Jason Notte writes for TheStreet, “Innovation boils down to two elements: creating something and making people want it. These companies make both look simple.”
1. Microsoft: First off, after slimming its Xbox 360 hardware and just about eliminating the “red circle of death” failures that cost gamers hundreds of dollars in console investment, Microsoft snagged the console sales lead from Nintendo’s Wii and has held it for months. Also, after years of taking a back seat to the Wii’s fun little motion controllers and Miis and getting beaten to market by Sony’s PlayStation Move motion device, Microsoft sold 1 million versions of its $150 controller-free Kinect motion-capture device within 10 days of its Nov. 4 release and 2.5 million before the end of November. By all accounts, that should have been a tough sell, considering the console itself goes for as little as $199, but a good concept and great third-party partner products such as Viacom’s infectious Dance Central remind us what Microsoft is capable of when its back is to the wall.
Adding ESPN to Xbox Live and putting it all on Windows 7 Phones may be for naught if nobody buys the handsets, but it may have been enough to engage Sony, whose rumored PlayStation phone has appeared in photos on gamer blogs as a tease to a potential Consumer Electronics Show debut in January. Way to change the game, Microsoft.
2. Apple:When your product is left in a bar, completely torn down by Gizmodo, completely revealed to the world two weeks before launch, plagued with bad press over antenna problems immediately afterward and more than 14 million people still want one, that’s the sign of a great innovator. Oddly, the iPhone 4 and its insanely high-resolution “Retina display,” HD camera, FaceTime video conferencing, new version of iOS with AirPlay and AirPrint wireless functions weren’t even Apple’s biggest leap forward this year.
For all of their smartphone, monitor and Mac advances this year, this will be remembered as the year iPad made people ask “What’s a netbook?” and “Why do we need an eReader?” as they snapped up 7.5 million iPads in six months en route to a record $20.4 billion fourth quarter and a nearly 53% share price increase for Apple. With the rest of the tech world playing tablet catchup, Steve Jobs had good reason to smirk from his Infinite Loop stage this year.
3. Google
4. HTC
5. Disney
6. Ford
7. Amazon
8. BYD
9. Fast Retailing
10. Haier
Full article, Think Before You Click™, here.
MacDailyNews Take: TheStreet must be shooting for the Travesty of the Year Award. TheStreet’s descriptions of each company speaks volumes about their bias. “Smirk?” Puleeze. Placing Microsoft above Apple for a video game over the device that this year shifted the personal computing paradigm (a paradigm, by the way, that Apple themselves created and which the derivative Microsoft copied poorly to great profit) is not only a joke, but also an act of hit-whoring that would embarrass even the likes of John Dvorak.
TheStreet is shameless.
To snag Number 1, Ballmer’s neck must be awfully stiff after giving so much head. It’s been reported that his mouth is STILL stuck open.
Think Uncle Fester sans lightbulb.
I wonder how much M$ paid to get listed as number 1.
Anybody want to guess?
I saw a Kinect in action at brother’s house over Christmas. It’s not a bad product.
But putting it ahead of the iPad is like praising a dog for sitting when it routinely shits on the carpet.
Just speculating here but I believe the street along with scott moritz are ordered by jim cramer to spill this crap out in order to prevent the sec from screwing jim c over his bias and cheerleading of aapl on his tv show. So he can say well we are a balanced snd objective company, Im 99% sure im right about this.
WTF was he smoking. I have not bought Microsoft product since the late 90s.
It easy to innovative when you steal other people idea, screw it up and market as your own.
“and just about eliminating the “red circle of death” failures that cost gamers hundreds of dollars in console investment”
Oh good God. Yes, thank you Microsoft. Thank you for your incredible innovation in making your products actually, you know, just about work sometimes.
BWwaaaahhhh ha ha ha ha…
Is the sky blue in your world TheStreet?
Just beyond belief that they are so totally out of touch with reality.
Who cares!
The author, by definition, lowered the bar enough to make it possible to include Microsoft in the top ten. Once there, all he had to do was single out one thing Microsoft did right, for once, to put them at number one.
BFD! Every one of those companies could have made the number one spot.
Low hanging fruit Jason, low hanging. Lazy fsck.
Is today April 1st.
If MST us #1 why is its stock always soo low?
Your comment absolutely “LEVELED” me.
I’m still falling off my chair laughing!
The Street’s new name is Mud (Trails)…..
So, by extension, Ballmer has to be CEO of the year, for all of the innovations he has pushed MS to unleash on unsuspecting consumers. XBox—is that some game thing for teen-agers?
Jason Notte: “Innovation boils down to two elements: creating something and making people want it. These companies make both look simple.”
Microsoft?
hahaha
HaHaHa
HAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Riding on Microsoft’s coat tales, eh Jason? Right down into the sewer of TechTard Journalism.
Saying MS was the most innovative of 2010 is like saying Japan was the most innovative country of 1957.
The Street’s cred is now on par with most grocery store rags.
The true test of an innovation is how indispensable it is in the future. The light bulb became the symbol of invention, the graphic interface widely used in the lisa and the mac in 1984 changed computing to where it is unthinkable to use a computer that doesn’t have one.
Funny that the Street honors a company whose flagship products: windows, word, ms sql, exchange, are all copies of other pre-existing products. Seems to me that all microsoft does is copy and write big checks.
Today and for the next five years or more the most desired new computer will be an ipad or an ipad variant. After all, the ipad is designed to replace that most basic of inventions, paper. That is what I call innovation.
Fox News style reporting. Up is down.
OMG! X-Boxed! The Street just lost whatever credibility they had with this announcement. Microsoft #1 Innovator? ahahahahahahaha
Well, at least The Street did better than CNN, who’ve just awarded the iPhone the No. 1 spot on their list of “The 10 biggest tech ‘fails’ of 2010”. In fairness, they concede that “fail”, in this case, is a relative term.
So, “The Street” gives microsoft credit for innovation because they got around to fixing some faulty hardware, and bought a company that had an input technology?
This Jason Notte guy is a moron.
-jcr
MS bought the tech for Kinect.
Microsoft? He means GestureTek. MS only licensed the technology.
http://www.gesturetek.com/products/technologyandlicensing.php
Tell me that people aren’t stupid enough to believe this tripe from TheStreet. Rabid desperation if you ask me.
=:~)
Didn’t Microsoft buy Kinect from another company….or just bought the whole damn thing? That by itself should disqualify them from even making the list.
M$ must have paid a looooooot $ to get there!…