I was speaking recently at a software company very interested in mobile apps. One of their concerns had to do with which operating systems to support. Should they do them all? Just a couple? My advice was that three’s a crowd.
Technical markets tend to divide like bettors at the racetrack where five percent win, 10 percent break even while 85 percent lose. Turning these numbers on their head and applying them to mobile OS revenue, IOS (iPhone, iPad, iGizmo to be named later) will generate 85 percent, Android 10 percent (because it is Open Source and free) leaving only five percent max for mobile OS number three, which could be Blackberry or Windows Phone 7 but can’t be both.
Notice this is all about revenue. I’m not saying Android won’t have more phones in use than Apple, just that Apple will make a lot more money from its phones.
Since Microsoft feels it can’t afford to miss the mobile transition, they’ll do anything to hold at least the third spot, which is why I expect Redmond to eventually acquire RIM. That would actually be a better than usual deal for Microsoft. RIM has (residual and fading) market share as well as incredible talent at its Waterloo, Ontario HQ, not to mention a bootload of cash. What they don’t have is a clue, which is why they need Microsoft, which is clueless, too, but will at least provide desperate new leadership, mass, and marketing clout.
Hey, I think that was my first prediction for 2012!
Another option for Microsoft would be to embrace Android and reposition Windows Phone as a shell, making Android apps look and function like Windows apps. This is not as stupid as it sounds. Thanks to its aggressive legal department, Microsoft already makes more money from Android than does Google, so Android’s success can be seen as Microsoft’s success if you squint a little. Microsoft could specialize in Android services where Google might be letting users down a bit and the Microsoft/Android Application Store could sell apps for both OS variants, undercutting Google.
That’s prediction #2: If Microsoft doesn’t buy RIM they’ll license Android.
If they are really on their game Microsoft will do both (buy RIM and license Android) which would be a true game changer.
This potentially leaves a little room for other candidates for mobile OS position #3, but I’m at a loss for a good business case for even trying. Consider, for example, Intel’s new mobile OS project called Tizen, which replaces the failed Meego.
Tizen looks to me like a bad bet. Intel even championing a mobile OS against IOS and Android is spitting in the wind. The best that Intel can hope is to grab third place, which would still take a miracle.
Is a potential five percent market share worth Intel’s time? I don’t think so.
Prediction #3: Tizen will fail in 2012.
First! No more than 2.
Two party system.
Regardless of what makes good business sense, I can’t see Microsoft licensing Android. And if they bought RIM (which they could easily do), where would that leave Microsoft with regards to Nokia? Two’s company but three is a crowd there as well.
Yes, it would be completely uncharacteristic of Microsoft to license Android. But what HAS been characteristic of Microsoft in this space other than total failure? The mobile transition is real, Microsoft, for all its wealth, looks like the big loser in this platform change. They NEED radical action. Embracing Android as a platform yet competing head-to-head with Google for Android services gives Microsoft a fighting chance while, at the same time, generating lots more of that license revenue Microsoft (not Google) is earning. It’s a stretch, yes, but without doing something really truly bold Redmond is toast.
Bob,
I just can’t agree with you here. Perhaps if Ballmer leaves. Mr. “I’m going to f*cking Kill Google” isn’t going to license bupkis from mountain view.
The stretch is to say that Microsoft is earning that license revenue. You and your readers know that Microsoft did NOTHING to earn that revenue, short of mafia-style extortion (aggressive legal department? – that’s putting it way too nicely). Microsoft has yet to identify any of the patents they claim are infringed, and has not had to defend their claims in court. If they did, we could expect results similar to the SCO fiasco. We note they didn’t threaten Google, they’re going after the hardware manufacturers with terms slightly better than fighting them off in court. You give them way too much respect.
I wonder if Android needs Microsoft more than Microsoft needs Android? What if Apple starts getting traction on its patent infringement suits? Is there a real risk for Google? A possible alternative would be for Google to sell Microsoft 49% of Android. Instead of cash, Microsoft would kick in its patent portfolio and protect Android.
Would either company consider this? I doubt it. That would require two big companies to change. I think you covered that topic nicely in your column “Why big companies can’t change.”
As an Android user I can tell you they are making some pretty serious mistakes. I see Microsoft spending whatever it takes to get a good share of the market. The unique thing about cell phones is brand loyalty lasts only 2 years, or the life of the contract. When its time to renew plans if a better option exists, the consumers will probably follow it. Microsoft definitely has a shot.
If you think the Canadians would let Microsoft take over RIM, I have a very nice Bridge to sell you in London.
After watching Nortel implode, we Northerners may be willing to accept what would have at one time been unacceptable. Not that I’d particularly like it.
What is the state of the legal proceedings against Google by Oracle over Linux copyright infringement? Does that not give some pause over licensing Android?
See Groklaw.net for the some current information. Needless to say, it’s not going well for Oracle. So I don’t see that really giving anyone pause.
Oracle’s case against Android is all but dead. Rather than giving one pause, it shows how resilient Android has become. Instead, I’d be rethinking Oracle.
No way MS buys RIM OR licenses Android. Microsoft, even more than Apple, has a “Not Invented Here” bias. They’ll continue to flop around a bit with Windows 7 or 8 on a phone because Ballmer never, ever admits he’s wrong. This will make your only dead on 2011 prediction come true in 2012, MS is the new IBM, only instead of remaking themselves, as IBM has done, they’ll become, sadly and unbelievably, a takeover target themselves. Look for IBM to BUY Microsoft late in 2012. That’s how bad things will get.
The money is where the apps are at and right now that is Apple. However, I would not be surprised if Microsoft makes a CLR that runs code on Windroid, or a third party makes an easy layer that addresses these two platforms together while leaving iDevices out in the cold. The real winner would deliver for all three and reap the benefits of selling tools to the gold miners (hinty hint hint).
Just do like I do – write apps in HTML5 – screw’em all!
In the previous column (Web OS) Steve asks if he can calculate satellite orbits that way (html, java script, css): https://www.cringely.com/2011/12/the-once-and-future-webos/comment-page-1/#comment-168589
You should really follow asymco.com where the topic is primarily the mobile industry with lots of data and analysis. Your revenue numbers are way off. The numbers are closer to profits.
You also forgot about the license Linux is under. If Microsoft did build on top of Android they would no longer be able to make patent claims against others using Android nor Linux for that matter. On the technical side there are zero good arguments for Microsoft to use Android. Even if they did they would still want their own app store, music/books/DRM etc store at which point it also being Android under the hood doesn’t really matter.
Buying a customer base that you intend to transition is unlikely to go anywhere. Why would you buy RIM for $200 per customer (made up number) and then try to convince them to switch to your platform instead of just spending $200 per customer and trying to convince them to switch anyway.
About the only thing RIM has that is of any value is BBM but messaging is easy to implement and scale. Harder is getting a sticky good user interface but Google, Apple and others will crack that.
I don’t believe you’ve face the Microsoft legal department: I have. There are any number of ways they can skin this thing.
Microsoft doesn’t have to license Android at all, for example, to sell Android apps or services. Given they are already getting royalties from hardware makers, why would they even want to? The point is to sell into that larger marketplace, making money from apps and services and increasing the handset base, generating royalties.
Perhaps after firing Ballmer (Bob, this should be prediction #4) Microsoft should quickly spin off mobile versions of the cash cows (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc.) for both iOS and Android, tied to cloud based services, and get themselves back into both games? That generates money but more importantly makes them look less like losers. It gives them a foot in the door, and gives them more time to aggressively market Windows Phone 7 (which should be renamed ‘Metro’ because the product is fine but the Windows name is damaged goods). The Metro name change credit goes to Gruber, btw. Just remember that Metro could be the new X-BOX…MS can just keep throwing money at it until one of the other teams stumbles and all of a sudden, you’re a contender!
One more thing. Amazon just made a play for RIM and was rejected. If there’s no value there, then why was Jeff Bezos eager to pull out his checkbook?
For the patent pool maybe?
The two RIM CEOs control 20-odd percent of the stock and feel they can regain RIMs glory days so they are rebutting all and sundry. Not too surprising. What’s more surprising is that Amazon even kicked their tires (are we sure they even did?).
RIM has, in essence, “licensed” Android as a shortcut to apps on the PlayBook. That’s worked out really well…. If Microsoft did this, they’d cut off all native Windows Phone app development (using the pretty good Windows tools). They’d also surely have to do a deal with Google to cut the licensing costs that Microsoft squeezes out of the Android OEMs. And while I’m sure there is no love lost between Redmond and Cupertino, Microsoft sees Google as a much bigger threat as its principals are so different. Microsoft and Apple are carbon based, Google is silicon based (or the other way around…).
Microsoft doesn’t need to buy RIM as the latter is busy shooting itself in its QWERTY keyboard. It doesn’t need RIMs patents because its part of the same RockStar patent consortium. It doesn’t need RIMs infrastructure as it still doesn’t know what to do with Dangers aging servers. It doesn’t need RIMs hardware because Microsoft doesn’t do phone hardware. And it doesn’t need RIMs talent because the best people have likely left (or are about to). What Microsoft needs is for Nokia to get a clue instead of rebranding its N9 phone and expecting it to sell itself. Besides, RIMs subscriber base is shifting away from the North American market (where its about as popular and good looking as the Kim dynasty).
RIM is on its way down and someone will pick up the wreckage, probably in the second half of 2012, that much I do agree with Bob on.
I just don’t see where they have an asset Microsoft would want. As you said Microsoft doesn’t need the patents, won’t do phone hardware because it’s too cutthroat (and they’re sane) and yes talent is always desirable, but not at the price attached to the rest of the RIM millstone.
Nokia actually has a clue now, but is still moving like a lumbering behemoth and will only become a shadow of its former self. I expect 2012 to be another year of heavy layoffs at both RIM and Nokia.
I suspect the weight of Windows success is weighing on Microsoft and as a company they’ll throw their weight at Windows 8 tablets, thus in the process let Windows Phone slide and perhaps die a slow, long tail death.
Microsoft will stick with Nokia and Windows 8 for PCs, tablets, and smartphones. Nokia makes very attractive hardware compared to RIM. Nokia has very competent phone chops. All they need is someone who can make the software work – and that’s where Microsoft comes in. And as many commenters point out, MS makes a good chunk of change from Android royalties without even making one single Android phone. Who da thunk it?
If Redmond buys a phone hardware company it would be Nokia. It now has closer ties thanks to Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, a former MS senior VP. Your unfounded speculation is purely a tech blogger’s link bait – no more no less. Your numbers are way off-base either. Your 85-10-5 spread sounds more like iOS profits compared to Android’s and WP, in that order, and neither revenue nor market share. Keep researching Bob.
Another, this mobile land grab is no three-way race. When the dust settles in a few years time you will have both Android and iOS commanding ~40% market share each with Apple taking most of the profits out of the market. The crumbs will go to wannabes of Windows 8 and maybe webOS (if we can count open source in the tally). Android can only make it look like a two-headed horserace but they have to take a big hit on margin to sustain that.
Microsoft doesn’t have to buy Nokia to get what it wants, which is to make Nokia dependent on Windows Phone. Yes, Nokia makes fine phones, but Nokia is also in deep, deep trouble — easily as much or more trouble than RIM. As I wrote in the column, Microsoft can’t afford to be #3 in this space.
Until 12 months ago Nokia’s share of SmartPhones and profits were increasing. The problem they had was that Symbian had gone about as far as it could go. Elop opted to go with WP7 rather than develop Meego and this has resulted in tumbling sales, profits and stock price. Nokia committed tech suicide by jumping in bed with Microsoft.
Elop’s job (basically coming – and likely with orders – from Microsoft) was to make Nokia use Windows instead of MeeGo, Android, etc, and thereby try to propel Windows into the leading SmartPhone OS. (The only problem being that people are not interested in Windows as their SmartPhone OS.)
However, even there he’s somewhat failed as while Nokia is on contract to deliver several Windows-based phones, they by no means must do so exclusively.
So the moment Elop’s out the door, his predecessor could actually act in Nokia’s interest and switch them over to using Android or MeeGo/Tizen or WebOS or even go back to Symbian.
Windows Phone isn’t a usless inferior copy of something else, like Bing. If it isn’t overpriced it could become the smart phone of the masses. Personally, I’m waiting for WinRT on Windows 8 phones. I would love to have a phone that was also my dockable desktop and could run all the stuff Windows 7 can. But that would require x86 and RT on Intel for compatibility.
I agree RIM is sliding toward oblivion, but I just don’t see Microsoft as trying to save them.
Google bought Motorola for patents, but as Bob points out Microsoft is already winning in the courts and doesn’t really need more patents. Certainly Microsoft is not inclined to get into the mobile device hardware business either which is cut-throat and large companies like Samsung are using economies of scale to crush smaller players like RIM anyway.
Microsoft co-opting Android is a nice idea, but I can’t really see Google letting Microsoft get away with it. Google can’t let Bing get a foothold to strangle its bread and butter. In the past Microsoft would add and change APIs to screw application developers and let Office win, so I think Google could easily adopt this strategy to throttle any Redmond efforts in this arena.
So that leaves Microsoft with its current legal winnings and whatever upside Nokia can give it. Windows 8 on tablets will pave their future path with small screens for small profits.
Or so they’ll think.
Microsoft are not “winning in the courts”.
All their patent “deals” have been settled out of court without any disclosure of which patents are involved. The last thing they want is to have their patent claims actually tested in court.
Since Android is open source there’s no money involved and no agreement needed with Google to license it. The only reason an Android OEM needs to involve Google is to comply with Google’s requirements to get Google’s apps, like the Android Market, Maps. etc. As can be seen with the Kindle Fire and Android app compatibility on RIM’s PlayBook, as well as other forks of Android like China’s OPhone, Fusion Garage’s GridOS, Baidu Yi, etc. if you don’t need or want Google’s apps you can do whatever you want.
There’s also no reason why Microsoft couldn’t keep squeezing Android OEMs for patent royalties while using Android themselves.
One good potential move for Microsoft would be to create their own fork of Android, replacing all of Google’s apps and services with their own app store, Bing search, Bing maps, Zune Pass, etc., and then offer THAT to all existing Android OEMs for a price LOWER than the licensing fees they’re currently charging for their patents. This could cut the legs out of Google’s whole strategy for Android in the first place.
Microsoft don’t need to licence the core of Android, and are very well placed to provide a replacement for the ‘top half’ that Google does require a license and bizdev deal to get access to. Amazon has already done this, MSFT could to.
If they do, that would be a huge change in their worldview.
Here’s my post on this from January:
http://epeus.blogspot.com/2011/01/two-faces-of-android.html
RIM started losing it’s way when it started trying to “me too” Apple.
It guess any decline starts with a loss of self confidence, and I’ve heard that RIM engineers were in total shock when they first disassembled the iphone (prior to that claiming it couldn’t possibly do what Apple was saying that it could do), being floored to find inside a chip strapped to the back of large battery.
Then in spite of a larger customer base than the iPhone – yet still – and a loyal one too – they started chasing Apple. The playbook is a sorry example of a rushed “me too” product.
You can’t lead by playing catch up. RIM lost it’s mojo and ceded it’s leadership. The should be taken over by Microsoft, which has turned the monetization of mass market open platforms into art. Yes, Apple can have very high profit margins with it’s closed systems, but those system will soon be replicated (legally) forcing Apple, to keep moving outward to a new leading edge. As long as Apple can keep doing that, they will prosper. Slip up once, and they will falter. and the high volume, low margin guys will swallow them.
Gates is was right. His way works period. Steve’s way only works if you’re Steve.
Your framing of this ongoing transition in a “Gates vs. Jobs” context shows that you don’t understand what is happening. The year is 2011, not 1994. But don’t feel too bad, you’re in the same (life)boat as Steve Ballmer and the RIM CEOs. Value in the mobile space is found in the integrated system, not in any of the individual bits and pieces. Geeks tend to focus on hardware and feature sets as if any of that matters when the gadget they admire today will be laughably obsolete in 6-12 months. Software in geek land is treated like religion while typical users see it as a means to an end.
Apple did what no one expected, they created an integrated system of mobile devices and services spanning many dimensions, brick by brick, user by user, supplier by supplier, dev by dev, and they protected it with a combination of legal and proprietary firewalls. Can Microsoft or RIM do the same? Sure, all they need are the best minds in business and logistics, some luck, lots of money, and about ten years of hard-ass work.
13th! LUCKY NUMBER!
Obviously you haven’t spent enough quality time with Windows Phone 7, and I get the feeling you haven’t with Android, either. Whereas Android is basically a ripoff of iOS, WP7 has gone in a completely different direction. I have so many friends that have Android and do nothing but complain about it. I attribute that to Google’s allowing the eco system to grow too big, too fast and get severely fragmented, with screen sizes, OS versions and OEM skinning. The closest WP7 gets to iOS is the fact that you can only customize the user interface so much. It is pretty much identical for all users.
At this point, Microsoft doesn’t need or want to buy a hardware OEM. They would rather give Nokia $1B than buy them outright. I suspect they may try do a similar deal with RIM; there is already rumblings about such a deal. Problem is, RIM has already bet the company on their LINUX-based OS, so a switch would be painful. Still, the next version of WP7 will allow for the BlackBerry/Palm Treo form factor, so RIM could segue into offering WP7 handsets. Staying out of the hardware OEM business allows Microsoft to continue growing the WP7 market without angering its current partners.
Microsoft also has no need to license Android. They have no hardware that would require it, and Microsoft would just as soon abandon mobile entirely than raise a white flag to Google and adopt Android. They also see what everybody else sees: that iOS and Android are vulnerable to significant market share erosion by a third alternative. No doubt iOS has the mind share. Android is seen as the cheaper alternative, although the hardware isn’t even always cheaper, and has a UI similar enough to iOS with a lot more hackability.
As far as Meego/Tizen/WebOS/Bada/Whatever, they are already non-starters. The market is already coalescing down to iOS/Android/WP7, with Symbian dying a slow death on feature phones, which will end up being an insignificant percentage of the market. There may be small slice open for an Android Pro/BBX, but to make it work, it will have to close off a lot of the avenue for customization in order to keep the UI as simple and as secure as possible. There is no room for any more CarrierIQ fiascos.
iOS has reached market saturation, and so Apple is growing it beyond the phone; Android is everywhere, in all shapes and sizes, and looking at the number of different versions of the OS that are currently out there, Google has just about lost control of it, and so will more than likely see a snap back in popularity. Google is also trying to grow the OS into other markets, followed by the similar BBX and WebOS, and so far has had limited success primarily because of the lack of business apps users want to be able to use on such devices, and the same skinning problem seen on Android phones from a myriad of OEMs.
Microsoft is sitting in the catbird seat, with WP7 after one year being in a very favorable position in relation to iOS at the same stage in it’s development. Current market share is low but growing as people respond to the ease of use. WP7 still has some growing to do, and some significant upgrades are coming in 2012. Where Microsoft has the advantage is in applications; they already have all the applications most businesses use every day, and as they add functionality to those apps, WP7 and the future Windows 8/Windows Phone 8 will be ready to take full advantage of newer tablet hardware and offer not only the easiest simplified UI but a real Windows desktop. No learning curve for existing desktop and laptop users. Add to that Microsoft’s experience with producing iOS apps and the ability to roll out apps to the Android market as well, and you couldn’t ask for a better position.
I know I come off as a Windows Fan Boy here, but I’ve been using Windows since 1987, and Windows Mobile/Phone since 2002. It sometimes has been a painful experience, admittedly, but Microsoft gives you an easy-to-master user experience with advanced functionality available as you need it, first with Windows and now with Windows Phone. If they get any momentum at all behind them, they will dominate, again.
>”Staying out of the hardware OEM business allows Microsoft to continue growing the WP7 market without angering its current partners.”
Never mind Microsoft’s Kin phones. They never existed. Never mind the Zune. (How’s that PlaysForSure platform coming along, BTW?)
>”They also see what everybody else sees: that iOS and Android are vulnerable to significant market share erosion by a third alternative”
Why? Oh, just because. Y’know, just like everybody could see that Windows and Mac OS were vulnerable to Linux on the desktop. Or BeOS. Or NeXTstep/OpenStep. Or OS/2.
>”iOS has reached market saturation”
Again: Why? Oh, again, just because.
The reality is that, like Mac OS on desktop computers, iOS is still far from a saturation point and has a tremendous amount of headroom to grow. Remember: “All phones will eventually be smartphones.”
>”Google has just about lost control of [Android]”
So that’s why Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich came out from someone other than Google? Yes indeed, the wake behind Google’s Android ship is a fragmented mess, but I don’t think anyone else is anywhere close to taking over as captain.
>”Microsoft is sitting in the catbird seat”
Uh huh. Sweating. (And not from the physical exertion of running around a stage screaming “Developers! Developers!”)
>”some significant upgrades are coming in 2012″
Luckily the public and the market have finally learned to stop listening to the “coming soon!” refrain of FUD from Microsoft. The emperor has no clothes.
>”Where Microsoft has the advantage is in applications”
ORLY?
>”they already have all the applications most businesses use every day”
Too bad smartphone (and tablet) adoption has switched from being business-driven to being consumer-driven.
And clearly what’s been holding back iOS and Android is that everyone has been waiting for Microsoft’s port of Office.
>”the future Windows 8/Windows Phone 8 will be ready to take full advantage of newer tablet hardware and offer not only the easiest simplified UI…”
“Coming soon!”
>”…but a real Windows desktop”
Obviously that’s what’s been missing on smartphones and tablets, and why their adoption rate has been so low. Oh, wait, Windows Mobile and Windows 7 (along with various previous tablet-targeted versions of other Windows releases) *WERE* about offering a Windows desktop on mobile devices. That must be why they’re the market leaders, now.
>”No learning curve for existing desktop and laptop users.”
Except for all the changes that are necessary for touchscreen input. And the fact that existing Windows software for Intel machines won’t work on Windows 8 on ARM, so users are either going to have to wait for their software to be ported, or switch to different software. And even if/when their favorite software is ported, new versions of software always have a learning curve.
>”you couldn’t ask for a better position”
I don’t know about you, but boy I certainly could.
>”If they get any momentum at all behind them, they will dominate, again.”
Ok, Mr. Ballmer, it’s time for your medication now.
Microsoft has shown that they can, indeed, learn from their mistakes. Sometimes it takes much longer than you think it should, but eventually they do. Buying Danger didn’t do a lot for them, but gave their mobile business a good shot of creative DNA. You could say that about many of their acquisitions over the years. Kin was killed quickly, as it was the Microsoft Bob of the mobile world. Nobody could ever gain traction on the iPod, so the hardware Zune eventually was put to pasture. Microsoft still learned a great deal about the mobile market from Zune, however.
As far as Office on ARM goes, they don’t need it, they have Office 365 now for the lightweight platforms. Windows 8 on ARM is going to go up against the iPad and the low-end Android tablets. No need for the standard Windows desktop. No need for x86 legacy applications. Windows 8 on Intel (Windows 8 Professional?) will have both the Windows Desktop and the Metro interface available.
I could take the time to pick apart the rest of your picking apart of my post, but that would be exhausting. I’m a heavy user of Microsoft technology, but I don’t dismiss out of hand what else is going on in the industry. You can look at the market studies by Gartner and other independent research firms that show the absorption curve of iOS is flattening, and Android exploded from 10% to 48% of the market. Clearly people wanted an alternative to iOS, for whatever reason. Google has a winner, although it hasn’t necessarily translated into profit for them. At the same time, many people I know who bought Android phones do nothing but complain about them. This may be due to build quality of the hardware in some cases, but the fragmentation of the installed OS base hasn’t helped, and Google hasn’t managed that well. Updates are slow to roll out on some platforms, if at all. There is a perception among noobs that Android is Android, but that’s clearly not the case. Try to get updates on that $79 Android tablet bought at the discount store without knowing anything about apt get, or flashing custom ROMs. The problem with Android is that it’s placed a pretty powerful platform in the hands of a lot of people who are not technologists, leaving them frustrated that they don’t have the latest build of Ice Cream Sandwich. This is where iOS has really shined, and where Microsoft learned a lesson. Now, Microsoft could still stumble over their own feet and fail, again, in the mobile market. From what I’m seeing in my own use of Windows Phone, and what I’m seeing happening on the developer side, and what I’m hearing and reading in the pundit realm, Microsoft has a potential breakout hit on their hands. It’s not exploding on the market just yet, and they still have some work to do to get WP7 up to where iOS is today, but they have the benefit of already knowing where Apple has gone. It’s much easier to copy than to lead. WP7 by itself will probably never be the segment leader, but it could be #2. Meanwhile on the desktop, uncertainty for the future of OSX is all people seem to see right now. Windows is plodding along, losing a few percentage points of marketshare, but continues to be the 800 pound gorilla. That is not expected to dramatically change for the foreseeable future. Enterprise business wants the tablet form factor, but don’t like the limited ability of the iPad, or the current high prices of Windows tablets. Android tablets barely register a blip, because they don’t offer much beyond the iPad. Windows 8 tablets, both ARM and x86, have the potential to really makeover the computing landscape. It’s what Enterprise is really waiting for. History has shown that Microsoft doesn’t always have to be first to market, or even the best of class. It just has to deliver what the customers want.
“Android exploded from 10% to 48% of the market. Clearly people wanted an alternative to iOS, for whatever reason”
Yep. An alternative from Windows Mobile and Nokia’s Symbian clap-crap…Not at all due to iOS fatigue as you suggests, Mr. Windows. Android is the lucky beneficiary from those folks who are afraid of “just works” hardware and software, or just plean cheapo. iOS is just fine and growing its ‘catbird’ perch, thank you very much.
“Now, Microsoft could still stumble over their own feet and fail, again, in the mobile market.”
Microsoft had already stumbled with WM6, WM6.5, Zune, Kin, Hiptop and in danger of kicking themselves in the groin while on the canvas with WP7. They have nary a tick on the RELEVANCE meter, aka mobile market share. Will they hit the jackpot with Windows 8 mobile? Consumers lately have voted with their wallets on anything but Windows-labeled phones.
Keep dreaming (FUDing?) Mr. Windows. That, at least, costs nothing to do…
Well let’s see…
Yes, Microsoft could learn from their mistakes, but I believe that would be a first in the history of the company if they ever did.
Microsoft managed to get a monopoly in three areas of the computing industry for at least a little time – Desktop, Office Productivity, and Web Browser – two of which are still being maintained, but all of which were gained through abuses of market share. (Yes, even though the jury was hung, they still unanimously agreed that Microsoft abused their monopoly to destroy WordPerfect and usher in MS Office.)
Only, now that the world is transitioning to mobile computing – which Microsoft has long poo-poo-ed in favor of the desktop – they are scrambling to gain some market share.
The mobile space was long held back (until iOS and Android) by Microsoft because they didn’t want to cannibalize their desktop market share and risk losing their monopoly. However, now they are fighting to gain traction in the mobile space because that’s where the markets are going.
So rather than learn from the past mistakes – from WinCE to Zune to WinPhone7, Danger, etc – they are instead converting their desktop edition to a version of Windows that sells like brick ovens in hell.
And rather than learn from their mistakes, a team lead/VP at Microsoft is even on record in an interview as stating that Win8/Metro doesn’t work well for big applications like Microsoft Office – quite late in the development cycle for Win8/Metro too.
So they’re finally betting the company on a big move to support mobile, but haven’t learned a thing about their past experiences in the mobile market – or rather, their past experiences in the mobile market was all about subduing it in favor of the non-mobile market so there was nothing for them to learn from other than what few things not to do, which they are still continuing to do.
The problem I see with your argument is the idea that there has to be separate desktop and mobile markets, which was true ten years ago. I’ve been a umpc user since Vista in 2007, so I think it’s a life changer having all your x86 desktop stuff with you, fitting in a shirt pocket, when on the go. The only reason for not doing that in the future is the desire on the part of manufacturers to sell more gadgets. It’s no longer a technology limitation.
Dear “Mr Windows,”
There’s a key on your keyboard you should learn to use. It’s the one right above the right Shift key.
Ever wonder what people mean when they reply to your posts with only “tl;dr”? Well, that’s one reason why that’s all they’re writing in their replies.
You’re welcome.
In my case “tl;dr” stood for “too long; did read”. In fact, I read it a second time just to see what people were commenting about. But I couldn’t find anything in Mr. Windows post to disagree with.
Microsoft in the catbird seat? #4 and closing slowly, if at all?
WP7 has effectively O% SmartPhone Marketshare. After almost 18 months on the market, no traction at all. The only thing WP7 appears to be doing is killing Nokia.
Look for Microsoft to drop out of Mobile phones in 2012 and shift to providing software for iOS.
Wow! That was optimistic!
Come on now – ‘learning curve’ for modern UI’s. What’s that – ten minutes? This tech’s been around long enough that a ten-year-old UI look and feel is no longer a big advantage.
“Where Microsoft has the advantage is in applications; they already have all the applications most businesses use every day, and as they add functionality to those apps, WP7 and the future Windows 8/Windows Phone 8 will be ready to take full advantage of newer tablet hardware and offer not only the easiest simplified UI but a real Windows desktop. ”
You say this like every other non-technical person who just doesn’t appreciate the very real technical differences between a phone and a PC.
MS got to where they are by promising businesses eternal compatibility. Whenever a decision needed to be made between technologies, MS chose both. The result of this is that Windows is huge but their implicit contract, their value proposition, requires all that obsolete junk. If they’re promising “full Windows” that means they support Win32 AND CLR AND Silverlight. It means they support DAO and ADO and OLE DB and OPC and a dozen other database APIs. It means they support both TCP/IP and NetBIOS. And so on and so on.
And all those business developers and business apps, the same ones you consider to be so important to MS future, all use these different APIs — because MS never had the guts to stand up and unequivocally say “xyz is obsolete and we will no longer support it as of three years from now”. Apple developers have been conditioned to expect that, every year,
Apple will obsolete something, and they will have to go back and fix their code to remove what is obsolete. MS developers are not used to that sort of world.
Apple will ditch Flash and never look back, if Flash does not work acceptably on its platform. MS will hum and haw and say “users expect Flash” and claim that if you buy the right hardware Flash (and WMV and Silverlight and VP8 and MKV and Dirac) will all work just fine — heck they’ll all work simultaneously.
The problem is — you pay a real price for all this backward compatibility.You pay a price in size of the OS, in resources consumed, in speed at which you can revise things. MS has been able to get away with this for years because they had no real competition on the desktop (so four years between OS revs, along with plenty of ditched OS technology they could never get to work with their existing base — Longhorn anyone? — was not a problem), but that is not the phone world.
Metro started off OK because it was willing to do one and only one thing — be a phone OS. But with Win8, we see the familiar old MS virus rearing its head. We’ve all seen the claims that Win8 phones will do every damn thing that Windows has ever done. This is just not possible with current technology.
So MS has a bind. If they drop the backward compatibility, they have no value proposition — a Win Phone starting from scratch is not especially interesting.
But if they retain all the backward compatibility, the result will be a monstrosity that uses a vast amount of CPU, RAM, flash storage and power to deliver an underwhelming experience.
Personally I expect they will try to straddle both camps. They will include some amount of backward compatibility — and piss off the many business who see that some of their stuff runs, but not all. At the same time, they’ll include enough crud that, on equivalent specs, their high end devices will feel complicated, sluggish and cramped compared to their Android and iOS competition.
Microsoft buying RIM would work out exactly like Microsoft buying Danger.
The first thing they would do is destroy whatever is left of their culture, followed quickly by killing their technology in an attempt to microsoftify it.
I believe you will prove to be mistaken about their ability to license android. But the courts will decide that one in the end. The are doing a lot of posturing around a few trivial patents, with very little, if any meat to their claims of ‘ownership’
FYI – RIM is already heavily in bed with Microsoft as they were the main supporter of Exchange integration for mobile, the big reasons a lot of companies had RIM devices.
Did Meego fail, or was it just abandoned?
One phone, now canceled, sounds like a failure to me.
One phone that sold really well, but under a CEO that wanted to destroy the product in favor of a Microsoft-only solution.
No, it didn’t fail – every report about MeeGo and the N900 has been absolutely fantastic, and it has a great following.
It was simply abandoned because a major Microsoft shareholder took the CEO position at Nokia and decided they should use Microsoft instead. (FYI – Nokia CEO Stephen Elop is one of the largest shareholders of Microsoft stock. It’s a pretty big conflict-of-interest.)
failed on its own or killed through corporate murder…either way it is still dead. thus i think it is safe to say it was indeed a failure.
“No, it didn’t fail – every report about MeeGo and the N900 has been absolutely fantastic, and it has a great following.”
Nokia sold fewer than 100,000 N900s in five months.
Apple sold 4 million iPhone 4Ss in its first THREE DAYS.
You are absolutely deluded if you think the N900 was ever relevant to ANYTHING.
Well, I was going to leave it as ‘Agree To Disagree’, but it looks like atleast someone else agrees with me. Thanks TemporalBeing.
First Nokia promised additional supply of the N900, then a followup model. Months went by, probably over a year, then the microsoft announcement, followed by a protest from their software developement team who staged a walkout. Then they finally announcde the N950. Problem was, you couldn’t buy one if you wanted to. ‘Loaners’ went out to a select few developers. What they were developing and for what product is a mystery.
The story reminds me alot of the HP Touchpad fiasco. You have corporate management that can’t make decisions, replaced by others with the same problem. Reversing decisions, changing their minds, End of Product line, wait maybe not, we’ll get back to you, completely new software direction. Come on people.
How can a company expect customers to buy anthing you offer when they stop believing anything you say.
If it wasn’t abandonded, then atleast it was torpedoed from within.
Meegone.
I don’t see what MS would gain by using Android. I don’t see that they have a technical problem to solve. Theirs is a marketing/design problem. I mean marketing in the sense of having a deep understanding of your customers and what needs/problems you are trying to solve.
Most of the TV ads I see for phones now just make my eyes glaze over. MS (or another company) will not take over the market because of a slightly different interface or sexier case. The existing crop of phones are already quite satisfying for people. To make a dent in the market MS would have to come out with something really spectacular. Unless the new feature is truly spectacular then it loses out to the benefits of the existing leaders (inertia, installed base, familiarity, “good enough”, ecosystem of accessories and stores and trained helpers).
Alternatively, they could find a different way to slice the market as Amazon did. I’m no fan of the KF but it is an interesting approach. They designed a box to be used to shop at Amazon. This appealed to an existing group of customers and filled a need such that some customers may overlook some of the KF’s shortcomings.
Miniaturize the Xbox Kinect and add phone capabilities – then they would have a winner. 😛
I think in about 3 years time Windows Phone will overtake Android. Here is why …
http://setandbma.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/windows-phone-vs-android/
Global markets.
A win32 shell on top of linux would have been nice a decade ago. A WindowsMobile shell on top of Android would be nice today.
MS could save on developments costs in each case, but they didn’t find the loss of power worth the cost savings a decade ago and I don’t see them having a different position this time around. Though, I really wish they would.
This all sounds like a lot of generals trying to work out how WWII is going to go by analyzing the problems of trench warfare. The threats to Apple and Android will come from new technology, if anywhere. New ways of controlling pads (camera based gestures for example) or other game-changers could destabilize the whole market, but until that happens it’s going to be changes of one percent here, one percent there. Buying RIM isn’t a bad idea for MS, and nor is pairing with Nokia – but in both cases it’s too little, too late to become market leader.
Microsoft’s existing code base, by the way, is not an advantage, it’s a burden. MS has never really had to deal with cross-platform coding, and MS has never yet released a product that didn’t need more CPU and more memory than was available at the time of the release. Cross-compile Office? I can’t see many users waiting five minutes for it to load, can you?
#Prediction 2 can only happen if Balmer leaves.
I decided a while back that Python could be used in a large number of things and it was an amazingly well designed language and supported by Google. It does what languages should do: the compiler handles the work. Nokia, had Maemo/Meego which used Python heavily. Europeans favor Python much more heavily. Nokia was effectively taken over by Microsoft. I speculate Microsoft got the big investors to believe the only way to “save” Nokia was in the Microsoft invasion oddly without Microsoft buying stock. There is a well known incident in which a financial analyst in Germany called Meego “the biggest joke in the industry”. I would assume Nokia also had a number of related projects. One of them was the Frankencamera that It developed with Stanford. This is a camera with open source software which enables very sophisticated image processing in the camera. One application is to modify the picture so that over and underexposed areas are leveled out. The software was designed so that Python would be readily implemented. In Tizen, the GUI will be the browser in the form of something made by HTML5/WAC. A developer must know the browser, so this also makes development much easier.
Apple started the multimodal game with the iphone. This was designed for three year olds and was the ultimate slap in the face after Apple had been slapping people in the face for decades. The fools that followed rushed in where angels feared to tread. There is now a void for a device where intelligent people can get things done. Those gentlemen also stuck developers with incredibly hard languages.
Meego was also intended to work on many small device types and the others will have to play catch up on this when Tizen comes out.
[…] I, Cringely » For Mobile OS’s, Three’s a Crowd – its all about the revenue rather than marketshare […]
RIM has only one chance left. Either they will release powerful new BlackBerry phones with dual core processors, a much better screen, QNX, and an experience that works or they will flameout and die. RIM also has to hit a homerun with an API and developer friendy tools plus an App store that doesn’t suck and alienate developers. Never mind users, if there are no Apps then there are few users.
They have a new MDM server offering coming soon that may appeal to enterprise. But the MDM manages Andriod and iOS devices!?!? This is merely a survival tactic. The enterprise customers are RIM’s bread and butter. But enterprise is seeing iOS and Android dominate and more employees are switching from BlackBerry as contracts expire and their peers show off the new shiny smartphones from Apple and Google. Our own BlackBerry users dropped from 100% to 7.6% between 2008 & 2011! Pretty soon it will be too expensive to run the BES server and maintain it. We’ll just shut it down and stop supporting BlackBerry.
RIM and BlackBerry was the first phone embraced and supported by corporate IT departments. IT departments don’t usually go out looking for new things to support. The got into the BlackBerry business because of a lot of pressure from their executives who saw others reading their email on their phones, and wanted to do the same.
Supporting BlackBerry involved a good investment in equipment and support staff. It wasn’t as easy as “just go out and buy a phone…” Today smartphones are a lot better and it is a lot easier to integrate them with corporate systems. Still IT has its memories and bruises of being early adopters of BlackBerry. They will eventually abandon that platform, but not after a lot of resistance. It is that resistance that is keeping BlackBerry in business. RIM is losing corporate support. RIM has let down the people who made them successful. When the business is lost, they will have lost most of those customers forever.
I think it will be interesting to follow the money from the bottom up.
Start with the customer. If the fragmentation of Android can be turned into a constructive competition of OS ideas the consumer will vote with their dollars to use the device that provides the best value, then this will be had to stop due to sheer critical mass. Apple has been great in providing the “seed” ideas to build out new devices but for the masses these are too costly.
I am an Android fan because I can have just about all of the iPhone4 functionality for a price of only $120. The key here was flash loading the latest Android OS and tweaking it to my expectations. (I really didn’t like what the phone came with at all!) It will be interesting if the so called “computer clone” senario happens for these other new devices. Again the OS is the big winner. However Microsofts “window” is starting to close and they need to grab Balmer before he falls out of it! Too tight control of things as the market matures is a negative force.
I don’t recall MS really building any serious PC’s, how strange.
The hole in this to me is that, unlike previous iterations, Windows Phone is actually a great little operating system. I originally started using it with my work phone, but I’d choose it over Android or iPhone for my personal device now. Microsoft needs to change two things – people’s (now unfair) perception of Windows Phone as an OS and the willingness of developers to include Windows Phone in their app development. I think they can hang on to a relatively small, but sustainable, market share and even slowly grow their piece of the pie.
Wow, I guess ignorance does run rampant when it comes to predicting and analyzing the succeeding of Windows Phone.
The “predictors” on both sides of the fence may be adding a bit of wishful thinking. But which side is “ignorant” remains to be seen.
The latest buzz surrounding Windows8 is that the ARM version for mobile devices will be separated from the “legacy” version supporting intel processors and desktops. Contrast this with the rumors that Apple is thinking about making OS X open source while transitioning all it’s future OS efforts and devices to iOS. If you were a dev, which path would be most appealing? Microsoft’s divided strategy with two separate, unequal OSes, divided among disparate enterprise/consumer/mobile markets, or Apple’s scheme with one OS running on hundreds of millions of devices spanning everything from watches to servers?
Both companies have mobile (iOS, WinRT) and desktop (OSX, x86) platforms. One is way ahead in mobile, the other in desktop. So while it makes sense for Apple to abandon it’s 5% share of the desktop, Microsoft’s users want more mobile stuff but can’t afford to just give up their desktop productivity apps. So Microsoft will support rather than abandon the majority of its users as it adds more and more mobile apps. Some day their mobile apps may do everything needed and the legacy stuff can be abandonded. I don’t see anything wrong with running mobile and desktop apps on the same device, as long as the user is prepared for the needed power and battery life compromise. I’ve been doing that for years on a umpc.
Here’s a tip: The core of Mac OS X is Darwin, which is already open source.
I’ve never heard any rumors about Apple “making OS X open source” any more than it already is, and I’m constantly up to date on all the Apple rumors (macrumors.com, appleinsider.com, etc. etc.).
Regardless, Apple’s share of desktop computing is growing, and it’s got a lot of headroom as they continue to cannibalize Windows marketshare. They’re not going to “abandon” that. Even if they do make more parts of OS X open source, that’s still not abandonment. Some companies (like HP) see releasing a project as open source as a way of putting it out to pasture. Many others see it as a way of making more money. Closed source isn’t the only way to profit in computing (just ask Google). Apple makes the majority of their money from hardware sales, anyway. For instance, they sold the last two major updates of OS X for only $30 each! Along with that OS X doesn’t require registration keys or activation, etc. For software that cost probably millions to develop that’s almost indistinguishable from being “free.”
You say you “don’t see anything wrong with running mobile and desktop apps on the same device, as long as the user is prepared for the needed power and battery life compromise.” Well, Apple’s converging mobile and desktop, too (see OS X Lion on a MacBook Air), but instead of forcing desktop compromises on mobile devices they’re giving the mobile benefits of longer battery life and “instant on” to their desktop hardware. No “preparations” needed for “compromise.”
The point is they haven’t done it yet. Remember, Steve was the one to point out the car vs. truck analogy. WinRT corresponds to iOS like x86 corresponds to OSX. Two trucks and two cars for now. It’s just a matter of what you need to do and which brand you prefer.
“Contrast this with the rumors that Apple is thinking about making OS X open source while transitioning all it’s future OS efforts and devices to iOS.”
Oh for crying out loud. We’re trying to have an adult conversation here, and you throw in this nonsense.
If someone wanted the patents, they would have bought WebOS.
If the WebOS community can get davlik and the Android Market running on it, WP7 will need to keep an eye on the rearview mirror…
All that matters now is Apps…
Again …
Cross platform mobile like this ?
http://ramp.virtualmobiletech.com/index.php/product/advantages
They say “the platform is the logical choice for transactional applications” but apparently not for anything else. They don’t say what it can be used with besides “Android”. iOS? WinRT? So it’s a platform that has to be used with another platform, probably Android.
Yes that is the whole point – they have a iOS, Android, etc native app which is a virtual machine on which your developed app runs – so the developer do no have to choose between Android or iOS
So, as a desktop analogy, is it like the JVM or Virtual BOX? But either way, just like in the desktop environment, I imagine it won’t be very popular since it would slow things down as in Java or it would be inconvenient to boot into different OSs. Would Apple even allow this on their phones? Would Microsoft?
Just as the history repeats I think Microsoft will make applications for both Android and iOS. They have been selling Office for Mac for a long time and making money.
>RIM has already bet the company on their LINUX-based OS
Qnx is not Linux but Mr Window can be forgiven.
Any corp (BAE) concerned about governments accessing their info should be a little safer using RIM products – read MS long history of security fumbles and the Carrier IQ spying farse… RIM devices are trusted by uncle sam – FIPS 140-2 certified
Bob, as one reader already pointed out… this is 2011, not 1994. Stop being so scared of Microsoft. They’ve grown too large and cannot execute. Look at every product they sell. The releases take a very long time and deliver only minor cosmetic tweaks. In the mobile space they are struggling to catch up from way behind.
Mobile computing threatens to cut off THEIR air supply. Each user who switches from PC to mobile reduces their revenue. One of their cash cows, office, is under attack and they’ve been forced to put it in the cloud for free. They resisted that tooth and nail, but in the end were forced into it. Geeks will point out windows mobile wins on features, but geeks don’t understand consumers. Consumers want “cool” and nobody likes the bully.
Look at IBM if you want to see Microsoft’s future. Still profitable, but just holding on to those trapped legacy customers who can’t or won’t change. Not relevant to anything current.
Even Microsoft has abandonded Windows Mobile. They have switched to Windows Phone (7 and 7.5 this year to intoduce the user interface). Next year WinRT on Windows 8 will be their new mobile platform.
Watch the interview with MS designer Steve Kaneko on The Verge. MS is changing. Changing hard. Zune HD became Windows Phone which is becoming Windows 8. MS is getting character and design aware. They might fail, but they are certainly trying hard. Unlike Rim. Unlike HP.
Android is hard to fight with; but the race is far from over, the market isn’t saturated yet. Android feels like MySpace; it’s not really a nice place to be, very customizable maybe, but not in a clean way.
With any iteration of Android, the customization options get smaller as Google takes control to get the UI in order. That means the hardware makers can differentiate less, meaning they will have less reason to stick with Android. Instead they might opt for the non-tech-savvy WP7.
And yet, I still can’t hook a WP7 phone (which even thru the NEXT update will not have an encrypted file system) to our EAS server… Maybe in 2013????
Even WebOS has an encrypted file system for Pete’s sake…
Sheesh!
WP7 was a “get stared” device for MS. You want to wait for Windows 8 anyway.
Why do I want to be tied to the Microsoft paradigm? What do they truly offer that is in any way, shape or form better than iOS and Android?
Android is getting fragmented, like Linux. And has security issues. iOS is tied to Apple only devices and the Apple ecosystem…way over priced and controlled. Windows Phones made by a few partners, including Nokia now, should be high quality, safe, maintained by Microsoft, and reasonably priced, with many device choices available. Personally, I’m looking forward to Phones with Windows 8. Some manufacturers may even make devices that can make cell phone calls, run low power apps like the phone/tablet types, and the x86 apps of today, as long as they use Intel chips.
It’s not actually THAT hard.
The future is not in single devices that do all your computing (and do it all badly). The future is a wide range of devices, from smart watches to phones to tablets to laptops to desktops. To make that future fun and productive, rather than a chore, requires that these devices all work together. No-one has all the pieces of that in place right now.
Apple is farthest along, with iCloud as the foundation. But Apple have made some grievous technical and UI fumbles in the first release of iCloud; and they suffer from the standard Apple problem of my way or the highway.
Google started off strong with the idea that Google would be the foundation that tied everything together. But they are utterly incapable of executing — it took them till 2011 to get their story together regarding single sign-on; they have no concept of decent UI, which means that, without a pre-existing model to copy their “cloud” UI will be some godawful abomination. And given the much-publicized issues around Android updates, the vendors (and the carriers) appear to have zero interest in getting “other” devices to work with one particular device — they are heavily invested in the “one device that does everything badly” model.
So there IS an opening here for MS, if they can get their act together fast enough. They appear to have the technical skills to create something like iCloud (by which I mean not a clone of Dropbox, but a set of APIs plus bespoke storage which allow phone and desktop apps easily to synchronize). They could, in theory, get to the “Avatar/Minority Report” vision of effortlessly pouring UI + computation from a desktop computer to a tablet portable screen before Apple.
But they don’t have the vision (real vision, not bullshit “what we will be doing with computers twenty years from now” vision), and they don’t appear to have the interest in slimming down Windows and throwing away the parts that hold them back and make it more difficult to pull off something like this.
Meaning:
(a) I think there IS a plan in place that MS could follow to become relevant.
(b) MS being MS, and Ballmer being Ballmer, I don’t think they will follow such a plan; rather they will continue to simply mimic Apple.
I think I disagree with the premise that the market can only support a very few contenders.
What makes this industry so different? We have more than three automakers, more than three airlines, why can’t we have more than three mobile OS vendors.
I agree that there comes a point where there is a declining amount of competitive space.
I think people lean too much on the Windows analogy — where one vendor completely dominated the marketplace with a 90+% share. I’m of the opinion that Windows is an historical anomaly. Expecting that kind of result in this market is foolish. Instead we should see a healthy competition with at least three or more vendors, none of which will see a share greater than 50%.