Post(s) tagged with "microsoft"
MWC 2012: Microsoft and Nokia et al. need to step up
The MWC in Barcelona 2012 is almost over. Phone vendors are pushing Android devices everywhere. Low-end, high-end, mid-end and experimental phones are all running Android. Except for the Symbian based Nokia 808 with its 41 MP camera sensor. The biggest Windows Phone 7 introductions at the MWC were two budget oriented devices, the Nokia Lumia 610 and the ZTE Orbit.
There is nothing wrong in going after a wider audience by covering more price points; it’s just that there are no high-end WP7 devices to begin with. Don’t get me wrong, the Nokia Lumia 800 is a nice phone. But so is the even better spec’d iPhone 4 from 2010. Windows Phone 7 devices are lagging behind with relatively low spec’d screens, processing power and lack of front facing cameras (on most phones). High-end WP7 phones barely match mid-end Android or iOS devices.
In order to succeed, computing platforms need momentum and network effect. Users/buyers attract more developers to push out great apps which attract more buyers which attract more developers etc etc. How do you get that momentum going? Well it’s hard, but the first thing you need is hit products. Hit products such as the iPhone 3G, the HTC Hero (in Europe), the original Motorola Droid (in the US) and the Samsung Galaxy S. Devices that eat their way into the consumer mindshare. It is great to have lower-end devices available as well. As a complement. But it’s the hit products that get the ball rolling. Windows Phone 7 had a late start in the race of modern mobile operating systems and Microsoft and device vendors need to push even harder than the competition in order to catch up. In my mind, the system is almost there; just give a device geek like me a reason to buy into it.
Graph: Asymco
Windows 8 needs a hit phone, or it’s dead.
Hopscotching between new Metro programs and old Desktop ones–which is what most Windows 8 users will do at first–is going to be an inherently disjointed, unsatisfying stopgap. Windows 8 will only be a landmark operating system if consumers embrace Metro. And they’ll only do that if developers write outstanding Metro programs, and if PC manufacturers create machines that are truly designed with Metro in mind.
That’s a lot of ifs. Most of them will be tackled by other hardware and software makers, not Microsoft. And even once Windows 8 has been released, it will take years, not months, before it’s clear how well they’ve addressed them.
Which is okay. Microsoft is intent on getting this operating system out the door in time for this year’s holiday PCs, but Windows 8 isn’t primarily about moving boxes in 2012. What it’s trying to build is a foundation for a Windows that stands a chance of being relevant a decade or two from now.
- Harry McCracken, Windows 8 Consumer Preview: One Step Closer to the PC’s Future via TIME.com
Microsoft’s huge gamble. If they lose with Windows 8, they will be just another enterprise software company, with a number of shrinking divisions that should/could be sold off or spun out.
Finnish mobile giant Nokia today released its fourth quarter financial results, posting a €1.07 billion ($1.4 billion) loss as sales declined by 21% year on year with smartphone sales and mobile sales down 31% and 1% respectively. Whilst it shows Nokia still has a lot of work to do, it sold 19.6 million smartphones and 93.9 million mobile devices, meaning that over the quarter, sales were up 17% and 5% respectively on the last quarter.
Matt Brian, Microsoft Paid Nokia $250m for Windows Phone Use via TNW
Jerry Yang has left Yahoo, a few weeks after Scott Thompson took the reins as CEO. I looked back and found this from 2008, a rumor that Yang would be leaving the company as part of an acquisition by Microsoft. That deal — for $47B— fell through, and the company is now worth less than half that. As I said then, Yang fumbled the future at Yahoo, and should be shown the door. Now, he finally is out.
Roughly equal companies in terms of market cap — $220B — but with IBM’s enterprise value about $50B, I am predicting a merger of IBM and Microsoft with IBM leading the merged company, Ballmer retiring, and Microsoft being run — at least for a while — as a branded line of business in the twice as large, new IBM.
The fit of Microsoft’s enterprise solutions — Office, Exchange, Sharepoint, database, programming tools — with IBM’s corporate offerings is great. Also, IBM is the perfect partner to capitalize on the (eventual) migration away from Windows as a PC and server O/S.
As part of the deal, IBM would spin out various parts:
We’ll see, but I think $25-50B could be saved in a merger, with all of that going to the bottom line for investors.
I can reduce a way-overlong post by Paris Lemon about what’s wrong with the Microsoft Phone:
Too late, not an order of magnitude better.
The iPhone was easily an order-of-magnitude better that the shit phones we all tolerated when it launched. Microsoft had years to come up with something awesome, and it’s ok. Which means death, today.
Source: parislemon
This war with Apple is starting to piss me off. Google rolls out great new features for maps, for example, that are only available on Android.
Jon Brodkin via Ars Technica
Indoor Maps was added to version 6.0 of the Google Maps application for Android, and will presumably be added to additional mobile platforms in the future. We asked Google if Indoor Maps will work on desktop Web browsers, but were told that “the new indoor maps feature of Google Maps is only available on Android mobile devices at this time.” Microsoft, by the way, already has indoor mapping of major malls for Windows Phone and indoor mapping of airports and malls for the desktop.
Source: Ars Technica
Adam Clark Estes
It took months of waiting, a couple of false starts and a whole lot of speculation, but Facebook has finally launched an iPad app. However, the upgrade is much more than a tablet-friendly version of the website. Facebook is also carrying over its developer platform to mobile. This means that all of the slick new class of Facebook apps that Mark Zuckerberg announced a couple of weeks ago at the f8 developers conference will be more integrated into the mobile experience. The specific details are a little bit confusing at first as Facebook is spoon-feeding the functionality to users, but we can already tell: Facebook is starting to function like an independent mobile operating system.
[…]
As [Facebook’s Luke] Shepard explains [here], Facebook apps will now be fully integrated into the mobile experience as their own apps within the Facebook app. If you receive a notification or request from a friend in a compatible app, tapping the update will switch to the mobile app if you have it on your phone or take you to Apple’s app store to download it. Shepard uses Words with Friends as an example. Let’s say your pal plays the word “quixotic”—a high scorer, by the way—you’ll receive a notification and tapping it will take your straight to the app to make your move. Facebook is also extending Credits to the mobile apps so you can also buy things within their framework. Again, it’s like its own little operating system within Apple’s iOS.
Facebook is headed toward a direct confrontation with Apple and Google (and Amazon and Microsoft) for the future of computing: the social operating system.
Apple certainly shouldn’t let Facebook create an independent app store.
When is Facebook going to develop its own tablet?
Six million copies of Lion downloaded so far — 80 percent more than Snow Leopard - The Next Web (via thenextweb)
Gruber responds to a Windows 8 fan boy, Paul Thurrott, who twittered ‘Hello, Windows 8? This is iPad. You win.’ after seeing a demo on a Samsung-produced tablet:
John Gruber via Daring Fireball
What did Microsoft show, though? They showed a Metro-style touchscreen tablet user interface that is, without argument, original. No accusations of ripping off the iPad here. Microsoft is admirably blazing its own trail.
But the OS reportedly isn’t coming out for at least a year. The demo tablet hardware from Samsung they’re showing it on (and giving to Build attendees) is a Core i5 Intel-based PC replete with a fan. Spec-wise these units are much more like MacBook Airs than iPads. Presumably actual shipping iPad-competing Windows 8 tablets will use low-power mobile CPUs — be they ARM, Atom, whatever, just so long as they get iPad-caliber long battery life and low temperatures.
How will Windows 8 run on such hardware? When will they actually ship? How many as-yet-unannounced iPad 3s will Apple have sold by the time the first Windows 8 tablet hits stores? (Not to mention the many tens of millions of iPad 2s Apple will sell in just the next quarter alone.)
It’s all in the future. All potential, nothing actual. Think about how different Apple’s and Microsoft’s approaches are. Apple unveiled the iPad to the public only when it was a completely finished product, two months before it hit stores. The demo units we in the press had access to that day were exactly like the mass-produced iPads that shipped to customers two months later. Can you imagine Apple doing with the iPad what Microsoft is doing with Windows 8? Say, showing a prototype iPad at WWDC in June 2009, running on MacBook Pro-caliber Intel hardware? Letting the public and the press play with the OS in half-finished alpha state on prototype hardware? Impossible even to imagine. (There were no hands-on demos, let alone take-home prototypes or developer downloads, when Apple showed a “sneak preview” of Mac OS X Lion at last year’s “Back to the Mac” event.)
I’m not passing judgment here — at least not yet — regarding which strategy is superior. I simply wish to direct your attention at how utterly different the two companies are.
Gruber seems to be making a corporate culture argument, but I think this is also a case of Microsoft playing catch-up, from way back in the pack.They hope to stall some buyers from buying an iPad, thinking that some razzamatazz might hypnotize them.
But iPad is clearly dominating the tablet space, and I don’t think Microsoft has a chance.
I am still betting on a Microsoft/Facebook social OS alliance. I wonder how closely integrated Facebook will be in Windows 8, when it launches.
Web anthropologist, futurist, author. My focus is the future, and the tectonic forces pushing business, media, and society into an unclear and accelerating future. more.
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