Two (but why stop there?) recent developments further indicate that Microsoft is in big trouble. Can they dig their way out? Not likely.
Item: Robbie Bach, who heads up the part of Microsoft that includes the Mobile Communications Business, has resigned/was fired/is retiring (the official explanation is number 3, but I’m not inclined to believe that). Regardless, this is a pretty big management shakeup directly affecting Microsoft’s position, small though it may be, in mobility. Item: Apple last week passed Microsoft as the most valuable company in technology. No surprise here – Apple, despite their own tendencies toward monopolistic behavior, builds products that are useable; Microsoft builds products that are designed first and foremost to crush the competition. Any crumbs tossed to customers are a bonus.
OK, I’m getting ahead of myself here, but let me start with a bias that should be obvious. I truly dislike Microsoft as a company. I positively detest their products. This firm, like all companies, granted, exists to make money. But Microsoft does so via products that are buggy, unreliable, slow, hard to use, and just plain frustrating, and with business arrangements that have truly harmed the IT industry for years. Why PC OEMs continue to put up with this nonsense is beyond me – again, go try Ubuntu, and see what a real PC OS can be – simple, fast, reliable, easy to use (Linux? Easy to use? Yes, absolutely!) and much more. Except for machines used for testing in our lab, I’ll never again purchase a PC equipped with Windows for production use around here. As you may recall, I switched to a Mac about 18 months ago; I now have four, including a server. I must admit that I like many user-facing features in Windows (XP, anyway) better, but the reliability, ease of use, and performance of the Mac are far superior to anything based on Windows, and these are key in getting my job done. Of course, I run the slow, buggy, unreliable, expensive, and overall poor Office 2008 for the Mac, but as I gain more experience with iWork and OpenOffice, I’m looking forward to never spending another dime with Microsoft ever again. After all, giving them money only encourages them.
Microsoft’s efforts in mobility have, similarly, been disappointing and of decreasing interest to me. I’ve used Windows Mobile (now Windows Phone, and formerly Windows CE) since the first release on the Casio Cassiopeia A-10, around 1997. And I’ve always found it slow, buggy, hard to use – you get the picture. My current platform phone, a Samsung Omnia (I), was purchased to run Skyfire and WMWiFiRouter. I no longer use these as much, and this phone will be replaced in three months when my current contract with Verizon expires. And it will not be replaced by another Windows Mobile (or whatever) handset – again, I’m done with Microsoft.
I’ve regardless contended for some time that Microsoft can no longer win in handset operating systems anyway – Windows Phone 7 is still a long way off, and was pre-announced as a desperation move, the usual justification for such long-term pre-announcements. There’s nothing here that an iPhone or Android phone can’t support, so I’m curious as to why any handset vendor would add significant cost to their product and produce a phone running this OS. OK, yes, there’s a big installed base, and Windows Mobile security is pretty good. But, all you users out there, the handwriting is on the wall – Microsoft cannot compete here. The features you need are in cheaper and/or more convenient packages from other suppliers. My advice to Microsoft: give up on the current mobile OS. You’ve lost.
And what to do instead? Well, far be it from me to help out the evil empire, but here are a few ideas that might work:
– Produce an OS based on Linux, with an extended API. Make sure this OS is upgradeable on all platforms on which it is deployed (a key frustration extending into the future with Windows Phone 7 as currently planned). Perhaps even take a stab at a standard handset architecture; that would be good for everyone.
– Why not skip the OS and just build Microsoft Apps, and promote them across a wide variety of platforms? If Microsoft had been smart, it would have taken the Justice Department’s advice lo those many years ago and broken up into at least three companies: Windows (client and server), applications, and Web/Services. They’d be worth a lot more today, and the Mac version of Office might actually work.
– Don’t compete with your OEMs. OK, Kin and Sidekick are from Sharp, but we all know who’s really behind them. Stop building hardware for end-users. Apple can get away with building their own technology into their own products because said technology isn’t licensed to anyone else (although they did in fact try that once, with a few Mac clones). Who in their right mind would buy crucial technology from a supplier who also competes in goods that use that technology? Might Microsoft keep some competitive advantage for themselves? Ya think?
A final note – there are now reports that Google is dropping Windows PCs for internal use in favor of the Mac. No surprise here; Google and Microsoft are on a serious collision course that will do great harm to the latter, and, while Apple and Google are also competitors across both the OS and applications frontiers, the former is indeed the (far) lesser of two evils with, regardless, a much more reliable product. Whoda thunk that Microsoft would ever be in such trouble, apart from yours truly (I wrote my first negative analyst report on MS more than 20 years ago)? I think the end, while not yet in sight, is coming; let us hope that the era of Microsoft ends as quickly and painlessly (for us users) as possible.
The days of Microsoft thinking that it can dominate all of IT – including mobility – should be over. Any assumption of market advantage based on past dominance would indeed be an exercise in self-delusion. Along with shifting cost structures that naturally result from the evolution of both technologies and markets, that’s really what, quite literally, kills companies – even big ones. I still don’t think these guys can survive long term, and the Champagne is still on ice for when it’s over. OK, this won’t happen tomorrow, but, again, the handwriting is on the wall.
