A look at Microsoft’s prospects for the future
Many years from now analysts will look back, draw a mark on a timeline and say, “Here it is, the beginning of the fall of Microsoft.” But don’t think for a second that MS is going to collapse in a week or two. Oh no, we couldn’t be so lucky, it’s going to take some time. You see, much like the Roman empire, MS is going to take a while to completely crumble. And even if they do fall there is no guarantee that they won’t pick themselves of up start over. Or, more likely, something different will arise from their ashes and a new company with an old name will start to compete in the market place.
But where will that mark be? When will historians peg the start of their fall? Personally, I feel it to be in about a year and a half into the future. When Longhorn comes out, and fails to be everything MS hoped it would be, that is where you can draw your line. That is where Microsoft had the chance to reassert their domination and instead they pissed their chances away. Longhorn is going to be a big disappointment to a lot of people. And when all of those people realize it’s time to upgrade, they might just look somewhere else.
Looking at the entire spectrum of Microsoft’s business this is how I see things playing out. Here are they main areas MS competes in, let’s try and predict where they will be in the near future.
Desktop Space – Let’s look at the easiest one first. This is where MS has the most dominating presence and thus this is where they will loose the most market share. I think that the halo effect is just one factor in what will be seen as the Mac resurgence. Thus I imagine Apple will gain the most from MS’s problems. Though Windows will still remain the dominant OS it will be nothing like the 90’s. In a distant third will be desktop Linux. Lets face it, anyone who isn’t a power user isn’t going to adopt Linux. And don’t start in with this “my grandmother uses Linux” crap ok? Because when something goes wrong with her machine she isn’t the one who scours the message boards and forums looking for a solution, no, that job goes to you.
Bottom Line: Safe for the moment but loses imminent
Server Space – The tide has already begun to turn here. More and more companies are realizing that Linux is the way to go if they want a cheap, reliable server setup. I can’t imagine this trend ending anytime soon regardless of how many Microsoft sponsored “impartial investigations” are published.
Bottom Line: Losing ground
Office Software – Momentum alone should make this the most stable of all their offerings. So, when all else fails I think they can return to their roots if need be and still make a lot of money off of the Office Suite. And as much as I hate Office and would like to see it replaced with a cleaner product, it is still the de facto standard for businesses. So, I don’t see it getting replaced anytime soon.
Bottom Line: Dominant for foreseeable future
Online Music – This is where MS really lost out. And guess what? They are never going to dominate this industry like they did the operating system world. Apple has too big a lead on this one for MS to get much of a foothold. But let us assume for a moment that MS actually managed to produce a music player as good as iTunes. Let us further assume that they tie it together with a music store that is as easy to use as the ITMS is. Even if they manage to accomplish these rather difficult tasks they would still lose because of the iPod factor. Now, if MS decided to enter the fray like it did with the Xbox then they might have a chance, but how many years down the road would that be? 2? 5? That’s a lot of momentum from Apple to try and overcome.
Bottom Line: No real presence in the market
Online Movies – They have a chance here to do what they couldn’t do with online music. Having said that I am confident that they will drop the ball again. Right now MS might be thinking that this whole movie thing could turn out to be popular. Apple is already prepping a movie service (just like iTunes) and a home entertainment device (just like the iPod) for yet another 1-2 punch that will propel it further into the media business. Can MS do something similar, probably. Could they do something similar, with as much style, that will be as easy to use in the short time they have? No chance in hell.
Bottom Line: Here is another missed opportunity
Video Games – The Xbox really only had two “killer” games, Halo and Halo 2. The machine itself was powerful, but not overly impressive and the Xbox online service has promise. There was just one problem with this whole product line, it was losing money left and right. MS took a hit with every Xbox they sold. Now, I actually understand their thinking behind that approach and applaud them for having the balls to loose so much money in hopes of getting market share. However, at some point your product has to start making money or else what’s the point? So, with that in mind take a look at the Xbox 360. It has a chance of capturing even more market share and actually turning a profit. However, that will only occur if the first game released for the Xbox 360 is Halo 3. In fact, that decision should be a no brainer. When commercials start running hyping up the XB3, the first images you should see are the Master Chief killing some aliens in startlingly vivid 3D. Anything other that and people won’t care. I know plenty of folks out there only bought a Xbox because of the Halo series. It’s their strongest card and they would be fools not to play it first and often. Of course, we should also remember Nintendo, kings of the video game industry until Sony came in and ho-smacked them to the floor. Nintendo lost its position for the same reason every other console maker lost or gained their status: games. That’s it. Ultimately people don’t care about playing DVDs, listening to music, running an OS, getting online etc. they care about the games. And the company that makes the best games is going to win regardless of what hardware they are running.
Bottom Line: If they follow up with Halo 3 and continue to make quality games they have a better than even shot of becoming the next Sony
Search – As far as online search goes Google owns this sector. Let’s just cut through the MS FUD here for a moment, shall we, and admit that Microsoft is hopelessly outclassed here. Gates & Co. have been talking for a while now about how MSN is going to take the search engine field by storm. To that I have to say “put up or shut up”. I have yet to see anything that would make Google do more than yawn. And plenty of people have said that Longhorn will have Internet search built into it and thus MS will win by default. I think not. Just because they have it built in doesn’t mean the search engine itself is better than Google’s. People are going to go with what they know, like and trust. Guess what, right now that isn’t MS. Same thing goes for the desktop search. If they made something like Spotlight I would be worried, until then their best, as usual, isn’t very good.
Bottom Line: Still getting spanked by Google with no end in sight
So, let me hear your views. In the near future how do you think MS will fare in these areas?
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Two quibbles here:
—Online music: It’s true that MSN Music is sucking wind. But you need to separate the MSN Music service from the underlying MS DRM and WMA codec technology that underlies _every other_ online music service (Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo). Yes, iTunes has a bigger share than these other guys, but the use of the MS technology platform here gives them a foot in the door.
—Search: MSN Search has 20-30% of the online search market, behind Google and Yahoo. Being spanked, yes, but people have counted MS out in the past (remember the original IE—built by Spyglass—was terrible) until 4.0.
It’s hard to believe that IBM, who defined the PC and for many years they were referred to as “IBM-compatible” are no longer in the PC game.
So maybe MS can fall too…
Except, MS live and die on the desktop. They need to dominate the desktop. Whether it’s MS Office, Online Searching, Online Music, Server etc If it has any relationship to the desktop, they will try to dominate it.
MS’s greatest weapon is MS Office. No Office, no Microsoft.
So many corporations depend on MS Office and more importantly, their other applications do. It’s all intertwined. They can’t use Open Office because it’s not compatible with, for example, their records managment syste (RMS). And then the RMS only runs Windows. Oh and the RMS runs on MS SQL backend.
Consequently, Joe Consumer uses a Windows desktop in his office, so when he goes home, he goes home to what he knows and feels comfortable with - and if anything goes wrong, he can ask the IT guys at work! So MS bury their tentacles deeper.
Contrary to popular opinion, MS aren’t getting weaker. Apple are getting stronger.
If Apple (or Linux) are going to make serious and lasting inroads into the desktop market, they have to do so in the corporate market. To do that, they have to get developers of all those periphery applications such as RMS, to develop for platforms besides Windows. But how can Apple or Linux make it worth their while?
I partially disagree with the last statement. I would have to agree that MS is very strong in corporate America as well as in the home, there’s no denying this. However, if you look simply at product branding - and we American’s always do without really thinking about it - there are few corporations with as bad an overall reputation amongst its consumers as Microsoft. Now, I agree with some of the bad press they get but certainly not all of it. Few would argue that they’ve become the company we all love to hate - and I don’t just mean Mac users either. Such hate eventually reaches a point of critical mass, it always does, and suddenly Microsoft products could well become as scarce as K-Mart - forgotten, but not gone. Every empire crumbles eventually.
Rather than focusing on the one thing that made them world-dominating in the first place, MS continues to focus unneeded attention on markets it can’t possibly compete in, the ones mentioned above are good examples. Why does MS want a chunk of the music pie? Did it always desire this? Or is it because Apple already has it? Same thing with search. There’s been MSN for years and it’s ok, sure. But once Google went public you saw a very highly publicized campaign from MS that seemed to almost come out of nowhere. We just got done witnessing this with Tiger. No one knew before Tiger came out what Longhorn even was, now it’s a household word.
The bottom line is this. For Microsoft to stay on top, and frankly I don’t care if they do or not - I feel that they make almost an equal amount of good and bad products - they need to focus on their strengths and quit playing the “keep up” game. They’ve spread themselves so thin over the past few years that somehow Apple found itself with hope after all, not to mention Linux. For a company that owns 95+% of the market, that’s really bad news.
On the other hand, getting Windows up to speed over the next few years, keeping Office as great as it is, and re-doubling efforts on their other outstanding software (personally I find Streets & Trips indispensible - if anyone knows of a Mac replaccement, PLEASE let me know!) will keep them on top for a long time to come. Let’s be realistic here, they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon - they’ve simply got too much money to burn.
Funny that I am using hotmail (a MS related site)! First of all, a lot has changed since these articles were written. What does everyone think of Vista? The David Pogue video was hilarious!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYqA83sitz8&eurl;=
Now, about Microsoft Office…I think that Excel is actually a pretty good program, but I HATE MS Word!! It is always doing things that I don’t ask it to do! I tried turning everything off, but obviously I’m too stupid to figure it out (I guess I need to take a class to figure out how to use it fully). It sets margins without me asking, it thinks I want to do things I don’t. Why can’t they have a “Turn off all the Crap” button so that I can tell Word how I want my document to look? Appleworks does that easily. I highlight the section of the document that I want to affect, and then set the margin (or whatever) and it does what I ask (I never took a class on AW). Then when I go to the next part of my document, it’s still exactly how I had set it previously. Wow, what a concept!!
That said, MS Office is still the giant in the business world. I made the decision to buy the version for Mac because all my colleagues are windows users and they couldn’t read my documents correctly. Funny, I had no problems reading theirs…but the learning curve for MS Word has been surprisingly “UN-Mac-like”. I am used to having creative control, not some company that dictates what they think I should do. It bothers me.
Guess what? Microsoft has gotten into the online music game and “created” the Zune. Umm…there may be some good ideas in there somewhere, but as usual, they assume too much control. Microsoft wants to control how we use the Zune, the way they want to control everything else they end up botching. That’s why they embed their programs so deeply in their Kernel. They do not want anyone to go outside of “Good Papa’s” eyeshot. That is not good for creativity and makes the OS bog down. Too bad they are like that. They have so much power and money they could completely transform the computer industry.
Papa Bill could really use some more insightful creative people on his team that could help advise him in the matters of creativity, in my humble opinion. Many of the people that work for MS are so smart that they sometimes forget that stability and creativity are the life-blood of a good company. Everything is always about the almight dollar.
Think Different.