“The problem is that Microsoft is utterly incapable of innovation,” Taylor writes. “Over the past three years the company has spent about $25-billion on research and development.”
Taylor writes, “What do shareholders have to show for that investment? Vista, an operating system that users were frantically uninstalling within days of loading the cumbersome beast onto their laptops? Zune, the supposed competitor to Apple’s iTunes and iPod? Kin One and Kin Two, Microsoft’s answer to the smart phone? Two intense years in the making before they hit store shelves, they were pulled after two months and scrapped.”
“The stark truth is that Microsoft has rarely invented anything that mattered. It didn’t invent the operating system. It didn’t invent the graphical user interface. It didn’t invent the spreadsheet or the word processor or the Web browser,” Taylor writes. “It didn’t invent the gaming console or the search engine or the tablet PC or server software. It has, in short, invented nothing – or at least nothing of consequence. What other technology company in the history of business has invented nothing and survived for long? Many of them invented very cool things and still didn’t last.”
Taylor writes, “The company should stop messing around and behave like a utility: Cut costs, including R&D, focus on what it does reasonably well and give all the money it can back to shareholders to maximize their returns.”
There’s much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: And, the world awakens at long last.
May Steve Ballmer remain Microsoft CEO for as long as it takes!
I live in Seattle, and the local NPR station had one of the VPs of MSFT’s marketing on for an interview yesterday. It was almost embarrassing to hear how the poor guy had to defend all the failures. He held up Xbox as an example of a success, but from what I’ve read MSFT loses money on Xbox. He also said Tim O’reilly’s opinion of where developers want to be (see other story from yesterday) was of no importance. He insisted they are innovative.
Oh and in addition to the dancing paper clip innovation, don’t forget the barking pooch with the tail wagging who brings you your search results. And the incredibly icky Office Ribbon. Gack!
@liebman Dude, that’s a joke site.
It’s fun to bag on Microsoft, but it’s also important to remember that they know how to sell to big business, who wants cheap, standardized software and machinery that can be locked down. What is hopeful is that enough consumers will figure out that there is an alternative to enslaving themselves to big business priorities to keep Apple flourishing.
But the bigger question is what will happen to Zune Tang?
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When an organization fails, you look at the top.
Steve Jobs has the eyes for real talent and innovations.
Inside MSFT, I would not be surprised to find lots of mediocre execs think they’re Steve Jobs, while a few brilliant minds toil away unknown. And even if the smart ones get noticed, either their projects get buried or they get *promoted* into management and never innovate again like the freedom that Jonathan Ives enjoys.
We will sing.
We will sing this,
“Ding Dong
The witch is dead!
The wicked witch of the (North)West is dead!”
With headlines like this, you really should consider renaming the site to “MacDailyOpEd”. This site is about as good as Fox News in terms of objectivity.
MS innovated bloatware. End of discussion.
“But the bigger question is what will happen to Zune Tang?”
He’ll be replaced by Eric Spielberg.
@Eric spielberg:
“it’s just being moved out of the way for windows phone 7”
…Cause that’s the smart thing to do with successful products – destroy and replace. That’s why Apple gave up on the iPhone 3GS. Oh wait, they didn’t.
Re: This is bs. Apple has 10% or less of pc market and only makes money off of products that also works on pc. Why does apple products also work on pc well because over 90% of us use windows pc. And ooooo kin failed it didn’t it’s just being moved out of the way for windows phone 7 which will let you connect to windows messenger and xbox live users wow that’s innovation. I love apple but windows will never die they run our world.
——
Apple may have 1% Market share but they are more profitable and making more money than Microsoft now.
Global marketshare is totally irrelevant these days.
What’s the point of running a company that has 99% Market share that has a profit margin of 10% when you can make more money as a company a fraction of that size but has a profit margin of 60%.
I know which business I would want to run, and it ain’t the one with 99% marketshare.
Microsoft = Lame
Isn’t that headline 15 years old?
Btw, for the record Apple makes money on ALL it’s current product line.
Proof: 13billion turnover last quarter with a profit of 3billion!
Blows your argument out the water!
@Lamos
The consumers you are describing are going to “settle” for ipads and whatever the ipad morphs into in the future. That will be more than “good enough” for them.
MDN Magic Word: wall
as in Microsoft has run into a wall; and that wall is a company called Apple Inc.
@Eric
“And ooooo kin failed it didn’t it’s just being moved out of the way for windows phone 7 which will let you connect to windows messenger and xbox live users wow that’s innovation.”
Kin failed because MS gave it their Midas Touch — took somebody else’s product that had some kind of potential (Danger) and tried to turn it into a MS product because they can’t bear to think that anyone else can do something better.
They took two years to do this: competed against other teams internally, designed by committee, second-guessed by bureacrats, focus-grouped by 9-yr old girls, aimed at the iPhone OS of 2007 (and missed); and finally put out a product that shamed the carrier — and even MS was forced to admit they were embarrassed by it. Pretty par for the course.
. . . the Mop and Pail ran that story. The Grope and Flail and its corporate masters, CTV/Bell Telephone, crawled into bed with Bill Gates five or six years ago because those running the joint had nothing but disdain for Apple, and spent zillions on a jury-rigged Windows system that was out of date 15 years before.
Heads may be falling.
Why picking on Kodak and Remington? Both have great point and shoot devices!
@ Colenzae
Yes, hopefully they will in 3-5 years… but not yet. For them, they still need to be able to use their printer, for them a $500 screen that they can’t hook up their current keyboard with and have to buy a new version doesn’t sound good, “losing” all their microsoft office files scares them (even though they really wouldn’t), not being able to use any CDs (the cloud isn’t there yet)
and for now, when that average person looks at numbers, a new bargain basement PC or laptop still does have more power than a comparable iPad (bestbuy.com has right now a 250GB HD with 2 GB of memory for $299, compared to the $499 iPad with 512MB of Memory and 16GB HD.
“I got three words for ya — I – love – this – company!!!” (dripdrip)
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, with respect to Microsoft: “Never in the history of mankind has a company made so much money off of so many, by offering so little.”
There is one phrase from the article that really amused me, “… and give all the money it can back to shareholders …”
Maybe it won’t be long before we start seeing people refer to “Beleaguered Microsoft”.
@Eric spielberg
Enjoy your summer. Good luck with 6th Grade next fall.
“But the bigger question is what will happen to Zune Tang?”
“He’ll be replaced by Eric Spielberg.”
Thanks, how refreshing, I mean what would M$ topics on MDN be without the village idiot.
“Microsoft has no history of innovation, and therefore no culture that the innovative find attractive.”
I love it.
You guys won’t be laughing when Cairo finally ships. >.<