“About five years ago, when blogging as an analyst, I asserted that computing and informational relevance had started shifting from the Windows desktop to cloud services delivered anytime, anywhere and on anything,” Joe Wilcox wtites for Betanews. “The day of Windows’ reckoning is come: 2010 will mark dramatic shifts away from Microsoft’s monopoly to something else. Change is inevitable, and like IBM in the 1980s, Microsoft can’t hold back its destiny during this decade. The Windows era is over.”
“What’s surprising: New competition encroaching on Microsoft’s Windows territory. Mobile device-to-cloud competition’s shifting relevance bears striking similarities to the move from mainframes to PCs, and it is a long, ongoing trend. Microsoft’s newer problem is sudden and unexpected: Competing operating systems moving up from smartphones to PCs or PC-like device,” Wilcox writes. “Apple’s iPhone OS on iPad is one example.”
Sure, “Windows is a cash machine. But so was the IBM mainframe monopoly before the dawn of the PC era and for many years afterwards. The DOS/Windows PC didn’t destroy IBM or its mainframe monopoly, but simply diminish its computing and informational relevance. Windows is on the same track,” Wilcox writes. “The mobile device-to-cloud applications stack will merely displace Windows’ relevance. It’s inevitable.”
Wilcox writes, “Still, it might not be obvious to many people that the Windows cash machine could run out. That’s because change can be dramatic and sudden, although the causes and progression tend to be long-time coming. The Berlin Wall fell suddenly in 1989, but not without Perestroika and a warming of the Cold War preceding it. Similarly, Windows’ dominance will seemingly change suddenly and, I predict, during the first half of this decade. A new era dawns.”
“Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer should have listened to me. In December, I gave 10 reasons why Microsoft should buy Palm. Had he bought Palm, Microsoft’s future phone strategy would be stronger and Windows wouldn’t be weakened by a major partner adopting an alternative-OS strategy,” Wilcox writes. “HP already has announced a WebOS-based tablet. HP’s next, logical step is to release a laptop running WebOS. Losing HP is bad, but there may be more trouble coming. Sony is yet another traitor in the making.”
Full article, in which Wilcox mistakenly thinks far too highly of Google’s derivative Android’s future, here.
Microsoft can’t get out of its own way.
The comments are fantastic, loads of whinging and nashing and bleating from the windows sheep.
I kinda feel sorry for M$.
Don’t get me wrong, I hope they keep doing what they’re doing and Ballmer stays there forever.
But they just don’t get it. They can’t see the forrest through the trees.
>But they just don’t get it. They can’t see the forrest through the trees.
“Forrest, Forrest Gump.”
Over?
It never even got started (in my household)
FWIT, the Windoze fanboys have all moved on to Android.
Ohh, I just read Matias Duarte jumped ship and is probably headed to Google.
Duarte is the creator of WebOS and this news can’t be good for Microsoft.
HP now owns WebOS and Google will have Duarte to come in and clean and polish Android.
I believe the relevancy of Microsoft will dissipate exponentially, unless of course Ballmer pulls a wabbit out of the hat with VS.
“Competition from once loyal partners is something else.”
Partners obtained through intimidation tactics are never really partners. They turn on you as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
Microsoft has once again been out maneuvered. Fortunately, this time the buying public is not clueless for the most part, and its ‘partners’ are not easily influenced (e.g. forced) to bring it back on top.
MSFT’s day as being the Alpha dog and bully on the school playground are over.
Microsoft: “Stupid is as stupid does”.
@ occams razor
Gah… The stupidity of those comments makes my brain throb.
Hmm… Maybe the immanent collapse of industrial civilization will have an impact on this “new era”. Chuckle, chuckle.
This is but one of thousands of article to follow, written by people who grow braver with each passing day, that mocks Microsoft. We love to tear down giants.
Before long the media will begin exposing Microsoft’s dirty little secrets, their astro-turfing measures to steer and even rewrite their criminal history, and before you know it, corporations and customers alike will stand in line to contribute their own horror stories.
The drama will make for an interesting movie; its genesis, the rapid growth, the rise and fall of the most powerful company on earth.
Let’s cast the characters for the movie, k? Any ideas?
Ballmer: James Gandolfini ?
Gates: Robert Carradine ?
I read the comments, now I need another shower.
Marking down a RESPONSE from the author? And talking about how Apple’s going to fail when “Fascist Dictator Steve Jobs’ liver fails”? Dude never said that Windows was going to die — just that it was going to lose its prominence.
Windows is not just constructed for the lowest common denominator computers, but marketed to the lowest common denominator people…
Wilcox is a Windows apologist. He may give a backhanded compliment to Apple once in a while, but still, he’s the enemy.
Jackholes like Paul Thurrott will never get this.
The King is dead, long live the King!
mw: end!
He only saw this coming five years ago?! It was clear over ten years ago that Microsoft was out of ideas. The company’s only expertise was in predatory business practices, and the top management was/is technologically illiterate. So it didn’t matter how much talent they hired, since Gates and Ballmer didn’t understand the first thing about technology. Good ideas almost never made it into products. Copying Apple, an early success for them, became harder and harder because management never grasped Apple’s conceptual thinking. And then msft proved to be bad businessmen when the predatory behavior become less effective. Their new product ventures and acquisitions have failed spectacularly.
Microsoft has been dead for a decade. But it’s such an enormous corpse, it takes a long time to rot.
Microsoft’s biggest failings in the last five years: neglecting their mobile unit, not really trying to compete with iTunes and iPod (Zune and Zune Marketplace is a joke), and not taking Google and Apple seriously.
Not taking Google and Apple seriously is a Balmer ego problem. Microsoft needs a new CEO because Balmer is still in denial and has run the company into mediocrity.
Apple has momentum, so does Google. I just hope Apple takes the consumer’s living room seriously; Apple TV. This will be the next battle ground, IP TV. Google and Boxee know it. It’s time for Apple to dominate that market too.
The company willing to kill the PC was the one who invented it.
That’s the difference between Apple and the others.
Are you sure the picture really shows dawn and not dusk?
I once used the same doubtful metaphor . . .
How can Sony and HP be traitors when they just want to serve something better to their customers than a Windows box?
BS.
And what a bunch of deluded replies here.
Windows 7 has already become the 2nd most widely used O/S in the world behind XP, is a very short period of time, and desktops have seen a resurgence in sales. I don’t see Windows desktops going away soon. iPads are not going to make traditional computers go away. No way.
I also don’t buy that cloud computing is the future. Sorry but I do like the idea of my data and applications to be housed in a networked “cloud”. Who is that really going to benefit anyway ? The providers, and the hackers who steal all our data one day !
or they can’t see the gump for the slump.
Funny how all the statistical geniuses never count iPhones, iPod Touches, or ipads as personal computers or Os’s…
What would the numbers really look like if they did…?
What does the horizon look like with those in mind?
Anew Era, a new paradigm.
Microsoft has abused their customers for far too long. First they got away with grand theft when they stole the GUI from Apple. Then they should have been charged with felonies for the crappy “updated” operating systems such as Vista. They will pay the price for lack of innovation and I won’t cry for them.
“Apple doesn’t offer an open platform like Microsoft does.”
The above is an idiot’s post on Joe’s story. The Mac is open. Anyone can make software for the Mac. Even Microsoft can make crap software for it.
Unix is open and Apple’s OS X uses Unix. OS X also uses internet standards. How open is that?