“Of all of the dramas currently unfolding in the tech world right now, Microsoft’s is undoubtedly among the most intriguing,” Zach Epstein writes for BGR.
“Years ago, just before Windows Phone was first released, industry watchers warned that unless Microsoft could make serious strides in the smartphone market, it would undoubtedly be doomed. Then the iPad and Android tablets began eating into PC shipments and analysts warned that unless Microsoft launched an immediate and aggressive attack on the tablet market, it would be steamrolled by Apple and Google,” Epstein writes. “Fast forward to today and Microsoft’s global smartphone market share still sits in the low single digits. Microsoft’s new tablet platform, Windows RT, is all but dead.”
Epstein writes, “Former Apple executive Michael Mace recently penned a piece on Microsoft’s current debacle. We covered some aspects of it earlier this week, but the broader, simpler theme is one that really is becoming an important question that more and more people are starting to ask: ‘Has Microsoft gone nuts?'”
Read more in the full article here.
Michael Mace writes for Mobile Opportunity, “It feels like the people who were responsible for the original Windows 8 vision and strategy have left the scene, replaced by folks who are tactically tweaking the products they inherited, with no sense of where they’re going long term.”
“In the tech industry we overuse the phrase ‘rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic,’ but in this case it really seems to fit,” Mace writes. “We should expect to see more odd behavior until MS picks a new CEO. Then it’ll be several months of strategic reviews, followed by ritual bloodletting and reorganization. So Microsoft is likely to continue to be confused for at least the first half of 2014, and that’s assuming they can choose a new CEO quickly, something they may not be able to do.”
“if Microsoft is to stay together, the new CEO needs to be either a product visionary or know where to find one,” Mace writes. “I wish them luck.”
Read more in the full article here.