Wavepacket Blog displaying only one specific post |
| 2010 | |
| July | |
| Sun Jul 11 22:38:59 2010 The End of Microsoft |
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| Sun Jul 11 22:38:59 2010 The End of Microsoft Taken down by the little guys... |
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| You've probably already heard about the
Microsoft Kin fiasco, whereby
Microsoft spent several years and around 1 billion dollars (a
billion dollars!) to produce the Kin phones, which were then discontinued
after just 6 weeks. They weren't selling.
Just recently local papers noted that Microsoft was firing people, although it isn't clear if these were related to the Kin disaster. Microsoft has been steady sliding in the mobile market. Market shares as of July 2010:
But this is just mobile phones. Why do I think this means the End of Microsoft? Because the future of computing is mobile devices. We've already seen the death of the desktop, killed by both browsers and laptops. Soon the laptop will be killed by mobile devices. Mobile devices are already doing most of what laptops can do, and in a few years laptops will really look like dinosaurs. Microsoft understands that mobile devices are the future. They take the same development platform philosophy as Apple, that is, try to produce a compelling customer experience while making it very difficult for application developers to build for multiple platforms. They want to keep a steady revenue stream for their mobile operating system, regardless of which phone is selling. But they can't seem to make any headway with Windows Mobile! Laptops and desktops are going away, and with them, Microsoft's main cash cow, the Windows operating system. Since office applications are also moving to the cloud, Microsoft has no cash cows left. The future of computing, only a few years away, is mobile devices, and Microsoft is steadily losing market share in the only strategic market. I'm not excited to see a large local company--and former employer of mine!--about to go off the precipice. Hopefully they will learn from their mistakes here, and get a compelling mobile operating system out before it is too late. Comments |
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