“In a meeting with financial analysts last week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer laid out who he thinks are the biggest threats today to Windows on the client side. Surprisingly, Apple wasn’t number one. It wasn’t number two or three either,” Shane O’Neill reports for CIO. “Referring to a pie chart at the meeting that gauges threats to Windows, Ballmer said that Windows itself, both licensed and pirated, were the top two threats to Microsoft in the client OS space, followed by Linux, then Apple.”
“Ballmer [offerred] a carefully-worded mockery of Apple’s ‘point or more’ market share growth over the past year. ‘A point of market share on a number that’s about 300 million [number of PCs shipped worldwide in 2008] is interesting. It’s an interesting amount of market share, while not necessarily being as dramatic as people would think,'” O’Neill reports.
MacDailyNews Note: According to Net Applications, Mac OS X’s share of personal computers visiting their network of over 40,000 websites worldwide rose from 7.57% to 9.93% between January 2008 and January 2009. That would be 2.44 points in just 12 months.
O’Neill continues, “Veteran industry analyst Roger Kay, president of research and consulting firm Endpoint Technologies, says he doesn’t see Linux as a threat to Microsoft now or any time in the future, and says it would be a mistake for Microsoft to take its eye off Apple. ‘Apple can move as a unit. The Linux crowd can’t,’ Kay says. ‘Linux is just a collection of philosophically aligned developers without a well-financed backer. I’d be much more leery of Apple, a company with $25 billion in cash and a crack team of technologists and marketeers.'”
O’Neill reports, “Likewise, Tim Bajarin, president of tech consulting firm Creative Strategies, says that Microsoft is in no position to take Apple lightly. He believes Apple has the superior client OS, but that Windows 7 is a big improvement over Vista and should help Microsoft keep their market share steady. ‘However, Apple’s newest OS will be rolled out this summer and could bring more attention to the Mac platform, especially if it is rated better than Windows 7,’ Bajarin says.”
MacDailyNews Take: If Apple’s Mac OS X Snow Leopard is not rated better than Microsoft’s Vista service pack… er, “Windows 7,” then the reviewer(s) in question will be paid off, blind, and/or liars – or named Thurrott, Dvorak, or Enderle.
O’Neill reports, “Another Directions on Microsoft analyst, Michael Cherry, says that Apple will continue to threaten Microsoft on laptops, desktops and smartphones, plus has set the bar very high for customer satisfaction. He adds that ‘even if Apple does not gain market share, there will always be comparisons to its design and quality.'”
Full article, in which, unfortunately, O’Neill incorrectly reports that “Apple announced a small round of layoffs” on Wednesday (See: Silicon Alley Insider’s reports, “Apple: Sales Layoffs Story Not True”here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ballmer’s absolutely correct. Never mind Apple – there’s simply nothing going on there. Just ignore them and they’ll go away. And, now, TGIF, a favorite toast: “May Steve Ballmer remain Microsoft CEO for as long as it takes!”
