Microsoft may not survive post-PC era

7/12/2010 4:38 AM EDT

Well, i remember speech of Paul Otellini at May 11, which is also posted by eetimes, mentioning
about ARM and blaming that their way of biz is not suitable to make money. At that time i said...
Wow giant intel is concerned about little boy growing. Indeed not focusing further to decrease their
cost and value of their products, has was criticising & underestimating the potential power of the
little guy who doesnt deal with foundry & production issues, despite focusing on R&D. This was
a good sign how imminent future and post-PC era as Rick mentioned will be shaped. Just look
how popular apple i-*** products became who indeed have nothing to do with intel x86 yet powered
with ARM core, or hand sets getting more and more intelligent, computer like again thank to little
boy. Its true M.soft tends to be fat-guy, acting slow. That is very bad habit of them, however
didnt have strong fellow against since recently. Unix like free solutions for desktops are still premature
and not promising powerful imminent future against fat boy cause of lack of strong big brother support,
in fact very strong at server side however their implementation to mobile sets was simply brilliant. At last
manufacturers have change to focus further on development not licensed software costs or limitations
related. Yes, at last you got strong punch fatboy, and yes have to worry. This is a very correct sentence
as Rick mentioned M.Soft's chum, HP recently canceled their windows 7 based pad project and decided
to go with acquired tech, webOS which is the most suitable solution for multitasking based post-PCs and
mobile handsets in my view. Shouldnt miss droid the mighty varlet also. If we dont see a shaking
wake up from MicroSoft shortly yes, they will loose place at mobile era, and will be playing at cable
court only.

7/12/2010 12:35 PM EDT

Perhaps it is time to retire the word "Wintel", since Microsoft's and Intel's fortunes are far less coupled in the post-PC era.

It's always risky to bet against the big guy, but in operating systems, MS truly is competing with "free" or almost free. Applications are a different story.

But Intel has a strong lead on silicon manufacturing and even ARM admits that it won't be too long before Intel catches up to ARM on low power.

Which company would you rather be? Being big and well-established does not automatically make you a dinosaur.

7/12/2010 1:36 PM EDT

MS has been a late comer of various products which include portable music device and mobile communication. So is Sony. Sony resists to join the battle of MP3 because of it will go against its record division. However, a company as big as Sony and MS will not fall easily. There is momentum and they still have products that are more attractive than similar product in the market. In MS case, Microsoft office is still popular. A lot of mac users are using microsoft office even they rate Apple a lot higher than MS. OneNote, Visio and Project are still my favorite applications that I can't find competitive products even though I have been using OpenOffice on my Linux for years.

I am sure Microsoft will find its way out to continue bring surprising products to the market.

7/12/2010 2:50 PM EDT

Microsoft only thrived when they could use their monopoly power illegally to manipulate the desktop PC market.

The courts found that Microsoft abused its monopoly power and used illegal and unscrupulous tactics to extend that power and eliminate competition. We still suffer from the effects of those illegal practices since competition has not been restored to the desktop marketplace in terms of operating systems, programming languages, development environments and applications.

Microsoft has already tried to extend its tentacles into other businesses such as game consoles and cell phones unsuccessfully, and this will continue. Microsoft has shown bad judgment concerning products not tied to their desktop monopoly, and they have a bad track record especially in mobile products.

Without the ability to manipulate telcos, the FCC, and phone manufacturers, Microsoft cannot parlay its mediocre, me-too, products into a choke hold on the consumer mobile electronics market.

Microsoft has enormous resources of money, and they're not dead yet, but it won't be long, and I wouldn't want to be the last one holding MSF stock.

7/12/2010 9:55 PM EDT

I agree that MS is going to have a tough time in the mobile space. I have struggled with a few Windows Mobile phones and they just don't seem to get it; something unnatural and non-intuitive about it. Apple, Google and the other phone guys are moving in the right direction.

But in the "business" software arena, no one has really made a dent in the huge market share, though there have been many tries. As a developer, I have seen more and more companies (especially small- to mid-sized) make the move to an all-Microsoft stack. This is not insignificant.

It's kind of like they have become the IBM of the new age, which is funny because that's what they were originally fighting against.



"You become what you resist"

7/13/2010 10:24 AM EDT

@Feory- yes, by all means, let's retire the term "Wintel." I also agree with what others have said- MS will face massive challenges in the OS area, but the company may be on safer ground in the applications arena. At least for now...

7/13/2010 11:34 AM EDT

Thanks for your article. I don’t think Microsoft needs to be to concern. It amazes me as I travel around the Country of how many people that are using mobile technology; but it also surprises me of how many people that are not using mobile technology. I believe an article needs to be written on this topic because we still live in a digital divide society. For example, there are many local government agencies, public/private schools and small businesses that are far behind in technology from a general point of view, and these groups have a large population. Mobile technology for these groups is not even on the agenda because of the lack of funding. With Microsoft profits, investments, and line of products; the company can do what it has always done: Wait for the right opportunity and purchase a very successful mobile technology company. Microsoft is a very successful company, but they don’t have to be the leader in every technology area, just be a team player with a good strategic management plan. Microsoft will survive the post-PC era.

7/14/2010 12:47 AM EDT

Microsoft's shortcomings in entering into mobile markets (of all kind) is understood, however, it's PC/Server based business still owns a big chunk of the market and who knows when the post-PC era begins.

it's no question that mobile computing/communication era has started and is growing at never-before-seen speed, however that does not necessarily means the end of PC/Server market. Those who know the ever-increasing value of the IT (or IS) services in big to small firms would acknowledge that the mobile industry makes the clients while Intel/Microsoft are making a huge share of the Servers. Which bank do you know that would run its mission critical servers on an iPOD or Android?
I think we are talking about post-PC era for the residential and mobile business users, as I don't see that era is even being a near threat for business servers and clients.

7/14/2010 10:32 AM EDT

I agree. It is yet too early to post-PC era at all.

7/14/2010 11:37 AM EDT

PC's are fundementally a multipurpose tool, capable of carrying out a variety of useful (and sometimes not so useful) tasks, and even capable of being modified to expand their functionality for more specific tasks. Just because of that flexibility, it will never, ever be completely replaced.

7/14/2010 4:33 PM EDT

For recreation; "Apps" will have their niche. In the real world we still need robust somewhat "open" systems. OS's come and go and I still need to bang out code occasionally. MS and Linux are so deeply embedded in our technology underpinnings that new OS's have a steep hill to climb now.

The new handset OS's just don't meld with the real work-a-day world like WM6. I can use my handset in the field as an emergency data console for instance, and I already know the "back end" to interface with the real world is all computer.

7/15/2010 5:49 PM EDT

Since it was just revealed that the 12th Russian spy worked at Microsoft, it brings up a concern.

First, 11 spies with valuable information relating to the latest operational, strategic, and tactical methods of the Russians are caught. These 11 spies are traded for 4 westerners, not all U.S. citizens, who have been in prison in Siberia for many years. Any information they had has been extracted by the Russians by now. This is not a trade worth making by any wild imagining.

To the best of my knowledge there has never, ever been a swap of prisoners so quickly. This is very suspicious. What do we have to gain? Or better yet, what does Obama have to gain?

Now we're hearing that some of these Russian spies had ties to Obama Cabinet members. Who will we turn to for the truth? Will Obama tell us about his or members of his Cabinet's connnections to Russian spies? Will the Democrat controlled Senate or Democrat controlled House of Representatives investigate? I don't think so.

Under President Bush, the U.S. had planned a missle defense system with radars based in several European countries, which Russia protested against. We had already made commitments and obtained agreement with Poland and several other countries. Since then, Obama cancelled the missle defense radar system without any concessions from the Russians. Since then the Polish President has been killed in Russia. Since then Obama has given Russia the spies caught by U.S. agencies without so much as interrogating them or trading them for anything of national value. And since then we have heard that Obama administration officials may have ties to Russian spies.

7/15/2010 6:12 PM EDT

MICROSOFT?? Peak Oil is the issue ... there isn't going to be any electricity to run anything ... better get ready for Prairie life.