Microsoft 2010 SP1
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
This should be my 2010 predictions column and it is, sort of, but if you’ve noticed I’m writing shorter columns these days but posting more frequently. There’s no way I can do a comprehensive predictions column in less than 3000 words. So what I propose to do instead is to write several prediction columns today, tomorrow, and maybe even the next day, covering in some depth what I think is happening and where we are going in the coming year as a technological culture. This first 2010 prediction column deals with Microsoft.
In the simplest terms what we’ll see from Microsoft in 2010 is more of the same. The company will continue to push its strengths, which are Office, with a new release, Windows 7, with an upcoming service pack and tablet support, the Bing “decision engine,” xBox, which has become a clear winner, Sync, the automobile technology that should expand beyond Ford, and a number of other products and technologies that are less visible but just as important to Microsoft. All these developments follow a theme that I think has been generally missed in the press and that is the continued maturing of Microsoft into its ideal — IBM.
IBM doesn’t even make PCs, remember? They sold that business to Lenovo for not very much money because it hadn’t made any profit for Big Blue in many years. Yet IBM continues to thrive by offering a broad menu of products and services for its core customers. Microsoft does, too.
At this point I wouldn’t say Microsoft has many serious business vulnerabilities. Their efforts to diversify their business seem to be going in the right direction.
For every corporate desktop, Microsoft gets:
$50 for Windows, give or take
$200 per PC for Office per year
$2200 per Windows server
$30 per user Client Access License (CAL) to access the Windows server
$3700 per Exchange server
$65 per user CAL to access their Exchange server.
For any company with lots of employees, these numbers — which don’t even include any client or workstation apps other than Office – quickly add up to a lot of money.
For a company with 10,000 employees, setting them up to use Microsoft technology will cost you $3,360,000. Over half of that will be for Office and you’ll pay that Office tax every year.
These are enterprise sales — a market that Apple, for the most part, doesn’t even address. So in the popular scheme of Apple nuking Microsoft, no Apple nukes yet exist in this space so they can hardly be a threat… yet.
Yes, there is strong motivation for corporations to cut costs and if good alternatives to Microsoft products existed, they’d jump all over them. The problem is there are few good alternatives and no comprehensive ones. The quality of Microsoft software is now pretty good. It works for the most part. Microsoft is supporting its products pretty well, too. For corporations to switch there needs to be a cost savings, a quality alternative, and low risk.
Open Office is getting progressively better, but it is not there yet. Red Hat and its Linux competitors do not offer a comprehensive alternative for enterprises. Understand, however, that Linux already dominates industrial-strength Internet applications and is likely to continue to do so. In that space Microsoft is the little guy and unlikely to get bigger.
Apple has too many holes in their product line to adequately replace Microsoft at this time, nor do they appear to be making any serious attempts to address the enterprise market.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer knows his first obligation is to these enterprise customers. That doesn’t mean, however, that Microsoft lacks ambition in the client and consumer spaces. Look at Bing for example. It is nice to see some creativity and innovation coming from Redmond. Even if you never use Bing, it will still help you, giving Google an incentive to try even harder.
Where Microsoft appears most vulnerable is in the mobile space as I wrote a few days ago. Windows 7 Phone (Windows Phone 7?) may not be enough. A Microsoft purchase of Palm would be interesting, especially if they let WebOS live and grow. Or they could buy Palm to kill it, too. We know all about that Microsoft technique. A more aggressive move would be Microsoft buying Research In Motion (RIM). I see this as unlikely but not impossible and I’d frankly love to see it happen, not just to shake up the smart phone market, but also to throw some Waterloo DNA into Redmond.
As far as standalone and client applications are concerned, it is a whole new ballgame thanks to Apple’s App Store archetype. If the new platforms will be smart phones and netbooks, then they will need new applications. It will be hard to use the old applications on these new platforms. The iPhone gives us a good view of the future of applications, what works and what doesn’t.
Another area where Microsoft has been quiet of late is communication services. This begs an interesting question — when do the telcos become irrelevant? As Google and Microsoft (and Yahoo?) bulk up their ability to support smart devices, what value add does an AT&T or Verizon really offer? What if Microsoft (or Google) bought, say, Sprint and converted their network to purely data? They could use VoIP with QoS for all voice calls. They could hook their giant information and application infrastructure directly to the data network. It could change the game.
In one sense such a bold move is more likely from Google or even Apple than Microsoft except for one thing — its likely negative effect on earnings and stock price. Neither Google nor Apple can afford the hit of absorbing Sprint’s lousy profit margins. But Microsoft, whose stock has trailed the market for much of a decade, probably wouldn’t be hurt as much by such an acquisition. Heck, it might even be viewed as a bold move despite the earnings hit and drive Microsoft shares up.
These latter ideas require scale and financial muscle and I think that fairly characterizes where Microsoft is headed. Bill Gates is gone and Redmond is settling into a comfortable middle age. While this may not be good it was probably inevitable as Steve Ballmer rebuilds the company in his own image. What’s sad is it probably means an end to changing Microsoft strategy over a weekend and sending the company into a tizzy as Gates liked to do. Recent layoffs at Microsoft, for example, have much more to do with remaking the internals of the company in a new, more pinstriped model, than with cost savings.
Mature companies don’t have tizzies and Microsoft is becoming just that — a mature company — but they’ll remain a significant player for another decade at least.
Next Topic — Homeland Security.
“These are enterprise sales — a market that Apple, …, doesn’t even address. So in the popular scheme of Apple nuking Microsoft, no Apple nukes yet exist in this space so they can hardly be a threat… yet”
I don’t see anything for the enterprise in the near or distant future. Their model is just not right for the enterprise.
I agree. But readers keep asking me about Apple competing with Microsoft, so I felt the need to explain. The very fact that Apple (and Google!) licensed Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync speaks volumes about what ISN’T happening here.
My Apple/enterprise daydream: the Mac Pro Mini (a.k.a. the Mythical Mac Minitower). A headless unit in between the Mini and the Pro, with just one upgradeable processor, one full-sized hard drive, one DVD drive, an upgradeable graphics card, one empty PCI slot (maybe), two RAM slots, and a bunch of ports. Guarantee availability of motherboard upgrades for five years to give IT that upgrade path they worry about, and so Apple can call it “green.” Sell it for Mac Mini-ish prices, which might be possible at typical Apple profit margins because it would use desktop components instead of laptop ones. It should also appeal to the Linux/DIY crowd and all the users who want something more flexible than a Mini or an iMac but for whom the Pro is overkill.
A pro mini would be great for me, but it would still cost more than a beige box, and Office for Mac is not quite identical to Office for Windows. Still, a 6.5X13X2″ box, with loic board & a PCIe on a riser on one side and a slim optical drive and a 3.5″ disk on the other would be nice…
“when do the telcos become irrelevant…What if Microsoft (or Google) bought, say, Sprint and converted their network to purely data? ”
Telcos will always be relevant as the providers of the data pipes. If ms or goog bought Sprint, then they would become a telco.
IIRC, Google already owns a fair amount of fibre backbone.
Brilliant, genius, great. You clearly had a good holiday break and your mind is working great.
I think the most likely enterprise challenge is PCs running Chrome/Android.
Most of the software already exists for running Linux PCs in the enterprise, even if its not quite as polished. Android/Chrome + Google Docs/Apps (including hosted GMail) + something like Red Hat providing support/certification is pretty close to a complete enterprise system and is an incredible cost savings.
If I was Microsoft, I’d be very, very scared if Google were to start convincing some big customers (governments?) to try this kind of system out.
When will the US “get” how bad an idea cloud computing is???
In the “old” country we have learned to be a bit more suspicious of handing over our computing and data to the likes of Google and Microsoft. Don’t get me wrong, I love Microsoft, they indirectly give me a living writing applications for their platform, but there is no way in a million years I would allow them or Google to have all my computing resources and I certainly will never recommend that to my clients. I remember Google Video!
Imagine this, you are a multinational company, your head office employs 3000 staff and you switch to Google or MS running all your IT in the “cloud”, you turn up one morning to find that your ISP has gone down and your internet access won’t be back up for 48 hours.
You’re going to look pretty silly when the bean counters work out how much they have paid in salaries for your staff to sit around whilst you get back on line!
Or, Google/MS decide they have had enough of this “cloud computing” malarkey and pull the plug on you without warning and it takes 2 weeks to get back to another service or good old owned IT!?
And this is all before all the issues surrounding how hackers/crackers? are hacking into your data connections and reading all your top secret valuable proprietory IP and selling it to your competitors and the fact that even in 2010 the rate at which data can be transferred to the cloud is still woefully inadequate when you are talking about data warehousing and the like.
Wake up, there is now way in a million years anyone who has half a brain will ever trust a big corporate in the US or any big corporate anywhere in the world to look after their data and IT … NEVER!!!
It’s a pointless fad like tablet PCs (yes YOU Apple!).
End of rant!
Microsoft is a lot more vulnerable than you think.
While I will not claim any year to be the Year of Linux, Linux is making great headway into Microsoft’s markets – both server and client, though slowly on the client side. Slow but steady does win the race.
Per Office, with the advent of ODF and especially Microsoft’s refusal to really support it (yeah, I know there are ‘converters’ out there, but why do you need a converted when everyone else doesn’t need one?). Even aside from OpenOffice (which OO 3 is pretty darn good), there are many other office products out there that use ODF and have been commercially viable for years. Expect to see Microsoft’s share in the Office productivity space dwindle greatly over the next few years as more and more move to other products – and don’t expect any single product to rule the roost, those days in Office Productivity are likely over.
Microsoft seems to be dropping interest in home users of Office with the significant increases in price – and especially the lack of upgrade pricing for Office 2010. You’d think they’d be smarter about it especially since ODF is chipping away their markets – and they’ve already lost quite a few, especially with many governments standardizing on ODF (expect to see more).
But with the loss of Office, also comes the increased likelihood that customers will drop Windows too – so it comes as a double bomb-shell for Microsoft whenever someone switches from Office.
While I don’t think we will necessarily see it in any one year, I do expect that Microsoft’s era is coming to an end, and that end may also spell the end of Microsoft too. Too much of the company is simply dependent on the billion dollar monthly income from Office and Windows; pretty much everything else either eats a lot of dough or barely turns a profit – not enough to sustain the company over the long haul.
Yes, Microsoft has done great at diversifying the company; but most of that diversity still requires the Windows and Office profits to keep it afloat.
@Matt:
While I like the *idea* of using only Google Apps and Gmail, the reality is that the only Google App that is good enough is Gmail and its supporting applications. Docs is mediocre to bad for doing extensive editing. Simple operations like cut and paste and filling down on a column sometimes lag for seconds, while they are instantaneous in Excel or OpenOffice, and a lot of features are absent or incomplete.
If Google could fix just the simple response-time problems, Docs would be much more usable. I’m curious to see if any business that subscribes to Google Apps actually uses any of the apps besides Gmail and Calendar.
You have found the reason for the Chrome browser and OS. The apps will get better. Adobe makes a Flash version of a word processor that is very slick.
I just finished an article in Forbes about using Google Apps. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/1228/technology-google-apps-gmail-bing.html This is in Forbes people, talking directly to the CEO.
I can see that online applications and what amounts to a thin browser is all that a business will need in the future. Why pay for the hardware and software? Moores Law has gone past the point where staying on the cutting edge makes economic sense. This is the future, but will take much longer to happen than 2010.
I am betting my future on Google, not MicroSoft.
You typically publish a follow-up to your previous years predictions and how well they came out. Did I miss that post this year or is it still in the pipeline?
You didn’t miss it. I’m not going to do it. That was my last column for PBS and what happens at PBS stays at PBS as far as I am concerned.
Ouch!
That is extremely disappointing – it was always the highlight of your articles.
I’ll wrap up the 2009 column for you:
for reference, the column is here: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20081216_005509.html
1) Correct
I don’t think this happened, although I don’t follow Mossberg closely. Incorrect.
2) Correct, although the banks tended to deny it.
3) Correct (this wasn’t exactly out on a limb though)
4) Correct
5) Probably correct, though this is hard to measure since it hasn’t happened as quickly as many people suggested.
6) This didn’t happen. Incorrect.
7) I tend to think this is correct, but it’s way too early to prove it.
9) Impossible to say one way or the other.
10) This one is half-correct. Apple is certainly up. It didn’t try to increase its ownership of content by buying free networking, but rather by buying the free music streaming company Lala. Half points.
11) This didn’t happen. Incorrect.
Leaving #9 out of the equation for being impossible to judge, this means that Bob got 7.5 out of 10, beating his historical average by half a point.
You forgot that Bob judges himself harshly, so that any prediction that wasn’t right on the money would have been considered wrong. By those standards, Bob is about average.
Thanks! That was right neighborly of you to break it down for us. WHUT!
Bob, don’t let the facts get in the way of a good column. There is no Office tax for most companies. We purchase Office and hold it for a number of releases. One time purchase.
Lately you seem to be more interested in stirring up the crowd than producing real unique information. Your .docx post was wrong also.
Been reading you for many years and you aren’t up to your old standards.
It depends on your license from Microsoft and your corporate policies. Yes, you can go several years on one copy of Office, but big companies tend not to. Sorry you find my work no longer up to snuff. Maybe it is time for me to retire?
Bob, I’m not sure where you got your numbers on this one. Since the recession (and subsequent downsizing) we no longer qualify for special pricing on office or CALS. that being the case, I’m looking at all options now and I can’t get to the numbers you have no matter how badly I screw up the license fees (with the possible exception of buying it retail- which no business does). Even when we did have an enterprise agreement- there was no annual fee- it’s a 3 year agreement and it certainly wasn’t as expensive as you’re making it out. Can you say where you got your numbers? Additionally you haven’t included virtualization- which (under datacenter) offers unlimited servers for approx. $2000 per Socket. that really changes the numbers
Even amortizing the cost of Office over 4yrs it is still pricey. I just moved a small office (30 employees) to Open Office; their bill was my my time just my time. Now the company didn’t have complex templates or proprietary Office plugins upon which they depended so Open Office was ready for them but that is not uncommon in small businesses that couldn’t afford to keep those things running in the first place. Employees are happy that things just work, management is happy with the bill employees and management are all happy that their documents are available on slick little Linux netbooks when traveling. Apple may not be the future of enterprise but Microsoft certainly is not the future of small business either.
Microsoft has the enterprise market and will just like IBM had the mainframe market and never lost it back in the 1980s.
The problem is that Microsoft is completely missing in the NEW markets that are the future. Sooner or later, corporations will start shifting to these new areas too much like many of them shifted from mainframes to PCs back in the 1990s.
Look at Microsoft’s keynote: They mentioned Zune HD, but the Zune is not just in third place, they’re in third place by a lot. Apple gets over 70% of the market, Sansdisk is over 10% of the market, and the Zune only has a 4% market share. Even worse, this is a market that’s shrinking. By the time Microsoft finally came up with a half decent MP3 player, the market is going away. Unfortunately, this was one of the brighter spots Microsoft mentioned.
Microsoft didn’t mention Windows Mobile 7 at all. No time lines, no demos, no even general sweeping market statements. Has Microsoft simply given up? Microsoft mentioned one new Windows Smartphone the day after AT&T announced they’re going to be getting five new Android phones and both Palm Smart phones.
Microsoft mentioned XBox which is doing well (but has it made Microsoft any money yet?) and a promise of Project Natal, but no mention in the portable gaming market. Where’s the Xbox handheld game?
Microsoft mentioned a deal with HP that will have Bing as the default search …I mean… decision engine. Wait a second! Isn’t Bing the default search engine on Windows computers anyway? Does this mean Microsoft is paying HP not to change Windows default settings? Not a good sign.
They did mention Windows 7, but the demo of the HP slate didn’t go very smoothly. Besides, the HP notebook is merely a Windows 7 computer. Where’s the Microsoft Courier tablet they talked about?
Microsoft can’t buy RIM without getting into trouble with various government anti-monopoly regulators. Microsoft and RIM compete in this market with each other. The only way Microsoft could buy RIM is if RIM somehow shrinks to irrelevance. ]
I too see Microsoft buying Palm. Palm has a platform, but not enough money for development. However, is Microsoft willing to have its main mobile product be based upon Linux and not Windows? If Microsoft doesn’t touch Palm and allows Palm to flourish, I can see it working. But, seeing what Microsoft has done with Danger isn’t giving me warm feelings about such a deal.
Here’s Microsoft’s problem: Windows profitability is lower and lower. MS Office sales are down. How can you charge $50 for Windows and $120 for software when your whole computer is less than $400? In a era where I can’t even get $600 per developer for a version control license, how long will corporations be willing to pay $600 per employee for Windows and Office?
Here’s my prediction for 2010: The idea of each corporate employee needing a Windows desktop system on their desk will become obsolete. Instead, employees will use their own devices (their own laptops and smart phones) via web browsers. If an employee needs a new device, the corporation will help them buy one (maybe even have a payroll deduction payment plan). That way, companies no longer have to keep buying and supplying PCs, and then figuring out how to dispose of them.
Microsoft Office will become obsolete as it is replaced by CMS and Wikis which can be used by almost any device. Microsoft Windows sales (and in turn Microsoft Offices sales) will still grow next year much the same way that IBM mainframe sales actually grew in the 1980 and even into the first part of the 1990s, but the trend is not in Microsoft’s favor anymore.
I generally agree with you, though not with your assertion that these markets aren’t interconnected. Microsoft is doing a terrible job in mobile, as you say, but Exchange is going great guns and it is supporting more mobile users every day. Yes, Microsoft could be doing a lot of things better. The company has probably peaked in its influence on our lives. But that hardly means they are doomed.
One word: Kerio Mailserver. Beats the socks off of Exchange and runs on any platform. Way cheaper too.
I guess I don’t understand. You assume corporations are just going to continue to pay the MS tax? It’s huge, BTW. Insanely huge when compared to what Apple/Red Hat offers. In this climate I just can’t understand that train of thought. Certainly some companies will not change. But isn’t Apple a Fortune 500 company? Aren’t they an “enterprise” company? If Apple can do it, certainly others can also. I don’t see Apple pushing it, but I believe more companies will look into it and gradually see the benefits. You can’t run the same program for 20 years. At some point organizations will see a chance to cut bait and change direction, and Apple/Linux has to be on their radar screens.
I’ve been predicting for about 7 years that the first Fortune 500 company (other than IBM, since they’re self-buying, mostly) to dump M$/Office for some Linux set-up will cause a massive cascade through the rest of the Fortune 500. Kind of a step function. Hasn’t happened yet. IBM still sells mainframes and COBOL compilers to run all that code which has been hanging around since 1970. What M$ has to threaten the Fortune 500 with is _file formats_, not applications (written by in-house coders). To the extent M$ loses control of those formats, is the extent to which Windows/Office become irrelevant.
Exchange is one of the reasons why Microsoft will survive. I’ve talked to a few system people who tell me the only reason they still have Windows servers and infrastructure is due to Exchange. They’re stuck on Exchange and there’s no alternative.
What I don’t understand is why isn’t Microsoft using this monopoly to force people to use other Microsoft products. Look at Sharepoint. You can’t work with Sharepoint on a non Windows system. You cannot use Sharepoint with Firefox. And, if you use Sharepoint, you’ll have to use Microsoft Office.
Why not do the same with Exchange. You want a mobile device that works with Exchange, you’re choice will be a Motorola Windows Mobile phone, a Samsung Windows Mobile phone, or a Sony Ericsson Windows Mobile phone. Why allow Android an iPhones to access Exchange data? The only reason is Microsoft is afraid.
There are two things Microsoft is afraid of: 1). The Justice Department investigating them for unfair practices, or 2). That if they make Exchange too incompatible, businesses might actually abandon it.
I’m not too sure which is the issue, but at my work, iPhones are all over the place with a scattering of Blackberries, and absolutely no Windows Mobile phones. If enough people can’t use Exchange on the devices they want to use, would businesses be forced to find a substitute for Exchange?
Also at my work, Windows PCs sit on everyone’s desk, but most people prefer to use their personal laptops. The sales people’s official Dell laptops with 20 pounds of accessories sit in the corner of their offices unused. They rather use their own Blackberries and iPhones while on the road. Everyone has PCs on their desks, but most people really don’t use them.
Sooner or later, we’ll have to wonder why we are spending so much money on PCs that most people aren’t really using. We stopped using Word for most of our written documentation, and instead use a Wiki. That means people with any web enabled device can access and maintain our documentation.
We cannot live completely without Microsoft. We still are tied to Exchange, and our financial side is all Windows: Excel spreadsheet and Microsoft Project documents. I’m sure we even do a PowerPoint demo here and there. But, outside of finance and Exchange, we simply aren’t dependent upon Microsoft any more.
Granted, I still have yet to see a spreadsheet open the same between MS Office and Openoffice. But Zimbra is a fine alternative to Exchange, and Alfresco supports the Sharepoint protocols and runs in all current browsers.
My understanding is that the XBox is in the black at this time. I think one reason is that the incentives to actually pay for your annual “XBox Live Gold” membership are actually sufficient to be compelling, so there are a *lot* of people giving $30 to $60 to MSFT every year just to enable that service.
But on the topic of handhelds and Zune… if you follow what’s going on with the XBox right now, Microsoft might be making a very large mistake.
The XBox video store was just rebranded with the “Zune” brand. Really. They’re pitching that you can buy the content once, and consume it on XBox, PC, or Zune HD. So far, my own experience is that it’s worse in a variety of important ways than the old non-Zune-branded native video service. But I can’t see them backing away from the Zune-video-on-XBox thing now that they’ve done it and hyped it this much.
You can write games for the Zune HD. How do you do it? Actually, the hobbyist dev environment for the Zune HD is the same as the hobbyist dev environment for the XBox. It’s the whole “XNA Creator’s Club” thing. And you can plug your Zune into your XBox and have your music library immediately be available to the console, in some cases even within music games (such as “LiPS”)!
This “Game Room” thing, where you can get classic arcade games and then play them on your XBox and Windows box… simple games are written for XBox and Zune the same way, and “you can consume it both on XBox and on your PC” is also the way they pitch Zune media now… I will *not* be shocked if that same game library shows up on your Zune HD in some kind of mid-year “surprise” move.
The XBox was doing well. They were really doing correct things. It was serving consumers well. The folks working on it understand their customers and actually try to actively engage with them (cf. “Larry Hryb”).
But Microsoft is now pretty clearly (to me anyway) showing early warning signs of trying to leverage their advantage there to elbow their way into other markets, possibly including: media players (Zune HD), media store (Zune store), handheld gaming (more of a stretch, but the “XNA works on both Zune and XBox” thing… I just can’t ignore it), and PC gaming (“Game Room”, and the recent changes to the “Windows Live Game” infrastructure — which is a dig at Valve and Direct2Drive, and a such is also a dig at retailers).
They’re doing other crazy shit too. We recently got Facebook, Twitter, and last.fm for the XBox, at the same time as the Zune video marketplace. Honestly, the Facebook app is a hidden gem. A real killer app for Facebook is the showing of photos of children. It’s very good as the internet equivalent of a grandparent with a wallet full of photos. The XB360 version of the app is actually extremely good for this application. But the last.fm client is too obtrusive with its advertising, and doesn’t seem to give you enough control over what your hearing (or, if it does, how to do so isn’t sufficiently discoverable — same thing). And the Twitter client is a complete joke. It’s heinous. There are good ways to integrate online gaming with twitter, and they managed to avoid all of them and do something stupid.
It all adds up to: XBox was doing well because it was being run correctly, but now the rest of the company seems to be poking at it and forcing stupid things. This is dangerous. They’re in a good position not because they have monopoly power, but because they were actually doing good things! If they go too far down the path they’re already on, instead of building business for their Zune HD and other initiatives, they’re going to drive people to Wii and PS3. *Microsoft* may be the company that finally makes the PlayStation 3 a compelling purchase for a lot of people.
(Sorry. Somehow this response turned into my own predictions column!)
Makes more sense for Google to buy a Clearwire (WiMAX) and Sprints share and begin developing White Space based solutions with radio vendors. Expand WiMAX to address White Space/700Mhz and AWS1 Spectrum based Data services. These would then be offered via their new Apps Store along with your choice of Data Service. This would also allow Google to work with the various Telco/Service Providers who have these spectrums allowing them to activate their networks.no need for Google to build networks just provide them as a Wireless Data Choice.
This would give Google existing Data Network they can leverage for an aggressive move into VoiceIP based services hosted by their (“The Big Switch”)
Is MS making money on the Xbox yet?
Last I heard they lost money on each sale, and only maybe made it up in game sales.
Sony has always claimed to be profitable on the console itself. My understanding is that PS3 sales have overtaken Xbox, furthermore they’ve come out with a slimmed down version and presumably continue to make a profit on an even cheaper device.
Sony is planning a totally new system, but as with past generations the PS3 will continue for a long time and ultimately be an embedded compatibility chip in whatever new device they come up with.
Clearly MS hasn’t LOST the game console market as the Xbox has been very competitive, but I’d hardly call hem an unqualified success.
The next opportunity to distinguish themselves will be with their new natural interfaces that they are hyping so much. But a lot of programming and tweaking stands between here and there. Remember their voice recognition dog and pony show a couple years ago? The one where a voice driven e-mail to his mom turned into a death threat to his aunt. I don’t think we’ve seen any actual products out of that yet.
While there will always be those who need “full blown” MS Office – I think those get overcounted…a lot. I put a copy of Symphony (IBM’s blue-washed version of Office) on my laptop, and have found it to be great.
Changing topics – would love to see an Apple or Google purchase of Sprint (or Clear?)..Just to have a broadband provider that is not in the hands of Telcos or Cable would win my business instantly.
Bob – something is wrong in iTunes with your podcasts – not downloading automatically -
Per-user MS licensing costs are not enough to matter, relative to payroll and other expenses. Heck– the per-user licensing cost for Cisco Call Manager is about as much, even though one could swap in Asterisk with virtually no user-visible changes.
As long as MS licensing is less painful than switching, and MCSEs are common, interchangeable and cheap to hire, companies will keep paying. It’s easier than listening to the whining, and besides, it’s Somebody Else’s Money.
I have a friend who had a business that sold and supported Asterisk phone stuff. He shut down his business a few months ago.
Asterisk is good stuff. No question. But there is a fundamental issue with providing technology to businesses. Your utility services MUST work, period. You business needs light, power, heat, A/C, phones, a data network, email, and a few other things. You can always find cheaper ways to provide each service — Asterisk is definitely cheaper than Cisco’s phone stuff. The challenge is you must keep it working. It has to be managed and maintained. If you lose your phone service, your business is almost shut down. If it takes a day to find someone who can fix your phone system, you’ve nuked any money you may have saved putting in a cheap phone system. Yes the services provided by Cisco and the telco’s is expensive. But the quality of their service is rock solid and they are their to help you when something breaks.
Sometimes it is better to pay more for a known good service and put your business at risk.
My friend made good money not only selling phone systems, but supporting the phone systems sold by others who had gone out of business. Now he had gone out of business and a lot of firms in the Carolina’s may have to put in new phone systems.
If I can’t open the documents and plans my customers send me, then I’m out of business. As much as I would like to send Microsoft less money, the simple fact is I can’t risk my business on Open Office. It can’t do all the basics.
You’re saying ‘No body ever got fired for buying Cisco’?
But OpenOffice DOES do all the basics, plus can clean up the inevitable file corruption of those same M$ Office formats. What OO cannot do is run ActiveX and complex Office macros, which are the biggest source of security breaches…and why I am *GLAD* it doesn’t support them. As a Oracle DBA, the most aggravating performance issues I have are caused by M$ Access users bogging the entire production environment with “scripts” generated with tools from this M$ “office suite”…
Hard to believe someone would give up a cash-cow business of selling and supporting PBXes. I’d actually love to talk with your friend about the business if at all possible. I have lots of PBX experience (most especially recently with Asterisk) and would definitely love to figure out a way to continue to support these businesses, especially if they’re running Asterisk. Please pass along my email address, mloftis@tcsys.net — I’d really like to start a dialog. Thanks!
Bob seems to have forgotten that RIM is a very Canadian company and a takeover by Microsoft would not be welcome and would undergo all sorts scrutiny and probably be rejected by the Canadian government. RIM is doing very well for Canada and Microsoft’s reputation in the mobile phone space and in takeovers leaves much to be desired.
I Agree that it would be an interesting fit should MS buy RIM but I doubt the Justice Dept would ever approve that purchase simply due to the amount of Government Usage of RIM. Then you’d have the same situation in Europe, which would not approve the sale to MS. Lack of Competition.
On the Apple Enterprise Offerings, they’re not even targeting that market. Sure they offer the X-Serve servers but the only use I’ve seen of them is limited to small work groups or specialty shops that use Apple Hardware exclusively. They Simply can not compete with the offerings of Dell/HP and others by offering a single product.
I’m on the Windows Phone team and look forward to seeing some folks here – including the inestimable Mr. Cringely – eat some words in the future. : )
Which Windows Mobile Phone Team are you on? Are you part of the old Danger team, under the Premium Mobile Experiences team which is responsible for Project Pink, the Entertianment and Devices Division which is working on the Zune Phone, or the Windows Mobile in the Mobile Communications Business Group?
I’d like to see that happen too. But my experience so far using Windows Mobile devices has pretty much sucked. Had an old girlfriend who AT&T suckered into one of them, saying “its just like the iPhone.” (This was when it was hard to get one at the corporate stores.) Going down the road using a stylus to dig through menus and type while she was driving her bumpy crossover, telling me what she wanted me to lookup, convinced me that you guys had lost this round big time.
You will have to do more than have downloadable apps and a neat user interface. This thing better speak to you with Majel Barrett’s voice when you ask it a question, and it better know what you are thinking before you realize it yourself. It needs to be f-ing amazing. Otherwise, Apple and Google have you beat already. You know Apple for one isn’t standing still, and they aren’t as dumb as Sony.
I’m sorry – I’m sure you’re with a talented group – but there is no way any version of Windows Mobile could be good enough to overcome the iPhone/Android juggernaut – and WM’s own inertia of years of mediocrity. It would have to be both better than it’s competitors and royalty free.
[...] Shared I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Microsoft 2010 SP1 – Cringely on technology. [...]
How likely do you think it is that Google would buy T-Mobile USA? Seems more likely to me than them buying Sprint. I base that more on a gut feeling than on any firm evidence. I also don’t know how much it’s worth Deutsche Telecom.
1-7-2010 “several prediction columns today” – first bad prediction
Would it be possible to buy Sprint and then kill its cell phone model? Isn’t Sprint licensing that spectrum from the feds (FCC) for a specific purpose? Or, having paid for the spectrum, can Sprint just declare ‘We are no longer a common carrier’ and do whatever the heck they want?
I do miss your predictions, Bob. Are there any predictions here? How are you going to rate, come next year, your accuracy concerning a pronouncement such as, ‘I really hope this will happen’?
The Cringely RSS feed seems to be dead. When I click on the word “entries” to the right of the RSS icon and the word “Subscribe” which are on the top of this page at the far right, I go to a page that has no entries. (Even though I got there from a page with one of the entries it doesn’t have …)
Hope it gets fixed. Maybe Feedburner is messed up.
Still not working.
FYI TO ROB:
The bookmark is not loading new columns for your site in Firefox 3.5.5.
P.S. I enjoy reading your responses to reader comments… thanks for the interactivity!
Your comparison between MS and IBM is pretty good. Human being are predictable, that’s what makes human affairs predictable. Human beings are predictable because people are lazy, short-sighted, and prone to conditioning. So it’s up to each individual to commit to change. You, sir, for example, does not depend on Office or any MS technology to communicate or make a living. And if people look around, other than .NET programmers, nobody needs to depend on MS technology. The niceties about the newer Office comparing to GDocs or ODF is all a matter of how we GOT USED TO the features and speed. The way most people use Office seems very inefficient and a waste of money to me. Even in my office that is a total MS shop, Chrome and Google Earth is very popular. We seem to hold on to IE for each others sake. Nobody wants to make the decision to use something else. But as IT budget continue to decrease, at some point newer CIOs will be asked to trim cost and increase efficiency. At that point your numbers will be very handy for argument against a legacy system in the face of a mobile, remote workforce.
[...] prices up by 10%, confident things will turnaround for the beleaguered company. Cringely thinks Microsoft may actually make a play and buy the company, just to keep its hand in mobile market, since its own [...]
[...] Read it. Bill Gates is gone and Redmond is settling into a comfortable middle age. While this may not be good it was probably inevitable as Steve Ballmer rebuilds the company in his own image. What’s sad is it probably means an end to changing Microsoft strategy over a weekend and sending the company into a tizzy as Gates liked to do. Recent layoffs at Microsoft, for example, have much more to do with remaking the internals of the company in a new, more pinstriped model, than with cost savings. [...]
Bob:
In my BlackBerry Planet book I note that RIM is staying close to MS in the enterprise, but wonder why the company does not expand its OS to include tablets and netbooks.
In addition I don’t think Apple is a any threat to MS and RIM in the enterprise, but Google definitely is – see recent utterances by Eric Schmidt. With regard to mobile phones, RIM can’t compete with free ad supported devices, so they either get into the mobile ad business themselves, or doom themselves to being googled to death.
Google, Apple, and the Internet do not pose a great direct threat to Microsoft in the next 10 or 20 years, but their technologies will lead to great financial pain for it’s corporate customers. Now smaller more nimble start-ups and companies that didn’t exist in the 1990s can use technologies to be more innovative than Microsoft’s client at much less cost.
Seems like a very US centric view regarding mobile phones.
Nokia sells more phones than anyone else in the world, and i believe more smartphones than anyone else too (or are most nokia’s now only feature phones!?). Sure they aren’t that big in the states, but they are big everywhere else.
Why would they decide to just become a ‘me-too’ android handset maker when they are market leaders? Makes no sense to me.
[...] BALLMER ON THE FUTURE AND NATURAL USER INTERFACE January 12, 2010 by Warner Crocker – 0 views – tags: ballmer, future, natural Sponsored links: Steve Ballmer had an interesting post on The Huffington Post , timed to run with the buzz generated by his CES2010 keynote, that by most accounts fell somewhat flat. He focuses on the Natural User Interface or NUI, which includes touch, gesture, speech, handwriting, and vision.Im glad to see him mention handwriting, even in a list of NUI elements, but most of the article focuses on Project Natal, which is all about gesture based gaming to a large extent. Microsoft obviously sees this as…Continue your reading to gottabemobile.com or search more about ballmer future naturalRelated Posts :MSI demoes 1080P Projector PC conceptMSIs new projector concept isnt only just a projector. Demoing at CES, MSI is combing the brilliance of a projector with the versatility of a PC. Thats right its a projector with a built-in PC, and cam project up to of 60 glorified inches of HD video on to any white screen, wall,…Nexus One phone pricing informationGoogle will be releasing their Nexus One phone today. A lot of information about the Nexus One has leaked, including the price. The picture above is a screenshot of a Google page that reveals the pricing of the Nexus One. You can buy the Nexus One Phone from T-Mobile for $179.99 with…Nexus One priced against iPhone 3GS Pre DroidWe've seen how the cost of the Google Nexus One stacks up against, well, itself. But how does the Nexus One and its official T-Mobile plan stack up against the iPhone 3GS (AT&T), Palm Pre (Sprint) and its Android cousin, the Motorola Droid (Verizon)? See the bottom line after…Second Generation Garmin Phone Coming To T MobileYWhile the tech world watches Las Vegas this week for any surprise mobile tech new, s the depths of the FCC contain secrets. For those of us who are T-Mobile faithful, seeing the phrase AWS in a FCC doc always makes our eyes widen. Though in this case, given the mega-fail of the first…ECS H57 and H55 Motherboard Series for Home EntertainmentElitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), a leading motherboard, graphics card, desktop system and notebook manufacturer, today announced ECS H57 and H55 series of motherboards with versatile technologies and features meeting next generation of HTPC. Both ECS H57 and H55 supports the latest…Related Videos :New natural gas storage cavern created in Spindletop…Dave Schultz vice president of asset development for AGL Resources talks about the new natural gas storage cavern being created within the Spindletop Salt Dome for Golden Triangle……source: youtube.com/-Ww-Huih_PUCartoon predicts the future 50 years ago This is amazing…This Cartoon predicts the future 50 years ago This could have been made yesterday Report sponsored by www StashYourSwag This Ebook has over 100 Secret hiding places in your house for……source: youtube.com/WB6p5QPVhPIJudgement Day How the Sun Will Rise in the Westspecific verses in the Holy Qur an that speak about five major cosmological events immediately preceding the Day of Judgment Dr Munir puts you on the edge of your seat as he explains……source: youtube.com/w7mxxyniYq8Related Blog Posts :iCoreworks Named as a Future 50 Winner by Washington…MCLEAN Va BUSINESS WIRE iCoreworks the Nations Capitol VoPIpany is proud to announce that they have been recognized as one of the Future 50 Winners by Washingtons …source: your-story.orgBharat Book Bureau The Future Demographics Bulgaria…To know more and to buy a copy of your report feel free to visit http www bharatbook detail asp id 64793 rt The Future Demographics Bulgaria html Or Contact at Bharat Book Bureau Tel 91 22 27578668 Fax 91 22 27579131 …source: bharatbookseo.blogsome.comPDNPulse Future of Photobooks Discussion Becomes a…In early December a pair of bloggers Miki Johnson of Livebooks Resolve blog and Andy Adams of Flak Photo got together to crowd source a blog based discussion on the Future of Photobooks A number of photographers publishers and …source: pdnpulse.comRelated Bookmarks :Watching the deer in rutting season in the Natural Reserve PThe sighting of deer in rut takes place during March and April each year in the Reserve Luro Provincial Park located 35 miles south of Santa Rosa National Highway No 35 The deer rut is a kind of hoarse…by: (Watching the deer in rutting season in the Natural Reserve P) diggs, commentsSonoma Wine Tours 2 Go Passport Weekend May 16Come explore a weekend of exceptional wine food pairings and good times from over 50 wineries of the Sonoma Valley Meet the viticulturist wine makers responsible for world renoun wines Get a glance as…by: (Sonoma Wine Tours 2 Go Passport Weekend May 16) diggs, commentsZune HD rumor mill 249 720p movies 64GB maybeIts obviously a bit hard to put too much faith in Zune HD rumors when even Steve Ballmer himself cant keep things straight but someone claiming to be a Software Engineer at Microsoft who has also dropped…by: (Zune HD rumor mill 249 720p movies 64GB maybe) diggs, commentsSimilar Topic Blog Posts : I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Microsoft 2010 SP1 – Cringely on … [...]
Awesome I enjoy most of the articles which have been written, and especially the comments posted! I will definately be visiting again!
Do you think I should buy microsoft shares now, or is it too late?
Capital is quite tight in my family members right now so several extras happen to be eliminated from our budget. The 1st thing to go was our cell phone plan and cable wasn’t far behind. At 1st I thought this would be a huge issue as my husband likes to watch sitcom re-runs. Yet, this hasn’t been a difficulty as he is capable to Free XBOX360 as well as other favorites of his. I’m glad he discovered these as I do not want him to lose everything he loves. Thankfully, I am able to write part of our World-wide-web fees off for my employment so we didn’t have to get rid of that also. I think that would are already the final straw for him.
Is it a 30 day risk free trial?