid product, an enthusiastic following, and a solid bottom line. While the tech side can argue engy fundamentals, the business side has to accept they got the mojo right now. Steve Jobs has it together and is on top of his game. Riding the bull is just that, but Apples is on top right now. Just have to give them credit. Cowboys get throwed all the time.
Techies, by biological distribution, comprise a fraction of the population. I could labor to make my point, but I will simply cite the existence of bankers despite known history/math. It is not a business model to claim victory via a perceived technologically superior platform.
>>Google wins.
You sir, are very correct on this point. They are the next major monopoly in the tech space and will behave just like all the previous ones, despite their fans. I would be thrilled to be wrong on this point, as I have some faith in possible futures.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive//6.01/hillis.html?person=danny_hillis...
Cooter
Google is afraid as they should be. iAd just took away 30% of the mobile ad space. Without advertising what is google? Nothing I am afraid. Even its search results are getting weaker.
I am big time tech... and sorry PC'ers, Apple is just now starting to eat Google and MS lunch. And its getting hungry.
iOS4 is a big deal keeping all us developers committed to Apple.
I take exception.
Captain - there be techies here! Just ones who find the collapse of our economic system an interesting study.
ex VRWC
I'd take you seriously if you could spell "Android"...
Isn't it Adenoid?
Spell checker is broke. ;)
:)
Bet your money on Google. Android OS will beat out Apple in the end. Apple's mistake on Flash is a killer. Watch what happens when next gen TVs come out with Android. Have you seen new Android 2.2 OS? Kicks butt and it is open source... get it? Google has it sights on dominating phones and TVs and has the free software to boot.
Droids can tether in the US giving other devices 3G and 4G capability. A tethered Droid can power a local wifi for you and your friends.
Google is the next Microsoft with Apple always innovating while Google snatches the market. Iphones came out of the chute 1st but Droid will finish where it counts.
I am an old Apple guy... hopefully they will never go away but keep an eye on Google. It's all baked into the cake my friends.
From a developers perspective... Android is a mess. No one is making money "selling" apps on the platform and to develop means to develop to the lowest common denominator.
Google has invented shit. Period. They are very much like Microsoft really. And Apple just keeps inventing, perfecting and improving. Apple is one of the last Great American Companies.
not everyone cares about open source anymore.. they did when Microsoft shitted on everyone but Apple puts people into a cage that is enjoyable for the majority of its users.
Also, open source projects have a way of not playing nice with other apps/devices since it is a wide open environment. There are pros and cons for everything and right now Apple is minting money and developers follow the money.
Eventually there will be a backlash.. but Apple is still on the upward slope. Microsoft won the early wars since they got into the workforce and people bought them for home since they were familiar and wanted Word/Excel to work in both places. Now Apple has everyone hooked on the iPhone plus all the college students using Macs .. this is paying off and now we are seeing more and more workers demand Mac as their work machine. The OS X did great mimicing Unix while Windows was screwing itself with Vista
I'll leave it at that.. most of you already see what's around you
Open source is an option, however most executives never quanitify this option. Any tech platform has a total cost of ownership and qualities that may or may not be attractive to their business. I cited this in a previous post above.
For example, labor liquidity can be HUGE for some businesses and neglible for others. Just got over to www.indeed.com ( http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=windows%2C+linux&l= ). The simple reality is that the more folks in the labor pool, the easier it is to hire and often times the lower the cost of the hire.
My point is that both have a role and the right decision is born by the leadership of a company to make the right call for their situation. The right call goes to the bottom line and the wrong call borrows from it.
One size does not fit all.
Cooter
Don't underestimate msft. They probably have the best tech, but are hampered by big company-itis. There infrastructure is as enviable as Google if not more. There is not a company mentioned above that does not have to give msft a cut every time they sell a device. Think active sync license fees, OS and office app licenses, etc.
Then there is the chance msft will stop messing up its execution. Time will tell, and it will be a lot less time than many think.
All 3 are powerhouse and the competition will benefit users immensely.
MS will likely continue making money, just as IBM has, but I don't see it being the OS of mobile computing, that seems to go to Google....
Then there is the chance msft will stop messing up its execution. Time will tell, and it will be a lot less time than many think.
This is not going to happen until and unless the whole "Senior Leadership Team" is replaced. They can't lead the way out of a wet paper bag, and the whole company is poisoned by the insane review process that they have forced down the throats of the rest of the company. This causes political backstabbing to be the main way to success, with all the attendant evils that brings.
Micorsoft is screwed.
Their business model was not innovation, it was "hard nose" business. That's how they got on top and stayed on top.
IBM used to lease mainframes to many, many businesses who would never be able to migrate to a new platform. That was until some CEO comes along and wants to pad their numbers for a few quarters by selling the hardware outright. IBM is focused on consulting services now with hardware as a side dish and it used to be the other way around.
OS and Office are THE cash cows of microsoft where everything else is a rounding error. Both of these products are FEATURE COMPLETE for years now. What OS feature did you really need for your home computer past windows XP? What feature of office did you really need past office 2000? Yet each time customers pay a full price. Is it rational to assume customers will re-pay for the same product to perpetuity?
They will end up just like IBM, a commodity. They will still make money, but they are already border-line irrelavent on the major happenings anymore. And once you are no longer premium, or dont have monopoly leverage, look out below!
The train has left the station now and they dont have the internal culture to keep up.
Cooter
Disclosure: I am a professional .NET developer who runs a large commercial website.
This I agree with, the rest I don't. MSFT's cash cow, Office offers significant leverage. The tech to move Office suite computing totally to the cloud existed since 1995 (I had a start up called NuoMedia that actually did this, but it was before its time). If you could have full control over the full fidelity office apps that you used, would you choose ecosystem that allowed the use of such provided it was at least on par with the competition? If MSFT doesn't mess up Office 2010, and the WM7 OS is lightweight enough, they are still in the ball game. They already have the best media OS (Zune HD), and a handy user interface. No one even comes close to matching or even modifying the files of thier ubiquitous office suite.
MSFT's problem is their culture lost its fire. They successfully survived two paradigm shifts and came out on top. No tech company has accomplished this, so a third is even less likely - but not impossible.
Reggie, before I rant a bit, let me say up front that you have provided far more knowledge to me than I have given to the ZH community as a whole. This is just my world view right now and a chance to give back a little, so take it at face value.
As they say in Texas, I dont have a dog in this hunt.
Let me approach this from a very basic set of circumstances I experienced in actual employment positions and let me draw some conclusions. Before I share this anecdote, let me make the following affirmation; most CEOs today grew up on roller skates. This will matter, but will make sense after I ramble a bit.
I was on a contract to do "project management" at a large telecom company after 9/11. Work was thin and you took what you could get. I was responsible for producing, via a data aggregation application, an excel spreadsheet which was sent up the food chain. In essence, we delivered an accurate spreadsheet on projects, timelines, and issues, and we get paid. It was that simple.
Here is the business observation. We had over 100 people on a single office floor in a building that did phone calls all day long, pumping out status data on literally hundreds and hundreds of projects. Each person cost the company over 1.5k dollars in license fees, hardware, phone support, network, and what not. I was close the guy in the server room, who did all the network, telecom, desktop support, upgrades, you name it, so the dollar cost to the business is solid. MS was easily sucking up 500 bucks of that, or 30% of operational costs. This excludes office space rent and salary.
Thirty percent!
Observation: if the CEO grew up on roller skates, he likely still dictates to his secretary and wants an intermediary (e.g. third parties such as Microsoft or contracting firms) to assume the risk of his incompetence/ignorance. If things go south, you just blame the middle man and try again. However, if the CEO didn’t grow up on roller-skates, he would *evaluate* any alternative that would present the *opportunity* to cut costs by 30% at 1.5k a pop across 100 to 150 people at peak. That’s bonus material.
That is in essence what competent CEOs do (other than rape customers/tax payers if those activities qualify as competance). If I am wrong, please correct me.
These “roller-skate” CEOs, dare I coin a phrase, are on their way out and will be replaced by individuals that grew up with Ataris, PCs, and modern home computing. The culture shift, in my mind, will be enormous. This is simply because many, many business models in the IT space require a business counterpart, with cashflow (everyone has this these days right?), that is willing to be the patsy. The MS Office and OS models I cited above are exactly this in *some* cases.
Before I conclude allow me a second anecdote.
I worked for an auto insurance company and was tasked with integrating their web rating interface, used by third party independent insurance businesses, with a mainframe. The project failed twice before I was hired and I wasn’t told about the project until after I started (I was qualified – but welcome to the frying pan). Management was in a panic and brought in a contracting vendor to provide a solution as a hedge.
Translation: management didn’t want to get fired and needed someone else in the middle to blame their incompetence on because they had no clue what they were doing. I implemented a basic solution in *two weeks*, kicking the vendor out the door (they would have made my life hell – my only motivation), saving the company at LEAST six figures over a span of a few months and likely much more in the long haul. Why? Because management didn’t understand the fundamentals of how tech applied to their business.
Aside: if you are a developer, IBM had a .NET data provider to connect from any windows system to their mainframe. A stored proc could actually shell out and execute any program on the mainframe. It took two weeks because I had to write a reflection based API to allow the mainframe to accept/return a copybook (COBOL data structure) with all my rating data. Simply stated, I passed a 100k plus copy book data struc over the wire, which fed directly into the rating program, which returned the same structure with rating data.
There was a .NET data provider from IBM! Hello! This, right here, proves incompetence.
This kind of crap will change in IT, which is precisely why I look at new opportunities. Fat is gonna get cut and with it goes the cushy salaries/benefits unless you are on the top.
Think it can’t happen? Consider the following hypothetical. A young CEO steps up at a major non-tech fortune 500 company. Eager to cut costs, s/he evaluates a significant shift within the company to cut infrastructure costs; the sacred MS OS/Office cow. Think Google wont sell a $50 dollar seat for web based excel, word, mail, etc under a registered domain? Its heresy when it happens, everyone says the fool is crazy, but they keep the scope focused, scale over time, and deliver. The cat is officially out of the bag and it’s a cost cutting bonanza like outsourcing was. Bonuses all around!
When you factor in the costs of doing back ups, redundancy, and many of the other infrastructure obligations that suck up serious cash, a company that is purely a consumer of IT will save TONS of money at the expense of MS.
And when they start to do this, and it will happen, with it goes MS’s perpetual upgrade cycle and their cash flow.
IBM adjusted and so will Microsoft. And for companies that require a lot of custom integration to provide value they will remain a partner. But in the context of the monopolies cited, stick a fork in them as they are done.
Cooter
I hear ya' and agree with you, but you're forgetting one very thing. The MSFT Office suite is too rich and complex (it was bloated, but has slimmed down a lot) to be copied easily by Google, or anyone else. That and it is the de facto form of business communication. MSFT will get hit margin wise, but by cannabilizing their own product, not by a third party doing it. They are waitiing to the last moment to canabilize said margins, but they know the writing is on the wall. A web-based thin client that runs all office apps in near full fidelity from cell phones, tables and PCs through the cloud is something that Apple and Google simply cannot match now, and will not be able to match in the very near future. Google is trying very hard with Google Docs, rewritining their entire word processer and spreadhseet in pure javascript (quite a feat), but it still pales to MS Office. The only reason Apple is still alive now is because MSFT/Gates agreed to continue writing MS Office apps for their platform.
MSFT will be broken once thier stranglehold on the workforce is released, but they will innovate before then. The compeition will force it.
I know this space because my start up, NuoMedia (way back in 1995) was a web-based office suite with storage in the cloud.
Microsoft started dying after Windows for Workgroups. XP was their last bounce-back.
Everything since has been dire.
They are past saving.
Windows Mobile is the most useless operating system ever marketed.
Who made my buy this phone?
They only exist now because of their monopoly. Google is now going to wipe them out.
The Cloud for storage? Git outta here. Storage is cheap.