“Microsoft, as Deal Journal has noted, already has pinpointed Google as its chosen nemesis–its Newman, if you will. But as Microsoft steams about how to find an acquisition to defeat Google, it runs the risk of forgetting it is fighting a war on two fronts: not just with Google, but with powerful rival Apple,” Heidi N. Moore blogs for The Wall Street Journal.
Moore writes, “Apple is just as formidable a competitor, with a well-documented history of menacing Microsoft’s lead in advertising, mobile and software. Apple has something Microsoft wants–and which Google also has: the attention of the American consumer. The introduction of the lower-cost, $199 iPhone is comparable to the game-changing introduction of the iPod and will encourage people to buy more Apple products, wrote analysts at Thomas Weisel Partners.”
Full article, in which Moore also mentions “the ill-fated Zune, a music player that was designed to compete with the iPod and went from wannabe to has-been in the space of a few months,” here.
[Attribution: MacNN. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Mike W.” for the heads up.]
When will Micro$oft buy Apple?
You mean the company that couldn’t buy Yahoo!?
I think the problems at MS are all internal. They seem unable to do anything effectively. They may have two or more areas they need to focus upon. They cannot seem to do anything well anymore, even copy new ideas upside down and backwards.
They may need to fail miserable for a while before anyone can take over and organize an effective effort.
I would think one of the first signs of a transition into recognition of failure would be layoffs. There have not been any yet. They must go though failure before they can again succeed.
When will Micro$oft buy Apple?
LOL. Have you seen the NASDAQ charts lately?
MSFT market value $266bn
AAPL market value $157bn
Microsoft should buy something smaller to make themselves feel better.
Maybe DELL, which by now must have a market value of about 62¢ or something
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Not even Microsoft has enough money to buy Apple.
Microsoft should do the following to right its ship:
1) Fire Ballmer.
2) Fire at least half its staff.
3) Sell off or close down all divisions not related to Windows, Office, or its server products.
4) Make the next version of Windows:
a) based on UNIX, I believe SCO is the version in MS’s pocket.
b) run older Windows in Virtual Machines.
c) scrap the registry.
d) based on user feedback, not IT demands.
e) hell they could even keep their Aero interface
Since that’ll never happen we all must just hope that Microsoft does no further damage in its death throes.
I’d assume Ozy is making a joke, but you never know. Microsoft doesn’t have a fraction of the resources needed to buy Apple, which is worth many times more than Yahoo, without the cooperation of Apple’s board. Since the current Apple board and executive team are very popular with Apple shareholders (guess why) it would be impossible for Microsoft to win any kind of proxy fight.
Fed Gov’t would never allow Microsoft to purchase Apple. The Antitrust police would go nuts. I assume you were joking.
Microsoft should focus on beating Google, and Linux. Google holds the keys to personal information which can be sold to advertisers and others, Linux threatens to take more of the server market (great stuff Samba guys!) which controls even more information. Apple doesn’t matter much except as a profit center for Office, they just sell pretty desktops that can’t run any decent games and toys.
Microsoft should also buy Yahoo and Adobe, and every other hi-tech hasbeen company. They should also get in to the hardware business, buying Dell would be a great idea, SCO too. I’m sure this strategy will appeal to Barmier, more power, more developers, maybe even get a bigger stage to run around on.
It would take years of intelligent research and planning to enable M$ to become a ‘normal’ company.
Because they got lucky with DOS and then stuck a few pictures on top and called it Windows, and because Apple screwed up back then, they have had a weird monopoly and tons o’ cash.
They have have never had to fight for anything, and now that the game has changed, they dont know how to fight.
Bunch of overpaid, lazy people.
Until ALL the execs are fired by the shareholders, nothing will change.
Still, we do have the Big Ass Table, and the Zune, and Vista – the list of amazingly BAD products goes on! LOL!
@Tommy Boy
Number 2 should be “Fire everyone with an MBA.”
@ Gnat Nuze:
Not the brightest post. ‘They should buy…blah blah’.
Dont you get it? Micro$hit doesnt have enough CASH to buy any of the big players, and that includes Dell.
They have enough cash to continue to make a hash of it all – and thats exactly what they will do.
Fat old men throwing chairs.
As for your comments about Apple – you dont know squat.
Games? Who gives a damn? Gamers make up a TINY segment of the market – the biggest segment is ordinary folk using their computers to get email and surf, to buy stuff online, to do online banking, pay bills etc, syncing their iPods, storing ALL their music, watching dvd’s.
Thats Apple territory.
BTW – buying Adobe, Yahoo and Dell would cost over 100 billion – where do you think they can get that cash from?
They can buy about 25 billion and thats it – maybe tat will get them Adobe, but thats another company with a poor outlook.
Dont quit your day job.
@ BSOD: My wife has an MBA. Thankfully she doesn’t work for Microsatan.
Nothing to see here folks, move along. Anyone who declares the Zune a “wannabe to has-been in the space of a few months” clearly doesn’t know what their talking about. More importantly anyone who thinks Apple is competition for Microsoft is insane.
Apple locks you into their miserable, proprietary systems, be they phones, so-called computers, or MP3 players. Microsoft is all about a little something called choice. You can put Vista on a Dell or Gateway or HP.
My advice to the folks in Redmond is to keep doing what you’re doing. Apple will never be able to catch up to your bold, innovative and user-centric products. And here’s a hint for Apple: you aren’t going to get anywhere continuing to make half-assed copies of Microsoft’s fantastic creations. Dorks.
Your potential. Our passion.™
Microsoft would have had to borrow money to finance even the Yahoo purchase. Apple’s market cap is four times the bid price for Yahoo. The FTC aside, the days of Microsoft buying out its competitors is over.
It should, instead, look to break itself into smaller, more agile components that are forced to compete on their own merits, rather than rely on the staying power provided by their current war chest to outlast their competitors.
chill out man, he was making fun of Zune Tang . . .
Let Microsoft be obsessed w/ Google . . . and let Apple continue to make great integrated products
Microsoft has a reason to fear Google more than Apple, as google are changing the way we interact with a PC forever.
Instead of making their own PC OS, Google are changing the way we use computers, to the point we will only need a web browser, as we will get our documents, email and applications from a web based server, via the web browser.
If we do all our daily computer interactions through a web browser, there will be no need for Windows, as we might as well use a free Linux OS. No point paying for an OS, if we only use a web browser.
Even Apple are slowly moving towards the web browser, with MobileMe.
I personally will still use my Mac, than Linux
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Hey, Zune. You’re weren’t even a has been. You’re a never was.
(ripped off from one of the Mighty Ducks movies, I think)
Poor Microsoft, always obsessed with what it doesn’t have instead of what it does. Why not focus on making a decent, secure operating system, office suite, and cross-platform development tools? Because MS doesn’t want to be the best, they want to be the ONLY.
“…has pinpointed Google as its chosen nemesis–its Newman.”
Congratulations. You are the first person to refer to Microsoft as Jerry Seinfeld. I hope Athletes Foot Fungus infests your armpits.
Yes, it was a joke. I recently went to Officemax and saw the mini Zune and a brochure. Now that’s a good joke.
Poor zune users… poor zune tang 🙁 Yes, lets hope Microsoft keeps doing what they do… go lower and lower and lower!
Then they can join all those other companies they bullied way back in the late 80’s and 90’s to extinction!
Oh, yeah, forgot, the only choice you have with Microsoft is what hardware maker you can buy with that wonderful and most popular Vista OS… hey, are they putting that on the new machines, cause mine came with XP, but said it was a Vista machine… you know, to keep those numbers up over at MS!
Your time and money. Our shame.™
We can all sleep at night… MS will never buy Apple… of course how things are going… Apple Inc could some day in the near future buy MS
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Have a nice day:)
Steve
MS keeps learning the wrong lesson from Apple.
They copy the technology… but the revived Apple is largely a product of management focus. SJ came in and cut everything non-essential. For all its growth, Apple has really only entered one new market–music. And it did so carefully. (The iphone is really just an extension of both the ipod AND the mac.)
One of MS’s biggest weaknesses is its Apple envy. The enterprise wasn’t going to adopt the Mac because it had a superior UI or other great features. But the enterprise IS considering the Mac because Vista creates problems for them instead of solving their problems. Some of the annoying security changes may have been necessary. But why is every freaking control panel redesigned so all that painfully won XP knowledge is thrown out and another OS has to be learned. And if you have to learn another OS, maybe…
How many enterprise customers needed a Sidebar to counter Widgets?
And the Zune???? Losing money while knifing your partners. And for what… to copy a special purpose device (ipod)… at the very time when Apple is moving away from it (in favor of small mobile computing.) If MS had half a clue they would have put the 500M into Windows mobile. But then they’d need a clue as to what to do with it.
It’s funny in the WSJ comments to read those who are still stuck in the 80s analogies. One of the lessons SJ has learned is to not stand still. So MS copies the special purpose ipod, while Apple develops a mobile platform. Of course MS HAS a mobile platform… but not the sense to fix it instead of going off on a totally unrelated direction.
Too much money, earned too easily (monopoly) can make you really stupid.
Let Macro$ucks self-destruct without any interference!
Apple simply needs to hold onto its cash, its simplicity and elegance and powerful computing devices and software, and continue to innovate its way to such superior excellence that any other consideration is a joke, obvious even to the lemming herd.