Thursday, January 29, 2009
Microsoft needs some buzz in mobile
Microsoft is getting hammered in any market, but in particular in mobile, which happens to be the fastest (and only) growing segment of the market (yep, netbooks are part of mobile in my world).When it comes to mobile, Microsoft flagship product is Windows Mobile. A bad looking, badly managed, low performance, slow selling operating system. In any market, Microsoft usually gets it right at version five. In mobile, we are at 6.5 and still they are years behind the competition (quoting Apple).
The last blow to MSFT is Motorola abandoning any effort on Windows Mobile. They are fully and only concentrating on Android. It is public news, you can even look at areas where MOTO is hiring: Android only. Windows Mobile is becoming just an add-on, something to drop soon.
Same for Palm. They are about to come up with the new Pre. Guess what will happen to their Windows Mobile lineup? Yep, we agree.
Who is left? HTC. Granted, they are fast growing. But they are now the leading supporter of Android (the G1 is made by HTC and I would guess the G2 will be HTC as well). And maybe Samsung and LG, that seem to have other plans as well.
Bottom line: the game of Microsoft, to reproduce in mobile the dynamics of the PC world has failed. There, they have a ton of HW vendors selling the same exact OS. Here, it just did not work as they planned.
I used to joke about this with something I heard once: if I give my daughter a hammer and tell her "be careful you could get hurt", she is likely to get hurt (maybe your kids are smarter than mine, I urge you to try it tonight to see if it is true ;-) Anyway, she will get hurt once. But she won't do it again. I can guarantee you.
HW vendors have seen what happened to them in the PC world. Totally marginalized. They won't let Microsoft or anyone else do it in mobile as well. They are much smarter now. They know they have to control their destiny and differentiate on the OS as well. They know the answer is open source.
Now Microsoft needs to do something. Quick. In an interview with CNET, Andy Lees said:
Nice way to say "we tried the game we played in the PC world and, oops, it failed".[..] Microsoft's efforts to make sure that its mobile software could run on a wide range of phones resulted in an operating system that failed to take advantage of advances in hardware. "We aimed to go for a lower common denominator," Lees said.
He added:
"You are going to see a bunch of announcements at Mobile World Congress but also it is going to be the beginning of a 12-, 18-month period where you are going to see a whole bunch of different stuff"So, MWC in February is the turning point. They have to come up with something great, something that will have people say wow. It is probably be a combination of the Sky services (a MobileMe and AppStore equivalent) and - maybe - a new strategy for the phone (or a phone itself? I would not rule it out). I haven't heard much since they acquired Danger and I am ready to bet MWC is going to be their coming out party.
They need buzz. Badly. A new phone would be just the right thing. They are a HW company after all (the XBox is one of the few positives going on at MSFT right now). Or it might be open sourcing Windows Mobile. That would be so cool.
With a suggestion to Andy: please try to avoid statements like the following, if you can:
"Our competitors are scrambling to try and copy our success"Yeah, right. The one you had in the PC world ;-)
Posted by Fabrizio at 08:38
9 Comments:
Hey idiot, Windows Mobile outsold the slow-selling iphone last 3 months.
Comment Posted at 11:23
Fabrizio said...
Nice comment :-)
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 11:26
That would be nice to have WM go open source. But, FYI, it won't happen...
I have noticed that Windows Mobile has been getting slower and slower, while the devices haven't kept up. I had PPC2000 and it was zippy. PPC2002 was alright, but kinda slow. WM2003/SE was zippy again. WM5 had a performance hit, acceptable. I tried WM6, and it was very sluggish. Not acceptable.
I'm waiting for XDA-developers to port Andriod to my PPC. :)
As for the iPhone, I've seen more iPhones than WM devices.
Comment Posted at 11:46
Palm OS 5, imo, is far superior to both the Iphone/Itouch software and the RIM blackberry software. Gosh, when there were rumours that Iphones would support copy and pasting... Palm's been doing that for , goodness, more than 10 years? I still don't see a word-processor functionality on the Iphone or the Blackberry. Just my thoughts.
Comment Posted at 13:15
with respect, Fabrizio, if you really don't get it, it might be better to stay away from the keyboard. Actually I'd stay away from all sharp objects (pens and stuff) altogether...
Comment Posted at 06:26
Orient said...
Fabrizio-I think you're missing the bigger picture here or are just horrendously biased-I'm not sure which. Windows Mobile has its limitations, but open source does not suit all segments (why does RIM have over 20 million subs??). MSFT is doing pretty well in software + services and cloud computing overall-do you really think they care if it's Windows Mobile or another platform provided it has a STRONG BUSINESS MODEL AND DRIVES REVENUE? MSFT cares about pull through revenue from MSFT software and services-hardware revenue is a blip. In any case, WinMo has been developed holistically since 5.0 and is improving-but of course it does not suit all users.
Also-a few points-since when has MSFT been a hardware company-I always thought they were a software and services company-ans what the hell is a sky service-kinda like a cloud service??
Comment Posted at 06:35
Fabrizio said...
Hi Orient,
I am definitely horrendously biased toward open source. That is not a surprise, if you look at the title of the blog ;-)
That said, I think MSFT is choking right now. In the desktop world, where Vista has been a failure And in mobile, which is the fastest growing segment in the market. Open source is a good reason for all of it (and Apple is the other one ;-)
That aside, MSFT sells the XBox, which makes it a hardware company as well. And the Sky services... just stay tuned for MWC in Barcelona and you will get the answer from Microsoft itself.
Cheers,
fabrizio
Comment Posted at 13:50
Orient said...
OK thanks-I know MSFT makes HW, but it is still more focused on being a SW company-and we all agree Vista was a disaster-but Windows 7 will be huge-and ready to go on its official release, thanks to its seeding into the wild early. If you mean Skybox, Skyline, and Skymarket, three of its cloud-based services-then I'm not really all that excited-sounds like consumer SaaS/webconsole and the equivalent of Nokia Ovi (although MSFT's version might actually work!) and app stores are all the rage right now-there was only so long rip off merchants like Handango etc could survive-
We should meet at MWC-would be an interesting conversation. Are you interested in that? If so-how should we get in touch-and I can let you know who I am (not on this blog of course!)
Comment Posted at 02:03
Fabrizio said...
Absolutely. Stop by our booth #1J46 (Hall 1) for a good cup of espresso and a chat!
fabrizio
