Microsoft fails?
An interesting article by Charlie Demerjian “Microsoft has failed” is being actively discussed at SlashDot and other western platforms. It is written in complex English, but it raises pressing issues, not limited to, for example, issues of convenience or inconvenience tiled interface. Although the author is said to often write too gloomy, but in my opinion, the material is in the style of a good sarcasm of a caring person, and is quite worthy of publication and discussion in the Habré. Translated 1in1, no change.
Nov 14, 2012
Charlie Demerjian @ semiaccurate.com
Microsoft has big problems: 2 main product lines fail, and the search for the guilty is accelerated. This time, Windows 8 is blamed for the failure of Steve Sinofsky, but the real problem lies in the pattern of behavior that such actions illustrate.
Microsoft is very much out of touch with today's realities: the few markets in which it plays evaporates at an astounding speed. The company’s well-known habit of fencing itself off from the rest of the world, ignoring the opinions of others, works well as long as there is no decent alternative, and such a strategy was fundamental for the company so long ago that nothing else was left. The model works, but with the growth of the walls of indifference, customer irritation grows, thereby increasing the value of possible alternatives. This cycle is repeated until there are no alternatives. As soon as they appear, everything collapses with awesome speed.
Any company that plays such a game for too long becomes a talk of the town, and even the chance that something might change becomes impossible. Microsoft has had a lot of time in this game. By betting on linking users instead of providing them with real value, the company's product lines have stagnated, and distribution channels are controlled by an iron monopoly hand. Any attempt at innovation in Windows PCs has not been tolerated for more than a decade, and woe to those who tried to change the state of affairs. History textbooks are full of examples of ghost companies trying to change the “Windows Experience”. Discontent of the company with those who tried was quick and fatal. At least before.
')
As a result, the development of Windows has reached the moment when any competition was eliminated, even in the bud. The Redmond rules said: "Do not change anything, unless it crushes someone doing something innovative." So they acted. And the market has stagnated. Ask yourself: when was the last time Microsoft did something truly innovative? What was it - the fruit of creative power within the company, or copying competitors?
Sooner or later, one will come who will do something better than the molasses offered by Microsoft. In reality, this happens all the time. And what if, at some point, someone succeeds, and for some reason, Microsoft cannot crush them like a cockroach? Then an alternative will appear on the walls of indifference. Then irritation accumulated over a long time will find a way out. And then you will not envy Microsoft.
In such a situation, the company has 2 outputs, both rather gloomy. They can radically change the way things are done, or they can dry out and die. Before you point your finger at Windows 8 and say, “but they change and create innovations,” wait a minute, this is not what you think.
Microsoft has 3 foundational product lines, Windows, Windows Server, and Windows Mobile / Phone / WART / HowThereThereThatToday. Exclusively they work other cash cows, Office and Exchange. These applications use protocols that are tied to them by suspicious methods and will not be run anywhere else. This way, competitors are taken away to do what Microsoft can do — either directly, like Novell, or indirectly, making the costs unprofitable. Thus, the walls grow, with each cycle, as well as the cost of overcoming them, and the value of alternatives, too.
The problem is that if you are faced with a choice of 100% Microsoft or 0% Microsoft, it is not trivial, if you give up on one thing, everything else disappears by itself. Once you start using Google Docs and related products, you no longer need Office. For you, or perhaps any other company, it saves a few hundred dollars per user. If you do not need Office, then you do not need Exchange. If you do not need Exchange, then Windows Server is not needed either. No need for Office means no need for Windows. As soon as the top of an avalanche begins to move, its speed increases eerily. And we are all there. Getting out is much easier now than entering.
If you read the news about the dismissal of Steve Sinofsky (of his own accord at the height of his own successes like Windows 8), you can see some interesting quotes. Read the article in AllThingsD , especially the appendix at the end. Pay attention to Steve Ballmer's quote,
You will see that one sentence is occupied by the usual praises when a top manager leaves. The following three are devoted to the line through which Ballmer takes off, praising the level of integration and success of the product lines. Has anyone guessed why he went so far to the side?
Recall the times before Windows Phone 7, when the Microsoft mobile OS line crashed, and was the laughing stock of the industry. Microsoft completely redesigned the OS and its appearance, paradigms, and also made it incompatible with all previously released applications. She spent nearly half a billion dollars on her advertising. She bought Nokia to simultaneously eliminate a competitor and take his market share.
At that time, Microsoft occupied about 12% of the OS market for smartphones, and Nokia a little more than 30%. By joining forces, Nokia and Microsoft, along with other partners selling Windows Phone 7.x, managed to achieve sales in about 2% of smartphones. The level of subsidies is high and only grows, and Windows Phone 8 only enters the market. By happy coincidence, it is incompatible with the previous versions of 7, so anyone who bought such is “outdated” without warning.
Microsoft’s intentions in the field of mobile devices have suffered such an astounding collapse that it’s incredible. Instead of eliminating the restriction that the vast majority of market participants who do not have a Windows phone leaves behind, Microsoft doubles the stakes of the new round, playing the same compatibility games as before to leave developers, competitors and innovators behind. It's funny that they did it in the name of compatibility. With Windows 8 (meaning Windows Phone 8? - approx. Translator), the current market share of which is rounded to zero, all already created applications for this platform are out of work. Windows phone has not yet paid for the latest advertising campaign, and may never pay for it.
Then came Windows 8, with a completely new interface for tablets, and WART. This is sad for business users, and anyone who spends any substantial time working on it will find out that the aura of novelty will disappear surprisingly quickly. To further worsen the situation, Microsoft dropped the Surface bomb on all of its partners, the very ones that she kept on a short leash and properly bound by monopolism. They were terribly angry, and before they were afraid to piss off Redmond. As we exclusively reported before, HP abandoned WART . Now they are much more worried about what will happen if they do not do the same.
Then Acer postponed the release of devices on Windows RT to the 2nd quarter, Taiwan OEMs speak of this as a dead man. The rest are looking for an alternative, any alternatives, as the main priority. There has never been such a mass outcome before, and this is a one-way street. Microsoft raised WART prices to an unbearable level, trimmed the prices of equipment partners, made it impossible for any vendor to release a profitable device on WART, and now it is surprised at the news. And what is most shocking? Microsoft's feigned surprise that all its partners do not like to enter the market with reduced prices. As a pacifying gesture for OEMs, Microsoft chose a scapegoat and fired him, and then returned to her plans as if nothing had happened. Parntery for some reason did not buy it.
No one was surprised when Steve Ballmer called Surface sales “modest.” Mr. Ballmer is not one of those who downplay anything modest means an extreme degree of failure in his language. They say that sales of Surface after a month of sales amounted to 4 million, which is hardly modest. But if you look at this figure in perspective, they say that Apple sold 5 million iPhone 5 on the first day, mainly because they could not cope with supplies, and another 3 million iPad Mini on the first weekend of sales. Indeed, modestly, and not a word about the returns, which, as we heard in SemiAccurate, are surprisingly high. Surface is another setback. Apple also did not conduct a broad advertising campaign; they just launched products.
This means that the two mobile device markets, from which they supplanted Microsoft, Windows Phone 7.x and 8, Surface, WART, Windows 8, as well as the entire strength of the Microsoft single ecosystem, were released in full attack. They were supported by hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising, a high level of OEM incentives, and were sold through a network of dealers and stores controlled by a monopolist supplier. After all this, if you close your eyes to the initial slippage of new products, Microsoft has not even gotten up in the area of phones and tablets. Failure is not even a strong word for Microsoft's mobile ambitions.
And this already leads us to Windows 8 itself, a mockery of the world of operating systems. Since Windows Vista, no operating system has been so vehemently ridiculed as 8k. At first, she seemed funny - but, as we said, the feeling of novelty quickly passes. It is inconvenient to work with it on an old computer, you need a touch-enabled screen. Unfortunately, it is inconvenient to control (interface) with the help of touches on vertically located surfaces, this is shown by dozens of studies. If you don’t have a tablet, Windows 8 is quickly becoming a frustrating exercise that causes pain in your hand. Worse, it is simply not suitable for tasks that most office users are accustomed to - making a document, preparing a spreadsheet, answering mail. Do you find it funny to constantly move your hands from the keyboard to the screen and back every time you need to click on any menu item in Word? Cool angular interface, or a nightmare of brush tunnel syndrome? By luck, for those who are aware of the problem, Microsoft has thought through this question and made it impossible to do otherwise. You can’t avoid a new interface, and this is not allowed for office work.
For developers, Windows 8 is also a nightmare. The best games are one of the areas where Windows still does not have serious competition, but it seems that Microsoft doesn’t care. Even without much effort, Windows 8 has surpassed itself in rejecting developers. First, Valve publicly flooded Windows 8 , then Blizzard supported Valve . A few more very large and influential game developers in private conversations with SemiAccurate about Windows 8 expressed themselves much more expressively. Nobody likes what Microsoft has done, some just don’t say it in public.
Microsoft has gone from an incredible impact on the software and games market to the moment when they are forced to pay developers for porting (porting) applications. This usually means the death knell on the platform, and most developers are already looking for new pastures where the grass is greener. The main attraction for end users died with Windows 8, and if you pay for every sneeze, you don’t reach out even with Microsoft’s deep pockets. Sales of products will never cover the investment on the side at this stage: there is no market without Windows 7 and backward compatibility.
The market for Windows 8 as a whole also does not look bright. OEMs, chip makers, and Wall Street together tried to minimize declining PC sales while waiting for Windows 8. With the release of this OS, Q4 and Q1 estimated sales growth by 5-10%. As soon as deferred demand is satisfied, good times lie ahead.
Then came the first substantiated confirmation, the Joanne Feeney Study from Longbow, with two observations about the health of the PC market. In it, she argues that there will be no changes in sales of notebooks in Q4, desktop PCs will fall by 5-10%, and the numbers are the same as the real ones. Windows 8 has been released and sales are falling? During Christmas and the Chinese New Year? True? Stop and think about it. When, with the release of previous versions, articles about people spending the night in tents came out to buy one of the first. Does this indicate a market acceptance of a product?
Here we are: Microsoft has a complete failure in phones, a complete failure in tablets, and the image of a star that has lost popularity in the eyes of a new generation. The company can talk about technological superiority for a whole day, but people do not believe. Windows 8 itself seems to be pulling down PC sales, and it will hit server-side sales too, which also lose market share at an alarming rate. To stop the recession after only losing most of its market share, Microsoft decided to make the mind an incomprehensible move by forcing the tablet interface into servers . If it does not open your eyes to how Microsoft is blind, then nothing can.
To improve matters, Ballmer did not recognize that the company had major problems, did not say that their actions taken could not only eliminate them radically, but also destroy the market for other products that were previously safe and did not announce at least something something that could shed light on it. Instead, he chose a scapegoat, fired Steve Sinofsky, and reported that Surface’s sales were “modest”. IPad sales are not modest. IPhone sales are not modest. Android phone sales are not modest. Android tablet sales are modest compared to Apple products only. Surface sales are also not modest, they are just a disaster.
Let's go back to Ballmer's eulogy about Sinofsky, remember? He said that this guy gave them everything, did an excellent job, even being fired, instead of Ballmer, most likely. The rest of the quotation is devoted to how Microsoft is now one, forward colleagues. All works as one. True, you will be forgiven if you think of it as a single whole, which will lead to even greater integration in the future. Fine.
Unless you have an iPhone, iPad, phone or tablet on Android, they do not work well with Microsoft, as Microsoft intended. They cannot work with Office, they cannot be integrated with Server 2012 applications, and they cannot execute that small number of applications for Windows 8 / WART that exist now. Of course, Halo 4 will not run on them, and there will never be a surface, but there will be a choice of applications compared to which Microsoft looks like a dwarf, and you can not mention the music and video libraries that have no equal. If you give up your iPhone, iPad, phone or tablet on Android, you can be part of 2% of Microsoft loyal users who believed all the promises and enjoyed a world that has no other products besides Microsoft.
For some reason, 98% of the market does not seem to be about to give up its devices. In fact, you could argue that the opposite is happening. Windows 8 sales are shrinking, and the target audience does not seem to want to pay more for less functionality just to get an OS that has “modest” sales and no apps. For good reason. Abandon iTunes and a collection of purchased songs, movies and TV shows? From applications for Android or iOS, for which there is no equivalent in the Microsoft ecosystem? All this for a lot of money and a weird, disappointing interface? What is there not to like? For whatever reason, at least one user might not want to buy all of their libraries again, just to switch to Surface?
For some reason, people don't just stand by; Users who previously bought a computer on Windows waited indefinitely for an upgrade, either decided not to do it, or have already done so long ago. That deadly helix of a small market share doomed Windows Phone 7 and 8 to failure, sticking WART and Surface, and the entire OEM community is looking for or creating viable alternatives to Windows itself. It is said that Microsoft itself has already written off hopes for adopting Windows 8 among business users. This means that all the goodies that are in Server 2012, we believe that some may be, will only work from a computer on Windows 8, like the previous 4-5 generations. Microsoft is very predictable.
So Android and iOS are not inferior to the Microsoft market, on the contrary, they eat off pieces from the sales of Windows 8. This means that the attractiveness of Server 2012 in the eyes of end users also decreases. OEMs have an incentive to offer anything, but not Microsoft, and from here it all begins. Already have a generation with tablets that do not have Windows. They use Google Docs, not Office. They use Gmail, not Outlook or Exchange.
They could have used the supposedly decorated Microsoft Office 365, but for some reason they don’t seem to want to spend money on the full license of the Office desktop license, which seems to be required. You can also buy the service as a separate product, but no one is visible. All cloud integration with Windows 8 in any form does not play a special role for you if you are not using Windows 8. Build - and hope that they will come (cinema? The popular quote in the West about building a business, and hope that customers will come - note . Lane.) They built - and customers came. Microsoft built another one, and wonders why no one wants to buy expensive tickets again, which also have small print on the back, that it is forbidden to ever go anywhere else.
As a result, the deadly spiral for Microsoft is already spinning with might and main, and the management spends a lot of effort to unleash it even more. Anyone who decides to indicate that the entire ecosystem is collapsing, or - even worse - to offer an alternative, will follow Sinofsky. Or maybe for Guggenheimer (Guggenheimer)? In any case, Microsoft does not want to change, and this is as clear as day. Even if they would like to, at the level of corporate culture they have already passed the point of no return. The market share, which had previously flowed away with a thin streamlet, turned into a turbulent flow, and management is not aware of this, uncompromising and blind. Game over, the bumpy still pave some time, but the result does not change. Microsoft failed. S | A
Source: semiaccurate.com/2012/11/14/microsoft-has-failed
Personally, it seems to me that the article has sensible thoughts:
What do you think?
Microsoft fails?
Nov 14, 2012
Charlie Demerjian @ semiaccurate.com
Microsoft has big problems: 2 main product lines fail, and the search for the guilty is accelerated. This time, Windows 8 is blamed for the failure of Steve Sinofsky, but the real problem lies in the pattern of behavior that such actions illustrate.
Microsoft is very much out of touch with today's realities: the few markets in which it plays evaporates at an astounding speed. The company’s well-known habit of fencing itself off from the rest of the world, ignoring the opinions of others, works well as long as there is no decent alternative, and such a strategy was fundamental for the company so long ago that nothing else was left. The model works, but with the growth of the walls of indifference, customer irritation grows, thereby increasing the value of possible alternatives. This cycle is repeated until there are no alternatives. As soon as they appear, everything collapses with awesome speed.
Any company that plays such a game for too long becomes a talk of the town, and even the chance that something might change becomes impossible. Microsoft has had a lot of time in this game. By betting on linking users instead of providing them with real value, the company's product lines have stagnated, and distribution channels are controlled by an iron monopoly hand. Any attempt at innovation in Windows PCs has not been tolerated for more than a decade, and woe to those who tried to change the state of affairs. History textbooks are full of examples of ghost companies trying to change the “Windows Experience”. Discontent of the company with those who tried was quick and fatal. At least before.
')
As a result, the development of Windows has reached the moment when any competition was eliminated, even in the bud. The Redmond rules said: "Do not change anything, unless it crushes someone doing something innovative." So they acted. And the market has stagnated. Ask yourself: when was the last time Microsoft did something truly innovative? What was it - the fruit of creative power within the company, or copying competitors?
Sooner or later, one will come who will do something better than the molasses offered by Microsoft. In reality, this happens all the time. And what if, at some point, someone succeeds, and for some reason, Microsoft cannot crush them like a cockroach? Then an alternative will appear on the walls of indifference. Then irritation accumulated over a long time will find a way out. And then you will not envy Microsoft.
In such a situation, the company has 2 outputs, both rather gloomy. They can radically change the way things are done, or they can dry out and die. Before you point your finger at Windows 8 and say, “but they change and create innovations,” wait a minute, this is not what you think.
Microsoft has 3 foundational product lines, Windows, Windows Server, and Windows Mobile / Phone / WART / HowThereThereThatToday. Exclusively they work other cash cows, Office and Exchange. These applications use protocols that are tied to them by suspicious methods and will not be run anywhere else. This way, competitors are taken away to do what Microsoft can do — either directly, like Novell, or indirectly, making the costs unprofitable. Thus, the walls grow, with each cycle, as well as the cost of overcoming them, and the value of alternatives, too.
The problem is that if you are faced with a choice of 100% Microsoft or 0% Microsoft, it is not trivial, if you give up on one thing, everything else disappears by itself. Once you start using Google Docs and related products, you no longer need Office. For you, or perhaps any other company, it saves a few hundred dollars per user. If you do not need Office, then you do not need Exchange. If you do not need Exchange, then Windows Server is not needed either. No need for Office means no need for Windows. As soon as the top of an avalanche begins to move, its speed increases eerily. And we are all there. Getting out is much easier now than entering.
If you read the news about the dismissal of Steve Sinofsky (of his own accord at the height of his own successes like Windows 8), you can see some interesting quotes. Read the article in AllThingsD , especially the appendix at the end. Pay attention to Steve Ballmer's quote,
“I appreciate the many years of work that Steven has dedicated to the company,” said CEO Steve Ballmer. “The products and services we have brought to the market in the last few months mark the beginning of a new era at Microsoft. We laid an incredible foundation by releasing new Microsoft Office, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, Microsoft Surface, Windows Server 2012 and 'Halo 4,' as well as perfectly integrating Bing, Skype and Xbox services into all our products. To ensure this success in the future, it is necessary to continue to work closely among all Microsoft groups, as well as to improve the integration and speed of development cycles of our future proposals. "
You will see that one sentence is occupied by the usual praises when a top manager leaves. The following three are devoted to the line through which Ballmer takes off, praising the level of integration and success of the product lines. Has anyone guessed why he went so far to the side?
Recall the times before Windows Phone 7, when the Microsoft mobile OS line crashed, and was the laughing stock of the industry. Microsoft completely redesigned the OS and its appearance, paradigms, and also made it incompatible with all previously released applications. She spent nearly half a billion dollars on her advertising. She bought Nokia to simultaneously eliminate a competitor and take his market share.
At that time, Microsoft occupied about 12% of the OS market for smartphones, and Nokia a little more than 30%. By joining forces, Nokia and Microsoft, along with other partners selling Windows Phone 7.x, managed to achieve sales in about 2% of smartphones. The level of subsidies is high and only grows, and Windows Phone 8 only enters the market. By happy coincidence, it is incompatible with the previous versions of 7, so anyone who bought such is “outdated” without warning.
Microsoft’s intentions in the field of mobile devices have suffered such an astounding collapse that it’s incredible. Instead of eliminating the restriction that the vast majority of market participants who do not have a Windows phone leaves behind, Microsoft doubles the stakes of the new round, playing the same compatibility games as before to leave developers, competitors and innovators behind. It's funny that they did it in the name of compatibility. With Windows 8 (meaning Windows Phone 8? - approx. Translator), the current market share of which is rounded to zero, all already created applications for this platform are out of work. Windows phone has not yet paid for the latest advertising campaign, and may never pay for it.
Then came Windows 8, with a completely new interface for tablets, and WART. This is sad for business users, and anyone who spends any substantial time working on it will find out that the aura of novelty will disappear surprisingly quickly. To further worsen the situation, Microsoft dropped the Surface bomb on all of its partners, the very ones that she kept on a short leash and properly bound by monopolism. They were terribly angry, and before they were afraid to piss off Redmond. As we exclusively reported before, HP abandoned WART . Now they are much more worried about what will happen if they do not do the same.
Then Acer postponed the release of devices on Windows RT to the 2nd quarter, Taiwan OEMs speak of this as a dead man. The rest are looking for an alternative, any alternatives, as the main priority. There has never been such a mass outcome before, and this is a one-way street. Microsoft raised WART prices to an unbearable level, trimmed the prices of equipment partners, made it impossible for any vendor to release a profitable device on WART, and now it is surprised at the news. And what is most shocking? Microsoft's feigned surprise that all its partners do not like to enter the market with reduced prices. As a pacifying gesture for OEMs, Microsoft chose a scapegoat and fired him, and then returned to her plans as if nothing had happened. Parntery for some reason did not buy it.
No one was surprised when Steve Ballmer called Surface sales “modest.” Mr. Ballmer is not one of those who downplay anything modest means an extreme degree of failure in his language. They say that sales of Surface after a month of sales amounted to 4 million, which is hardly modest. But if you look at this figure in perspective, they say that Apple sold 5 million iPhone 5 on the first day, mainly because they could not cope with supplies, and another 3 million iPad Mini on the first weekend of sales. Indeed, modestly, and not a word about the returns, which, as we heard in SemiAccurate, are surprisingly high. Surface is another setback. Apple also did not conduct a broad advertising campaign; they just launched products.
This means that the two mobile device markets, from which they supplanted Microsoft, Windows Phone 7.x and 8, Surface, WART, Windows 8, as well as the entire strength of the Microsoft single ecosystem, were released in full attack. They were supported by hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising, a high level of OEM incentives, and were sold through a network of dealers and stores controlled by a monopolist supplier. After all this, if you close your eyes to the initial slippage of new products, Microsoft has not even gotten up in the area of phones and tablets. Failure is not even a strong word for Microsoft's mobile ambitions.
And this already leads us to Windows 8 itself, a mockery of the world of operating systems. Since Windows Vista, no operating system has been so vehemently ridiculed as 8k. At first, she seemed funny - but, as we said, the feeling of novelty quickly passes. It is inconvenient to work with it on an old computer, you need a touch-enabled screen. Unfortunately, it is inconvenient to control (interface) with the help of touches on vertically located surfaces, this is shown by dozens of studies. If you don’t have a tablet, Windows 8 is quickly becoming a frustrating exercise that causes pain in your hand. Worse, it is simply not suitable for tasks that most office users are accustomed to - making a document, preparing a spreadsheet, answering mail. Do you find it funny to constantly move your hands from the keyboard to the screen and back every time you need to click on any menu item in Word? Cool angular interface, or a nightmare of brush tunnel syndrome? By luck, for those who are aware of the problem, Microsoft has thought through this question and made it impossible to do otherwise. You can’t avoid a new interface, and this is not allowed for office work.
For developers, Windows 8 is also a nightmare. The best games are one of the areas where Windows still does not have serious competition, but it seems that Microsoft doesn’t care. Even without much effort, Windows 8 has surpassed itself in rejecting developers. First, Valve publicly flooded Windows 8 , then Blizzard supported Valve . A few more very large and influential game developers in private conversations with SemiAccurate about Windows 8 expressed themselves much more expressively. Nobody likes what Microsoft has done, some just don’t say it in public.
Microsoft has gone from an incredible impact on the software and games market to the moment when they are forced to pay developers for porting (porting) applications. This usually means the death knell on the platform, and most developers are already looking for new pastures where the grass is greener. The main attraction for end users died with Windows 8, and if you pay for every sneeze, you don’t reach out even with Microsoft’s deep pockets. Sales of products will never cover the investment on the side at this stage: there is no market without Windows 7 and backward compatibility.
The market for Windows 8 as a whole also does not look bright. OEMs, chip makers, and Wall Street together tried to minimize declining PC sales while waiting for Windows 8. With the release of this OS, Q4 and Q1 estimated sales growth by 5-10%. As soon as deferred demand is satisfied, good times lie ahead.
Then came the first substantiated confirmation, the Joanne Feeney Study from Longbow, with two observations about the health of the PC market. In it, she argues that there will be no changes in sales of notebooks in Q4, desktop PCs will fall by 5-10%, and the numbers are the same as the real ones. Windows 8 has been released and sales are falling? During Christmas and the Chinese New Year? True? Stop and think about it. When, with the release of previous versions, articles about people spending the night in tents came out to buy one of the first. Does this indicate a market acceptance of a product?
Here we are: Microsoft has a complete failure in phones, a complete failure in tablets, and the image of a star that has lost popularity in the eyes of a new generation. The company can talk about technological superiority for a whole day, but people do not believe. Windows 8 itself seems to be pulling down PC sales, and it will hit server-side sales too, which also lose market share at an alarming rate. To stop the recession after only losing most of its market share, Microsoft decided to make the mind an incomprehensible move by forcing the tablet interface into servers . If it does not open your eyes to how Microsoft is blind, then nothing can.
To improve matters, Ballmer did not recognize that the company had major problems, did not say that their actions taken could not only eliminate them radically, but also destroy the market for other products that were previously safe and did not announce at least something something that could shed light on it. Instead, he chose a scapegoat, fired Steve Sinofsky, and reported that Surface’s sales were “modest”. IPad sales are not modest. IPhone sales are not modest. Android phone sales are not modest. Android tablet sales are modest compared to Apple products only. Surface sales are also not modest, they are just a disaster.
Let's go back to Ballmer's eulogy about Sinofsky, remember? He said that this guy gave them everything, did an excellent job, even being fired, instead of Ballmer, most likely. The rest of the quotation is devoted to how Microsoft is now one, forward colleagues. All works as one. True, you will be forgiven if you think of it as a single whole, which will lead to even greater integration in the future. Fine.
Unless you have an iPhone, iPad, phone or tablet on Android, they do not work well with Microsoft, as Microsoft intended. They cannot work with Office, they cannot be integrated with Server 2012 applications, and they cannot execute that small number of applications for Windows 8 / WART that exist now. Of course, Halo 4 will not run on them, and there will never be a surface, but there will be a choice of applications compared to which Microsoft looks like a dwarf, and you can not mention the music and video libraries that have no equal. If you give up your iPhone, iPad, phone or tablet on Android, you can be part of 2% of Microsoft loyal users who believed all the promises and enjoyed a world that has no other products besides Microsoft.
For some reason, 98% of the market does not seem to be about to give up its devices. In fact, you could argue that the opposite is happening. Windows 8 sales are shrinking, and the target audience does not seem to want to pay more for less functionality just to get an OS that has “modest” sales and no apps. For good reason. Abandon iTunes and a collection of purchased songs, movies and TV shows? From applications for Android or iOS, for which there is no equivalent in the Microsoft ecosystem? All this for a lot of money and a weird, disappointing interface? What is there not to like? For whatever reason, at least one user might not want to buy all of their libraries again, just to switch to Surface?
For some reason, people don't just stand by; Users who previously bought a computer on Windows waited indefinitely for an upgrade, either decided not to do it, or have already done so long ago. That deadly helix of a small market share doomed Windows Phone 7 and 8 to failure, sticking WART and Surface, and the entire OEM community is looking for or creating viable alternatives to Windows itself. It is said that Microsoft itself has already written off hopes for adopting Windows 8 among business users. This means that all the goodies that are in Server 2012, we believe that some may be, will only work from a computer on Windows 8, like the previous 4-5 generations. Microsoft is very predictable.
So Android and iOS are not inferior to the Microsoft market, on the contrary, they eat off pieces from the sales of Windows 8. This means that the attractiveness of Server 2012 in the eyes of end users also decreases. OEMs have an incentive to offer anything, but not Microsoft, and from here it all begins. Already have a generation with tablets that do not have Windows. They use Google Docs, not Office. They use Gmail, not Outlook or Exchange.
They could have used the supposedly decorated Microsoft Office 365, but for some reason they don’t seem to want to spend money on the full license of the Office desktop license, which seems to be required. You can also buy the service as a separate product, but no one is visible. All cloud integration with Windows 8 in any form does not play a special role for you if you are not using Windows 8. Build - and hope that they will come (cinema? The popular quote in the West about building a business, and hope that customers will come - note . Lane.) They built - and customers came. Microsoft built another one, and wonders why no one wants to buy expensive tickets again, which also have small print on the back, that it is forbidden to ever go anywhere else.
As a result, the deadly spiral for Microsoft is already spinning with might and main, and the management spends a lot of effort to unleash it even more. Anyone who decides to indicate that the entire ecosystem is collapsing, or - even worse - to offer an alternative, will follow Sinofsky. Or maybe for Guggenheimer (Guggenheimer)? In any case, Microsoft does not want to change, and this is as clear as day. Even if they would like to, at the level of corporate culture they have already passed the point of no return. The market share, which had previously flowed away with a thin streamlet, turned into a turbulent flow, and management is not aware of this, uncompromising and blind. Game over, the bumpy still pave some time, but the result does not change. Microsoft failed. S | A
Source: semiaccurate.com/2012/11/14/microsoft-has-failed
Afterword
Personally, it seems to me that the article has sensible thoughts:
- new products (Office 2013, Windows 8) offer a new, non-alternative interface that many do not like. In Windows 7 and Office 2010 work is much more comfortable and faster. I tried, but I can not retrain. And why?
- windows phone: questionable interface + few applications
- those who do not like the tiled interface are faced with a choice: either buy Windows 7 + Office 2010 (still for sale), or switch to Apple / Android / Linux (now or in the future)
- it is frustrating that despite the rejection of the new interface by many users, the interface was still implemented. Those who used the search in the Win7 start menu know that applications like the Classic Start Menu are an unequal replacement.
- adequate alternatives to the office and win are not yet visible, but perhaps this is what is going on (because, from the user's point of view, the usability of the latest Microsoft products has been degraded).
What do you think?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/159809/
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