“Microsoft needs to learn from BlackBerry,” Rocco Pendola writes for TheStreet. “It needs to understand consumer psychology. If you’re going to face the consumer you better be good at it. Because, if you stink, the consumer will eventually push you out of the enterprise all together. You do remember when we were told large organizations would never drop BlackBerries for iPhones, right?”
“If Microsoft exits the consumer business, it can focus solely on fighting Google and others in the enterprise,” Pendola writes. “But it will do it — and this is key — without that BlackBerry-like overhang. It won’t have to worry quite as much about being uncool and unwieldy with consumers, who will then urge IT departments to dump both the enterprise versions of Microsoft’s consumer products and Microsoft’s more hardcore enterprise-only products. You don’t see people running around demanding that their company stop using IBM stuff. Not at all. Because when they think of IBM they don’t think of it as a consumer company. There’s no need for IBM to be cool. It performs critical functions — nobody outside of IT knows or cares exactly what — so it stays. Microsoft needs to become IBM.”
“Satya Nadella should be ashamed of himself for even going along with the introduction of yet another Surface tablet,” Pendola writes. “He should be discredited for lame attempts at making it appear relevant. It’s not. Microsoft knows this.”
Read more in the full article here.
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20 years and counting!
Maybe they should get out of the tablet business and the operating system business and just stick with the office productivity suite business? And drop the crummy subscription plan? Wouldn’t that be reasonable?
Microsoft’s strengths, so to speak, are its back-end systems (Servers and related products and services), and the ability to run legacy software and hardware. They should exit the Consumer side, which for the purposes of this thread, are Windows, the Office productivity suite, all hardware except possibly the keyboard & mouse combo, and their various hardware consumer efforts (Zune, Xbox, etc). This will effectively shrink the company down to about a third of the size they are now – or less – but at least they will survive. If they refuse to voluntarily downsize, they they will implode, and it’s impossible to say what the end result will be. Regardless which way it happens, by the end of this decade, Microsoft will be a much smaller company.
If anyone wants some comic reading, go to the original article on The Street and take a gander at the comments. I cannot believe the number of delusional people who think Microsoft can do no wrong and Surface is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
The latest clown car careens into the centre ring to the booming of the calliope and a smattering of applause from a tight clutch of coke-bottle geeks.
Wrong the Coke-bottle geeks use Unix\Linux.
“the current clown car careens into the circus centre to the cacophonous clatter of the calliope and a cautious collection of kudos from the clenched clutch of Coke-bottle clod.”
if you’re going to alliterate, don’t fsck around.
better: “clenched clutches of concave Coke-bottled clods.”
LOL. My alliteration was entirely unintentional, sometimes a careless consonant kidnaps creative composition
oh.
I feel like the boy who, while trying to impress the cute, freckled girl, successfully performed a flawless somersault that risked permanent cervical damage…the exact instant her head was turned.
Your gymnastics did not go unnoticed, and may have elicited a blush.
Heaven forbid–don’t damage your cervix!
“…’cause you know, sometimes words can have two meanings.” – Robert Plant
I understand the people who are locked into Microsoft because their business is locked into Microsoft.
But these people with an actual personal choice, quoting the mantra like they’re dead inside with no will of their own. I have this compulsion to pull out my wooden stake and hammer…
That’s vampires Derek , zombies have to have their heads smashed in.
Oh right! Sledge hammer. Sorry.
I agree about he comments with the original article. Those are the delusional folks who want to believe something despite all the evidence to the contrary. They just make the world more fun!
Hah. I read some of them. Pools souls they are. Lost in yesterday.
The IBM analogy is so very true.
If you think Microsoft’s beleaguered; how about Google? They’re all over the place and still can’t make any $ beyond ads- a shrinking market on the PC side and no $ on the mobile side. Ain’t that beleaguered?
Google doesn’t need to make any $ beyond ads. When it comes to Internet advertising, nobody even comes close.
Everything else is an experiment with their $billions of pocket change.
Nadella will never succeed.
I think this was in the pipe and Satya, rather than killing it outright, gave the hardware team enough rope. He’s still establishing himself, consolidating power in the byzantium that is Microsoft. This Surface 3 looks just as weak as the previous two incarnations of the Frankenstein monster. If it fails, it won’t tarnish him but the previous strategists, and he can pull the plug without an internal revolt—then refocussing the company on enterprise services. He’s fording a stream skipping from stone to stone. I see IBM at the other side.
Read the comments over at the Street. The foaming at the mouth M$ zealots are out in full force and have let go of reality with both hands.
Bring back uncle Fester. He was a lot more fun.
He’s still the majority shareholder
Largest individual shareholder. There are several pension funds that hold more shares than he does.
Yes Ballmer was a more satisfying choice from Central Casting as a doofus looking, fat, clumsy & oafish, terrible vertical dancing, gas baggy, tongue sticking out, Uncle Fester resembling CEO. Audiences are still laughing at that choice, hard to top.
Yes, I agree with Dave.
IF Microshaft continues to try to be the Microshaft of old, they’ll be gone in two years… DISAPPEARED… And that’s ok with me..
The problem with Microsoft (and its supporters) is they do not have any pulse on what the market is doing, making, advancing, etc. because they are still in their own little world thinking that they cannot do no wrong. Let’s face it, as long as Gates is still there, and the new CEO is loyal to him, Microsoft will not change.
The new CEO needs to get rid of the old, in with new blood, and kiss the past goodbye – just like what Steve Jobs did with Apple.
When the beloved Apple comes up with a viable replacement for the stability of Windows Server, Microsoft SQL server, and speedy enterprise and industrial development that I get with .NET/Visual Studio, we’ll talk. The users can’t force me to use Apple toys to run my 24/7 industrial data collection systems, the Blackberry to iPhone thing is another world, vs a valid comparison to the enterprise. Microsoft is making missteps with Windows 8, but I’ll be darned if anyone out there can beat Server, SQL, and VS.
Signed,
An IT Manager
Despite your being completely off-topic, I will take your troll-bait for a little run up the river before I spit the hook out.
There are many viable, and in fact, superior systems available from other vendors, and as an IT Manager, it would be a great disservice to both employees and employers not to consider those “viable replacements”. Apple does not compete or sell into this market so your introductory comments are moot. Not only that, your fear of users is showing – how in the world could users ever be in a position to “force” you to use “Apple toys”?
The article is about the Surface 3, and you failed to mention it even peripherally. You are correct about the slight “misstep”(?) with Windows 8, though your assessment may be a little milder than most have given it. I do congratulate you on your spelling and grammar, a quality sadly lacking on the internet, but I really don’t see the point of your post – do you have an opinion that’s germane to the subject – the Surface 3 – or not? By the way, when you say IT Manager, what you really mean is MS-Certified IT manager, am I right?
Tongue-half-in-cheek,
dmz
WTF? The article was about Rocco talking out his ass about how much better it would be for MS to abandon the consumer market and concentrate only on the back end. TW states correctly that this isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Microsoft has a profitable Xbox franchise that has room for innovation and growth. MS now owns Nokia, which has IP and capability of coming up with new stuff that could indeed surprise the competition. Most of all, MS has the gravy train of corporate cash from back-end tools that allows MS to play around with its complicated consumer software and its new business/consumer Surface franchise. Like it or not, corporate customers that have very solid experience with Windows enterprise infrastructure are just as likely to give Surface tablets a try than they are to abandon Windows compatibility and use ultralight ARM-based Android or iOS tablets. Yes, we all know the iPad has a dominant lead in iPad sales and market share. Does MDN report corporate deployment of Apple versus non-Apple tablets? No, because the vast majority of companies are sticking with MS-based fully capable laptops and are using iOS only for show and tell or clerking duties. For the same price as one rumored “iPad Pro” or a new Surface Pro, a company can buy two full laptops that are compatible with the infrastructure and software that a company already uses out of the box. As long as MS has the unchallenged monopoly on IT backbones in most companies, it will have plenty of cash to sell gaming consoles, mobile phones, and “inbetween” tablet/computers. Apple, on the other hand, dominates only consumer markets and has not made any serious effort in replacing MS in company IT departments. Apple should do so, but apparently Cook isn’t that bold.
Yes, I think I can see IBM on a distant shore as well. Despite the previous rearrangement, and now re-painting of deck chairs, the SS Microsoft plods onward. Even if they manage to avoid the iceberg, I’m afraid the reception from IBM may be somewhat frosty. Wouldn’t it be ironic if, in the end, IBM buys and guts them? Revenge is a dish best served cold, and IBM has been chilling for a such a very long time… payback’s a bitch!
Just musing…
dmz