Satya Nadella: 'We Clearly Missed the Mobile Phone' (mashable.com) 245
At the Wall Street Journal's WSJD Live conference, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admitted that Microsoft has largely failed in making a dent in the mobile hardware business. Nadella, who took over the command of Microsoft from Steve Ballmer in February 2014, however added that the company is now focused on doing well in new categories and also building new categories. He said:We clearly missed the mobile phone, there's no question. Our goal now is to make sure we grow new categories. We have devices which are phones today but the place where we are focused on, given where the market is, is what is the unique thing that our phone can do. We have a phone that in fact can replace your PC, the same way we have a tablet that can replace your laptop. Those are the categories that we want to go create. If anything, the lesson learned for us, was thinking of PC as the hub for all things for all time to come. It was perhaps one for the bigger mistakes we made.
First Post (Score:5, Funny)
Sent from my Windows phone.
Re: First Post (Score:5, Funny)
Liar! No one has a Windows Phone!
Re:First Post (Score:5, Interesting)
There'sno chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60 percent or 70 percent or 80 percent of them, than I would to have 2 percent or 3 percent, which is what Apple might get,". Steve ballmer in a 2007 interview with USA Today.
Microsoft didn't even see it coming.
Re:First Post (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft didn't even see it coming.
Microsoft is a lot like Wile E. Coyote. We can see that the anvil is going to land squarely on them, but they never seem to be able to look far enough into the future to see it themselves.
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Microsoft didn't even see it coming.
Microsoft is a lot like Wile E. Coyote. We can see that the anvil is going to land squarely on them, but they never seem to be able to look far enough into the future to see it themselves.
You forgot the part about them over-paying for the anvil in the first place...
and then paying extra for the expedited shipping option.
When it comes to cartoon anvils, everyone knows expedited shipping means "will fall from sky at some point".
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Seems to me like understanding your own mistakes is a pretty good step towards rectifying them.
MSFT under Ballmer was late or completely missed important trends like mobile and search. Ballmer focused on monetizing existing revenue sources, not building new ones. But since then, I think MSFT's hardware strategy has been good. I REALLY like the idea of creating hardware that eliminates the need for other hardware. This, as opposed to Apple's strategy of "now we built an iPad / iWatch, you need that too!". I
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More to the point, Microsoft never sticks to a product line long enough to warrant investment in it.
True.
Microsoft had the leading smartphone OS before it was called a smartphone (remember PocketPC's ?), before RIM's blackberry became the de-facto business device.
False. PocketPC was a desktop clone for small device form factors that sucked so bad it was hilarious. Sure if you wanted Win95/NT4 on a phone it'd have been great...but then, you had to use a stylus to do anything as that was your mouse, and it required a full keyboard. Could it be considered a Smart Phone? Yes, but it absolutely sucked and never really had a very big market share - no where near majority by any means.
Palm and then RIM won b/c they actually did stuff the user cared about in easy to
MS commitment to projects (Score:2)
Microsoft's non-commitment to it's hardware and software keeps tarnishing the brand. If they are not willing to commit
There's one more - the Windows NT on RISC platform. It was actually a pretty promising concept, and had Microsoft executed on it properly, we would probably still have Silicon Graphics and DEC workstations running today Windows 7 (or 8 or 10). And there wouldn't have been an Intel monopoly either - there would have been enough semiconductor fabs and vendors willing to make MIPS and Alpha chips for the platform, so that we'd have had a healthy choice of workstations from which to choose.
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There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.
Lol. Apple sells more phones in a slow week than Microsoft was able to sell in any 2 quarters.
Ballmer must wince every time he sees that quote. :)
Re:First Post (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft didn't 'miss' the iPhone - since their basic business model had always been to sit back and copy whatever big new thing Apple (or anybody else, for that matter) came up with - and count on tie-ins to the desktop to make their copy succeed. What they missed was Android, which swooped in and stole the OEM market from them. By the time they were ready to move the app barrier to entry was too big. That said, Blackberry missed Android too - they failed from a leadership position.
They failed with their iPod clone too - but for a different reason. iPods were fairly cheap, and they tied your music collection to the Apple ecosystem. And iPods worked with Windows as well as anything else - i.e., they were cheap enough and limited enough in functionality that MS couldn't leverage Windows to out-compete Apple.
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...and by the way, the Continuum thing may also be too late to market. Once Android has the same desktop dockability, the only advantage of Continuum will be the ability to run legacy Windows apps. Not a small advantage, that - but the keyword is legacy. The market for people that want a pricey phone with crappy phone apps so they can dock it to use legacy X86 Windows apps is pretty small. And once most of those legacy Windows apps get Android - or web - replacements, that market is better served by jus
Microsoft failed at legacy, too (Score:2)
But that's the thing, Microsoft's solution doesn't even do that; because their Windows Phone (now Windows 10 Mobile) devices run on ARM, they can't run legacy x86 Windows apps, and people can
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I remember having a conversation with a tech about my Windows CE phone, explaining that I should be able to download and install apps directly instead of connecting up my PC and syncing to do it.
He argued that "Nobody wants to do that."
I replied, "I do."
Microsoft had the market share, but they were too interesting in tying the phone to their Windows monopoly to give users what they wanted. Apple did this too, until everyone told them they needed apps on the phone.
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In some way it's still true. 60-70% of android is a bigger market than all of the iphone. What they missed is that there would be other competitors jumping into the market so soon.
Which they could have foreseen - both iphone and android started life outside of Apple and Google, the development of smarter things than java phones or feature phones was ongoing if you knew where to look.
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Yeah: like pushing their crap onto captive markets (Score:2, Insightful)
Making the deal with the bosses to force the sheep to follow along (schools here in Germany are a good example).
That's what Microsoft was always good at. Wine and dine the decision makers. The ones who, lastly, don't have to put up with their crap, since it's their secretary who does it for them.
Re: Yeah: like pushing their crap onto captive mar (Score:2)
Microsoft had the chance to make a decent phone with Windows Phone 6.1, but they nlew it because they had a shitty api and a bad build system for the OS creating headache for many vendors.
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The Turks seem to do pretty well after the Armenian genocide, they're ready to start another one on the Kurds. The Germans, on the other hand, are now so full of guilt that they are infesting Europe with muslim emigrants to be able to feel dood. "Gutmench" (good human in German) has become an insult in the rest of Europe.
Really? (Score:2)
"the lesson learned for us, was thinking of PC as the hub for all things for all time to come. It was perhaps one for the bigger mistakes we made."
Apparently, according to IBM, they should give up and make Macs instead.
No you don't (Score:5, Insightful)
No. You don't. Because that isn't possible to do. The fact that this guy even said that means he is clueless about mobile. He needs to be replaced.
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You sound exactly like the guys who said nobody would buy a phone that had a software keyboard.
Don't worry, I'll get off your lawn.
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All of those are bad examples, because the latter form factor is better in every way except its ability to fit hardware inside. If you could make a laptop that contained the same hardware as a desktop, for the same price, then it would obviously be better. A decade ago, laptop sales outpaced desktop sales and so the economies of scale started to tilt things in favour of the laptop. As desktops become increasingly niche, the prices will keep going up and a lot of desktops now are just laptops without the
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There are a lot of things where you can open up the laptop and start working immediately, but the phone will need connecting to an external monitor and keyboard before it's equally useful. Even putting a picoprojector in the phone won't entirely solve that, as you often don't have a useable projection space.
For you, sure. For me, yes. But for many consumers, no. My wife doesn't use her work laptop at home for anything other than actually working at home. She gave her iPad to one of our daughters. And she lives, outside of work, on an iPhone. Doesn't want a laptop. Doesn't care about a laptop. No, laptops will never 100% replace desktops. Desktops will never 100% replace workstations. Workstations will never 100% replace servers. Servers will never 100% replace mainframes (well... maybe they will). But for the
Re: No you don't (Score:2)
Anyone born in the 20th century knows the grandparent is idiotic as of course I don't see green screen dumb terminals hooked to a massive mainframe for basic word processing.
Yes offices did this as mainframes were real systems. Not toys for serious WordPerfect use.
Opterons? Huh. IBM 370 mainframes didnt run these and modern mainframes don't run on Xeons or opterons either.
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How many mainstream PCs do you know of running Xeon or Opteron CPUs? How many have more than eight physical CPUs in them? How many have more than 32GB of RAM? How many have Tesla, Quadro or Titan X GPUs in them?
That's what I thought.
How many mainstream PC users do you know of needing Xeon or Opteron CPUs? Or more than eight physical CPUs in this? Or more than 32GB of RAM? Or Tesla, Quadro or Titan X GPUs in them? That's what *I* thought.
Seriously, nobody said high end workstations and servers should go away. Just that for most consumers and business users, a laptop on the desk with an external monitor is pretty much covering their needs.
Same way nobody said DSLRs and medium format cameras will ever go away. But the iPhone or Andr
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There are plenty of people who can do everything that they do with a PC (i.e. watch YouTube, post on Facebook and play games) on a phone.
Most people don't use their PC's for anything more than mass media consumption; a phone or tablet could be a complete replacement for all their needs.
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The point that MS was *trying* to make was that they could give a phone that when docked becomes a viable PC (shame they made it based on ARM, which nullifies that promise of value, even in theory).
MS has a challenge that on the one hand they need to move beyond leveraging their near monopoly on desktop to get success. The problem is they haven't produced something that is new and compelling on its own merits in over a decade. They keep breaking and fixing Windows, keep milking the cash cow that is Office
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No. You don't. Because that isn't possible to do. The fact that this guy even said that means he is clueless about mobile. He needs to be replaced.
Ah our resident doofus. If he said he had a PC to replace your phone, obviously he'd be clueless. A phone to replace your PC? Why not, for most people their phone now has way more power than the PC had ten years ago, it just has bigger input/output devices. Microsoft could make a x86 phone with a HDMI/DisplayPort/USB dock (or just an USB-C cable hookup) and it'd make a perfectly satisfactory PC for most people. His problem will be that nobody wants the phone side of it, they want their iApps or Google Play-
Depends on what you do (Score:3)
No. You don't. Because that isn't possible to do.
That depends entirely on what you plan to do with it. There absolutely are some people who can replace a PC with a smartphone or a tablet because the smartphone/tablet competently does everything they did with the PC. While it isn't true for me personally I have family members that have ditched the PC completely because their tablet does everything they needed from a PC and it's easier to use for them. Even for me a smartphone has replaced a lot of what I used to do primarily on a PC.
The fact that this guy even said that means he is clueless about mobile. He needs to be replaced.
"Clueless"? Ummm...
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Well, in principle it's not so far fetched. In terms of compute power, most people have needs that can be met. The PC difference is human factors around input/output. So their 'continuum' concept is not too terrible in *theory*.
In practice, 'modern' applications are nearly non-existant, making the phone-friendly applications exteremely limited. Where they do exist, they tend to have a worse interface than their Android/iOS equivalents (e.g. netflix's modern app is terrible). 99% of my Windows 10 PC usa
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No. You don't. Because that isn't possible to do.
Sure it is. Watch this video -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
No, I don't work for HP. No, I don't work for Microsoft. I just think it's a cool phone.
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"We have a phone that in fact can replace your PC"
No. You don't. Because that isn't possible to do. The fact that this guy even said that means he is clueless about mobile. He needs to be replaced.
For once, I agree wholeheartedly. I don't think a phone, regardless of how capable, will be replacing a desktop PC anytime soon. Maybe someday, but not for some time to come. And the "tablet that can replace your laptop" is in the same category. Maybe someday...but not today, and certainly not tomorrow.
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I have 5 sons only one of them owns a PC and he is a software developer the other 4 don't work in any tech field and have game consoles xbox1, PS4, and android phones and aside from gaming their cell phones do everything they would do on a PC.
Replacing the PC for regular users is already happening.
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aside from gaming their cell phones do everything they would do on a PC.
So in other words, they haven't actually replaced their PC with their phone. And your other son, the one who has a real job, he does use a PC.
Thanks for clarifying that and for making my point.
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Sorry, the most successful is a contractor but doesn't own a PC except for what the business owns and he has secretary to use it for him. Good try, making it sound like everyone has to own a PC to have a real job. In my family it's only those over 35 that own PCs even if they use one at work.
Now you could say the gaming console and cell phone have replaced the PC but I have nieces that don't game and do everything they would normally do on a PC on their cellphone alone.
You will have to face it other than bu
Re: No you don't (Score:2)
The point is 10years ago all sons would have pcs
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Re:No you don't (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with Microsoft, is that they view themselves as a "Windows" company. I've said this for years, and was laughed at a long time ago. They are still a "Windows" company. Everything they do, they try to tie into "Windows" regardless of whether or not it fits that product. In the end, they will be a Windows company.
Their mistake, is thinking "Windows" when they should have been thinking "Technology"
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I think it is more that everything they do they call Windows...except for Office, but then they tie a lot of Office into Windows.
Re:No you don't (Score:5, Insightful)
Data Center = Windows
Phones = Windows
Tablets = Windows
But what does the rest of the world use to run GPS navigators, cameras, routers, set top boxes, thermostats, wrist watches, super computers, and more? That would be Linux.
What do developers use? Linux. Microsoft admitted as much when they said the reason for bash on Windows was to lure developers back.
Maybe you shouldn't have driven developers away with Windows Surface, a whole new App API, and your crappy app store. Oh, but Surface also drove OEMs away because it back stabbed them by competing directly with them on hardware. And Surface drove users away, because it sucked. Wow. Developers, OEMs and Users. What a master stroke the Surface was!
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GPS navigators
Windows actually. My last Tomtom crashed spectacularly to a CE desktop. Admittedly that was a while ago.
cameras
Mostly just a bit of custom code, unless you count that one camera Samsung made that runs Android, but then you should also count that camera with a Gigapixel sensor that runs full blow Windows 7 on it.
routers, set top boxes
Yep and yep.
thermostats
Errr nope.
wrist watches
Errr what?
Look there's a lot of things in Linux, but don't pretend it's on every device in the house. There's an awful lot of custom code out there and for many of the above if they ar
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GPS navigators
Windows actually. My last Tomtom crashed spectacularly to a CE desktop. Admittedly that was a while ago.
As pointed out, TomTom is a Linux-based GPS; AFAIK they have only ever delivered Linux-based devices. So you're probably confusing your devices, or you had a really really old TomTom that is nothing like their products over the last 10+ years, but I highly doubt that. (FWIW, TomTom made the news back in the early 2000's b/c MS sued them over FAT FS patents since they used Linux and a FAT/vFAT FS.)
cameras
Mostly just a bit of custom code, unless you count that one camera Samsung made that runs Android, but then you should also count that camera with a Gigapixel sensor that runs full blow Windows 7 on it.
routers, set top boxes
Yep and yep.
thermostats
Errr nope.
wrist watches
Errr what?
Look there's a lot of things in Linux, but don't pretend it's on every device in the house. There's an awful lot of custom code out there and for many of the above if they are running on Linux it's typically the type of device you end up throwing away because it's slow and clunky to use (though no where near as slow as it would be running on Windows, and no prizes for guessing why I don't use that old Tomtom anymore)
Linux actually runs on a lot of stuff you wouldn't even imagine it runs on - and the devices are not slow. The m
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For likely 80% of the population that is in fact a true statement. Facebook? Check. Viewing youtube videos? Check. Web browsing? Check. Email? What's that.. err, check. Messaging? In all its forms, check.....
Wait, I was thinking Android / iPhones. Windows phones? Not so much....
For the items you mentioned, you can still check off the boxes. You can still FaceBook, Email, Message... YouTube videos - you'd have to download one of the many YouTube clients online (all of which allow you to download videos, unlike Google). Only thing where you're SOL - FaceTime/Duo, and VOIP calls, if you need to make international calls but want to avoid paying Verizon or T Mo.
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"[We have a phone that in fact can replace your PC] ...the same way we have a tablet that can replace your laptop"
So technically he's correct, just not in the sense he wants to be.
My Surface Pro 4 has replaced my laptop. Although it hasn't replaced my iPad, my Note 4 phablet did that.
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They can both be used as trays for serving drinks?
Developers, developers, developers (Score:4, Interesting)
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The failure of windows phone had nothing to do with 'developer engagement'. Simply put they were far too late to market to compete with the already established iphone & Android.
They might have had a shot if they had realized it and focused from day one on the business market (which they were already a player in), but instead attempted to compete with Google and Apple who had more cachet with consumers.
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They were not too late: there were phones running some form of Windows long before the iPhone and Android.
No, they had the wrong vision for a phone. Their vision was Windows running on a small platform and it did not resonate with mass market buyers. Perhaps they saw the market as corporate buyers, not the consumers who buy phones today.
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The failure of windows phone had nothing to do with 'developer engagement'. Simply put they were far too late to market to compete with the already established iphone & Android.
They might have had a shot if they had realized it and focused from day one on the business market (which they were already a player in), but instead attempted to compete with Google and Apple who had more cachet with consumers.
Smartphone history doesn't start in 2010. It didn't start in 2007 with the iPhone, either.
Those of us who have longer memories are aware of the iPhone's predecessors. For quite some time, it was a three-horse race between Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Palm. Blackberry was preferred by many businesses because of BES - it was a bit expensive, but it was super secure and made it possible to replace a lost or damaged Blackberry with a fresh one in about 20 minutes, with all the user's accounts and data intact
They weren't late, they just completely blew it (Score:2)
A lot of us had PDAs back in the 1990s. A lot of us also had cell phones. It didn't take a genius to figure out that having one device which worked as both a cell phone and PDA would be really nice, if for nothing but to reduce the amount of clanking going on in your pocket. So it was pretty obvious by the mid-1990s that cell
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So Microsoft wasn't late to the market. They were right there at the beginning of the smartphone market and had ample opportunity to dominate it. They just blew it. I suspect someone high up in their management chain, maybe even Gates himself, didn't believe this phone-PDA convergence was going to happen.
Very much agree. Microsoft's Vision - from Gates and through Ballmer - was Windows Desktop on everything. They executed their vision very well. It's just that it wasn't what their customers wanted and they were pig headed enough that they refused (still refuse?) to change to something that customers actually wanted.
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Don't get me started on xna... they canceled it just when it was finally maturing.
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I disagree with that. Spending money on developer engagement wasn't their problem. Their developer tools were great and they are still great. Plus, they spent a ton of money on developers (which I was one of).
One problem was that when their app store came out, they modeled it after the iOS App store. For instance, they wanted to charge $99 a year for a developer account (although, that fee was waived initially). They locked down their platform, as they wanted everything to be published and only available th
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PS: When I wrote "Plus, they spent a ton of money on developers (which I was one of)". I meant third party mobile app developers.
Making sense (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing I hope is that now that Nadella actually said those words, they're going to stop trying to turn their operating systems into an iOS or Android clone. Saying they're done with Windows Phone unburdens them from having to try to revive Windows Store and the Universal Apps model. I am very skeptical about whether they'd do this, but they could also (shock! horror!) completely separate PC mode and tablet mode, and make Windows behave more like a desktop OS when run on PC hardware. Just doing that one change would probably convert the last Windows 7 holdouts.
That said, this is a very expensive "oops." What I see doing engineering work for Windows shops is the need to monetize everything else -- Azure is being pushed extremely hard, and this is where Microsoft is going to make all their money in the future. All new features are Azure-first these days and backported to the packaged products. What's probably going to happen is that they're going to make it so cumbersome to run on-premises Windows Server and other Microsoft products that most companies will just throw their hands up and move everything they own to Azure. After that, they're locked in permanently and Microsoft will enter its new phase as the 21st Century IBM. Just like IBM collecting monthly mainframe revenue, they'll collect monthly fees from Azure customers, who will be even more dependent on Microsoft than they are now.
The other super-smart thing they've done is realize that the OS wars are over. You can run Linux in Azure as a first-class citizen. They do this to compete with AWS, but they also know that being OS-agnostic long term allows them to keep collecting revenue perpetually. I just hope they redeploy the Windows Phone people who are still there to new projects instead of throwing another few thousand techies onto the unemployment pyre.
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Re:Making sense (Score:4, Insightful)
they're going to stop trying to turn their operating systems into an iOS or Android clone
They said exactly the opposite. They said they're giving up on Mobile phones and focusing on other areas. Other areas being crossover tablet devices in which they are doing quite well while to the disgust of everyone butchering their OS in the process.
Expect more of this not less as MS pulls back from mobile phones.
Why they failed (Score:2)
Many people say its the lack of apps. I think that was their own fault for dumping and rebooting the platform a million times thinking they just had to get that sauce perfect and and the world would love them. They've been drinking to much of their own koolaid.
I think the lack of apps is simply what finally put them out of their misery though. I'm not convinced any significant amount of people actually wanted Windows on their phone in the first place.
The first step.... (Score:2)
Is admitting you have a problem. While I assume they've known this internally for a while, it's nice to see the public acknowledgement.
MSFT is doing some... surprisingly... competent things with Surface and other PCs, it will be interesting to see if the magical "new devices category" is something that they can take the Surface competence into.
(Did I just use "Microsoft" and "Competence" in the same sentence? And not preceded with "in-"? Shiver....)
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People need to stop thinking of Microsoft as one entity. It is a diverse company where each division is fairly independent. Yes, Microsoft makes mistakes, it is part of "no risk, no reward"
(Insert Windows Phone vs Amazon Phone discussion here)
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(Did I just use "Microsoft" and "Competence" in the same sentence? And not preceded with "in-"? Shiver....)
Shivering? Must be feeling a bit "Shilly" over there ;)
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Sure you missed it (Score:3)
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WinCE came out in 1996 and Windows Mobile in 2000, about the same time as BlackBerry and PalmOS phones, and long before iPhones and Android.
Microsoft was a pioneer in the mobile space, they just pissed it all away.
Re:Sure you missed it (Score:5, Insightful)
But then, Microsoft (Bill Gates) said (in 1995) that the internet was a fad. That should make you think about how much vision they have. It's in their DNA to be only a monopolist. They can't compete in any open market. That is why everything must be always tied back to Windows.
Re: Sure you missed it (Score:2)
Developing a new one to match the needs and the constraints of a small battery powered device, is.
Those experiments by MS were just that: experiments. And failing ones.
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You don't know what you're talking about. Windows CE wasn't a "pesky os for PCs", it was a different OS from Windows for desktops, specifically aimed at consumer electronics, embedded systems PDAs, and phones.
Windows CE was big; it had nearly half of the smartphone market for a while and showed up in numerous embedded and portable applications.
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You missed the PC, too (Score:2)
Which had no commercial impact, though, as soon as your monopoly was big enough, which came pretty quick (and not only by legal means, as we know today). Since then, you can stuff everything you want down users' throats who have nowhere else to go because the applications they need don't run on other platforms.
I still haven't completely given up hope, though, that this will change one day.
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I still haven't completely given up hope, though, that this will change one day.
Unfortunately, I have.
We'll talk exclusively about desktop apps, and ignore web-based applications and mobile apps for the moment.
Who are some of the big players in the desktop software market?
Adobe, Autodesk, Intuit, Sage, and Nuance are all in the list of top-100 software companies by revenue, admittedly a list heavily skewed toward the enterprise market - SAP and VMWare are clearly outside the scope of this exercise.
Most of these companies' flagship applications (Photoshop, AutoCAD, Quickbooks, ACT, Natu
A Phone to Replace my PC? (Score:2)
Yes, when phones come with 24" screens!
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How about something the size of a larger cell phone that can wireless connect to a display and keyboard where it functions like a laptop. And has a dock to turn into a PC? You wouldn't really be gaming on it though.
http://store.hp.com/us/en/ContentView?storeId=10151&catalogId=10051&langId=-1&eSpotName=Elite-x3 [hp.com]
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dual 32 inch 4K monitors you insensitive clod.
Dear Microsoft.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Stop FUCKING AROUND with stupid shit like phones.
Make your OS not suck, Stop trying to make the server OS into a desktop.
And make your other software work better and faster
No they didn't (Score:2)
They've been making mobile operating systems since the days of the PDA, but they weren't considered successful, even in the odd years they where leading the category.
One problem is they every couple of years they would revamp it, losing compatibility with the old software.
They didn't miss it (Score:3, Interesting)
They completely failed despite trying for many years. I'm not talking about what they've done post iPhone and iPad; they were making Windows XP based tablets and Windows CE based phones back in the early 00s and similar products even earlier. Nobody wanted to use them. I hate Apple's arrogance and elitism but they did succeed at something that Microsoft failed.
That's why I'm pretty skeptical about their ability to build "new categories." It seems much more likely they'll fuck around with some tech and produce something that completely misses the point, and then Apple, Google, or some new upstart will come along and do it correctly
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They completely failed despite trying for many years
No they missed it. Throwing a token dev team at hacking a few things out of Windows CE and adding microphone support is not "trying". If anything they have shown very well how a company is able to release a product with the least amount of effort possible.
I call bullshit! (Score:2)
Microsoft didn't "[miss] the mobile phone," they shit on the mobile phone market with their usual bullshit. Turns out that when the quality of your product matters, you need to put out a high quality software platform that offers more than concessions for users and developers.
no, you didn't miss the mobile phone (Score:2)
Microsoft was one of the earliest smartphone manufacturers, and together with Symbian, one of the two biggest. They didn't miss it, they screwed it up, with their usual mix of greed, attempts at monopoly, and bad software. The difference is that this time, it backfired, and people never again trusted them.
Billions wasted (Score:2)
All you have to say is "we missed it?" Come on Microsoft it's not like you can write off all those billions of dollars invested and say you missed it. Oh you mean you fucked up your execution? That I'll believe more. You had a strategy, remember Windows CE and it's derivatives which morphed into Windows Mobile? Yeah you remember those, platforms without real developer tools and you couldn't debug on? Those platforms that made any effort painful and then you'd pull support for them. Yeah I remember th
internal memo from Satya Nadella... (Score:2)
Any ideas?
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This is the obvious way for Microsoft to try (Score:2)
and get back in the game.
They are unifying all their platforms on a common kernel with universal app frameworks.
Next, for the 90% of people that don't need tons of computing power, they replace your PC / Laptop / Phone with one device in a phone form factor.
When you are at a desk and need a keyboard and mouse you dock and voila you are good to go. Heck, using a mechanism similar to the Surface Book, the base / dock could contain a discrete GPU etc. to even enable people to do CAD / Video work.
The bonus for
Compatibility vs. Nimbleness (Score:3)
Microsoft had to choose between compatibility or nimble and compact.
When they competed purely on nimbleness, their mobile apps were not be sufficiently compatible with Windows desktop software to make anyone choose them over competitors, who were cheaper and more nimble.
When they competed purely on compatibility, then the device was expensive, bloated, and had short battery life because it had to copy too much of the desktop to be compatible.
When they tried the middle ground, they sucked enough at both of these factors to not be compelling to consumers.
They cannot compete with smaller companies on price, features, battery life etc. because they are big bureaucratic behemoth.
Announcing Microsoft Ear! (Score:2)
Missed the market by about thirty six years (Score:2)
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Giants die slowly. But I see their Win10 "strategy" as a good accelerator of that end.