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Cheap Solid State Computers Could Kill Microsoft
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon May 30, 2005 05:23 AM
from the interesting-but-frothy dept.
from the interesting-but-frothy dept.
Eh-Wire writes "This is an interesting point made by a Clayton Hallmark on IndyMedia out of Argentina. He predicts that cheap Asian computing appliances with an Open Source Operating System on a chip will be the ultimate MS killer. References to the US$220 Mobilis out of India suggest the begining of newer, more powerful, and cheaper things to come. Mr. Hallmark also points to the success of the Wal-Mart cheap PC as proof the end is near for proprietory software. Overall an in interesting and thought provoking read."
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Not that likely... (Score:5, Insightful)
The likes of Atari ST / Amiga /
M$ is not going to be "killed" any time soon - the most realistic chance there is, is that they will eventually be (financially) ground down far enough for them to no longer be able to react quickly enough to save their own hide. But that is most likely still quite a few years away - and it depends on there being enough serious outside threats.
Also, it would be more important to engage them on more fronts - if they are only in a skirmish with google over the search engine, their income will more than pay for that. If there were more (and different) fresh new competitors to emerge in different markets where M$ is a player (or sees that the market is too important for them to neglect), that could hurt them - but a single issue (the early browser wars; search engines now; cheaper computing platforms in the future) most likely won't be enough.
(And - no - the "new browser wars" I won't even count as a secondary issue - M$ already has the expertise to deal with that - it will cost them money, but it isn't something new they have to worry about - they need to be challenged on new frontiers - just look how long it took for them to catch up with netscape in the first place; and I would be prepared to bet that google is going to last for a few years yet, before M$ can kill them off - it will still be a while since M$ still need to build up a good deal more expertise in this market.
Re:Not that likely... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, MS is immortal. Like the British Empire, when you're that rich and powerful nothing can change it.
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Re:Not that likely... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Not that likely... (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you "throw money" at a cheap computer that doesn't run Windows?
Make a cheap computer that DOES run Windows?
How? Go back to DOS?
Get serious. MS can't compete against "free". That's what Bill said when he took down Netscape and it's just as true for him as it was for Netscape.
Besides, nobody is saying MS is going to go down next year. It could be ten years before they're ground down enough to be in financial trouble.
But it will happen. Without a major turnaround in thinking in Redmond, it WILL happen - and a major turnaround in thinking is not possible as long as Gates is breathing and Ballmer is his lapdog.
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Re:Not that likely... (Score:4, Insightful)
But back in reality, their shareholders wouldn't let them run a month without making a single dime without a clear explanation of how they're going to change that RIGHT NOW.
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Re:Not that likely... (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly no money in and the Microsoft share price value would plummet. All those nice shareholders would turn nasty and demand that Microsoft hand over that big 'ol pile of cash now! Unless the remaining members of the company with large shareholdings, such as Gates etc, keep shareprice up by buying back outstanding shares at inflated prices. Either way that nice big "war chest" will be nothing in no time.
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Re:Not that likely... (Score:5, Informative)
OK, I'm not sure how many times I'm going to have to hear this
First, the one-time bulk dividend you are refering to was approx 32 billion not 37 (not really important). Anyway, it will most likely actually be higher than that as that dividend was actually part of a three piece four year plan. Besides the one-time bulk divedend, MS also planned a stock buy-back and an additional raise in normal dividends over a four year period based on performance. This three part plan could equal as much as 75 billion over four years. Now I won't go over the calculations AGAIN, but basically with crazy assumptions to the low side, at the end of the four years MS will still have at least 30 billion in cash (more realistic numbers would have that number much closer to 40 billion).
OK, besides the numbers its important to understand WHY this is being done. No, its not because anyone is scared
Now many will say "how can having that much cash not be good?". And that is a very fair question, and the fact that it isn't certainly can seem counter-intuitive on its face. However, when we all talk about the job of a corporation is to make money, we are talking mainly about making money for its shareholders (not to make the corporation itself rich). Yes, you do need to have some cash on hand (war-chest) and what that amount is, is not easy to calculate. It will depend on industry, company outlook, short and long term plans, etc, etc, etc. Coming up with a number for this is very complicated, but every company should have a target cash-on-hand number (thats what CFOs are for). Again, this number is not easy to calculate, but anyone looking at financials and understanding MS knew they had TOO MUCH cash. They are making money faster then they can spend it and unless they were planning the purcahse of IBM or something, it was just getting rediculous. The job of the corporation is to make money for shareholders and keep itself happy, but historically MS has just horded all of its cash. As a shareholder, I'm going to get a bit miffed if they already have more cash then they can resonably spend and just keep adding 10 billion a year to thier cash position instead of paying that out to shareholders.
While you think this was done out of fear, it really points in the opposite direction. When a company sees tough times ahead, they will try to raise thier cash reserves to be able to weather whatever is ahead. The tech industry has traditionally horded cash, because they are young want to be VERY safe (and may not have a "traditional" CFO). This payout if anything shows they are maturing as a company and feel VERY safe. As a rule (of course depending on other factors) you want to hold just enough cash to pay expenses and a nice "war-chest" just in case. In the case of MS, that war-chest was getting rediculous to the point of many seeing it as plain irresponsible. Cash like most other things isn't always more == better.
A very basic explaination [investopedia.com] about corporations cash. If you want to do more reading on this just google for "too much cash in reserves" and you can find plenty of discussion on this.
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Re:Not that likely... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:History is against Microsoft this time (Score:5, Insightful)
??? Microsoft never produced a free OS, the IBM PC was not an open source hardware platform. The only area where open standards played a role was that the manufacturers of PC 'clones' refused to support the proprietary closed microchannel architecture and OS/2 that IBM was trying to introduce to monopolize the market.
Open standards are not open source.
Like most slashdot stories on this topic the article is not thought provoking in the slightest, it is simply a repetition of the same prejudices that have been repeated ad-nauseam without any thought at all.
Falling hardware prices have been an issue for years, Dell were selling a full spec PC with LCD monitor for $400 six months ago. Microsoft themselves sell their X-Box for around $200. It isn't very long since the cheapest usefull PC cost over $2000.
The masses go off and pay $50 for one computer game. There is no way that Tomb Raider or EverQuest have even one percent of the intellectual effort of Windows put into them. Open Source games are practically non existent, people are still working on a rip off of Civ 3.
Linux is nowhere near providing a mass market user experience and most people working on Linux have absolutely no interest in making it mass market. What some of them want to do is to make the mass market realise how superior the C shell is to a GUI interface but most of the serious developers understand that they are producing something for techies.
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Must be a parallel universe you live in (Score:5, Insightful)
Gary Kildall must be spinning in his grave right now. CP/M was a PROPRIETARY operating system by Digital Research. Maybe there is an open or public domain incarnation today, but it was very much proprietary when DR still extisted. The STANDARDS were open in that the BDOS calls were pubically available, and CP/M variants ran on multiple platforms (8080, 8085, Z80, 8086, 68000) and CP/M machines were usually open architecture S100 machines. You could definitely not obtain a copy of CP/M legally for free nor could you see the source code without a special agreement and extra cost.
The BIOS for the IBM PC was also open
ummm...no it wasn't. Even the BIOS calls weren't 100% fully published. Phoenix and Compaq developed a compatible BIOS against the wished of IBM (it was the one and only part of the original PC that wasn't an off-the-shelf component in a design a small group of hoppyists could easily replicate). The way it went was like this: a group of people disassembled the IBM bios and wrote a detailed specification of all the entry and exit points of all the calls and what effect they had on the system. Then a separate group of developers at different company (Phoenix) who had sworn a legal oath that they had never examined an IBM PC used that specification to create the first IBM compatible BIOS.
It wasn't really Microsoft or IBM that created the advantage of which you speak at all--they merely took good advantage of "open architecture" and the co-operative efforts of others. When it comes to the creation of the industry, others did all the work and IBM and MS used their marketing savvy to take maximum advantage and profit (the ones who did the work were not marketers obviously).
When IBM finally realised that a little firmware was not enough to keep a lock on the market it was too late--they no longer steered the direction of that market. The MCA bus was technically superior to EISA, but it was closed and incompatible and IBMs share of the market they created was less than 50% or at least fast heading that way.
Don't confuse open architecture hardware platforms with Free/open software--they both have an advantage in that information is more free to move about, however control oof the design and direction of the former is still firmly in the grip of a select few hardware vendors: Intel controls the bus and motherboard dimensions, Intel and AMD the CPU and chipset, ATI and NVidia video and so on.
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Not quite... (was: Re:Not that likely...) (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ahem... (Score:4, Funny)
(switches screens on Linux system)
Re:Ahem... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Ahem... (Score:5, Funny)
So any office document will be in one of OOo's format, any tool will be based on the expected contents of
When they finally notice that something is wrong, some get enlightened (others additionnally require some vigourous whacking).
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Mobiles, Mobiles! (Score:5, Insightful)
If we analyze the submission, the main reasons why people would switch to solid state devices would be
1. Price
2. You don't need a PC to send mails and make documents
3. Compactness and looks better
4. Easier to use
But if these are the factors, wouldn't mobile devices be way way easier than these computing appliances? And guess what, MS has an even better chance at capturing the market than anything else with XBox 360, which is now a multimedia + entertainment + communication
The reasons why people would use PCs would be
1. Powerful machine (For games, multimedia, programming etc etc)
2. Developers, Power users
3. Upgradeability
4. and most importantly, they prefer a PC for some reason.
By the way, about the $220 Mobilis, I don't see it as any different from the Simputer (which was yet another Slashdot favorite, and also from India) but failed to make any waves. IAAI, and I have not seen a Simputer, except at a trade show.
solid state? (Score:5, Funny)
Endless Opportunities (Score:4, Funny)
Finally a home computer after 20 years! (Score:4, Interesting)
So why should the mass market, the home users, use systems designed solely for accountants and managers that were retrofitted for home use? What we need is a computer that have been desiged from ground up for home use with hardware closely designed with software. In short a mass market Apple. Linux could be and has been shown to be the operating system for this dream as it is inexpensive, well supported and customzable as it has been shown in cunsumer products as some DVD players and TiVO style boxes.
Hope we have real home computers comming back soon, has been a while.
Microsoft s going to kill Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
woohoo .. thats 30.000 laptops for *me* (Score:5, Funny)
That's 200.000 billion. With about 1 billion people currently living in China, that's 200.000 laptops each. Allowing for you know, like, supply and demand to kick in, that will level out to about 30.000 laptops to each of 6 billion people on earth.
Now, I can't decide: should the joke be about the inherent need of IPv6 or (ooh) a beowolf cluster of these? Sweeeet
And who will shell out the $20 million billion these things will cost?
Ah, the joy of an extra factor 10^6 here and there
Correction -- the end is near for *all* software (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, a bit of hyperbole here, but not by far. If you cherry-pick the killer apps, and market the devices properly, only geeks will care about the fact that the underlying machine is a general-purpose computer.
If these consumer devices have an office suite, web browser and media player, most users aren't going to stray from those applications. The afformentioned apps are all commoditized by OS/FS to some degree. Once they are fully commoditized, nobody will care about the operating system or the applications, as long as the *data* can be exchanged with all other systems.
This is neither bad nor good for OS/FS. It's bad for people who develop the software because it means their job is done and they need to find a new one. Only maintenance programmers will be needed, and fewer and fewer of them.
In the end, it will be like arguments over FM vs. AM and what kind of amplifier circuit your radio uses. All those questions are answered, and you don't see too many ads for "analog radio engineer" do you? In other words, all the battles over software that seem so important now will be nothing more than academic when theh software is fully commoditized. Whether or not its proprietary won't matter, because software will all be the same anyway.
Re:Hmmm. kill microsoft? or help them? (Score:5, Informative)
It's a nifty technology which allows a chip to be written to as well as read from, but remain persistant in the manner of a ROM. Very few so-called ROMs these days are actualy read-only -- you just write to them occasionaly, and read from them often.
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Re:oh, please (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like the fall of the Roman Empire (or anything else in history), everyone who predicted it was wrong, until the time it happened.
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Re:oh, please (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Yipe! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't hate Microsoft. Why would I? It makes little sense to hate a company that makes a product that I prefer not to use. I see lots of new cars that I think are very ugly on the road every day but do I hate the people who make them? Do I go around wishing that some other car company will put them out of business, so that they never take another breath again? (and to hell with all the people they employ that make a decent living?)
Does anyone on the "I hate Microsoft" rant even do anything about it? I see a major lack of innovation. Gnome and KDE have clearly copied Windows in many areas, but somehow made it more difficult for the average user to use. The best alternative is OS X- who we should hate as well, right? Big company, proprietary ideas... pretty much all the components of pure evil, right?
I've never visited Apple's headquarters, but I doubt their engineers sit around day after day with their lips stuck out, complaining about how they hate Microsoft. I doubt the are dreaming all day long about the next thing that might come along to put Microsoft out of business, throw their asses out on the street- hoping maybe Firefox or Open Office or WalMart PC's will "take care of the job." Remember- these are the guys that put out quality, annual OS releases. If you believe that there can be something better- create it or find something else to use.
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