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Is Microsoft too late for the phone/tablet market?
Today's announcement that Microsoft will offer it's OS free for smartphone/tablet users comes too late in my view? Who will want to change their OS at this point, and isn't the smartphone/tablet market already way over saturated already? Plus, why would I want that old hasbeen OS on my tablet anyway? If I did I'd have to know how to use ctrl+alt+del often! Good luck MS! Apr 03 14 01:33 pm Link Windows phones and tablets are powerful tools, currently with a market share of about 7% Microsoft's Surface tablet is way more versatile and powerful than Apple's ipads are. Bought one in 2012 and sold my ipad after a few months of using both. Most Android stuff is cheap crap on the hardware side. Your Ctr+Alt+Del comment shows that it's been a while since you used a Microsoft device  Just my 2c... Apr 03 14 02:04 pm Link Windows 8.1 is has been? Wow. When I can put an SD card or a USB key in an iPad I'll think about getting one... nah probably not. Apr 03 14 02:07 pm Link c:/error Apr 03 14 02:08 pm Link Northbee Photography wrote: Xbox One still sucks. Apr 03 14 02:10 pm Link Microsoft is a superior product. Apple is more user friendly. Neither determines how the market will go. Might I remind people of beta versus VHS. Beta was without argument superior. But didn't stick around. I prefer competition to keep cost reasonable and I like that I can do everything from my surface including business on office Apr 03 14 02:37 pm Link Another cool pro android thing tht apple sucks with. 13 mp camera!!! The iPhone six will have 12mp when it debuts Apr 03 14 02:40 pm Link lynne g wrote: Yeah and the Nokia Windows phones have between 20 and 41 megapixels. Apr 03 14 02:45 pm Link Northbee Photography wrote: Which will come in handy for all those people who want to make a 120-inch poster out of their lunches and kitty cats. Apr 03 14 02:47 pm Link My evolution with computers started with the Commodore PET back in the early 80s. I then owned a Commodore 64, an Apple IIE, and then I was very active in the Amiga community in the late 80s and early 90s. When C= went belly-up I switched and got a 486DX66 clone. WOW was that thing fast for its time! I've been pretty loyal to Microsoft products over the years but about five years ago I had to get a Macbook for work purposes as many of the people I was working with were all Mac people. Having custom built my own machines my entire life, I simply could not believe how clunky the Mac felt. There were many things I liked about it but by comparison to Windows 7 a Macbook Pro just felt like a Speak and Spell to me. Much to my surprise of owning one for several years, most of the Apple propaganda I discovered to be complete bullshit. Macs got viruses and malware (mine did). Macs crashed on a high degree of frequency (mine did as did everyone else I knew who owned one did too). Macs had huge amount of compatibility problems with things like mice, printers, you name it. You know, the things all the Mac people complain have happen to PCs. But more than anything, I just couldn't understand how Apple justified the price! I remember buying a 17" HP Laptop for my wife a few years ago and when we were walking out of the store we passed by the Apple kiosk and they had a 17" Macbook Pro on display there. Out of curiosity I started comparing specs against the HP and much to my surprise, they were IDENTICAL machines. Same brand of motherboard, same CPU and speed, same amount and brand of memory, same make and model of graphic card, and the same sound card. The only difference was the HP had two extra USB ports, a built-in multi-card reader, and blu-ray drive instead of DVD. Oh yeah, there was one other difference too...the HP cost $1,600 less. So basically what Apple is trying to say is for one thousand, six hundred dollars you get an operating system and an apple logo. Woo Hoo. I'm not saying Macs are bad computers, they aren't. I just don't think they are worth the insane prices and the smugness that comes with them. I also much prefer the Windows interface and amount of control you have over your computer. I don't like to be baby-sat with what I can and cannot do with my own damn computer. Itunes sucks ass. Well, two months ago I sold my Mac as I no longer have a use for it and bought a nice, shiny new Alienware machine with Windows 8.1 on it and while I run Win 7 on my desktop, I actually quite like Windows 8.1 now that I've gotten used to it. I have a Samsung Galaxy SIII phone and I'm looking to upgrade this summer and Windows phones are certainly on my list to look at. Apr 03 14 02:52 pm Link lynne g wrote: The MP alone means nothing. My 6 mp Nikon D70s will take a much better quality photo than you 13 mp android. Apr 03 14 03:24 pm Link London Fog wrote: It's never too late, a lot of people thought microsoft was dead 2 years ago. You may not be fully looking at this. Office is being offered free to read only. They hope that users Buy their service to fully use it. They also have cloud. Apple sells a lot of iphones. This is additional income. Business people use word and excel. Apr 03 14 03:24 pm Link London Fog wrote: Your prejudice is showing. Apr 04 14 08:33 am Link Looknsee Photography wrote: Agreed, and also saying that the Microsoft OS is a "hasbeen" is a biased lie. It's as state of the art as any of them. Just a reminder, there were many smartphones on the market for years before Apple introduced IOS. Just because something is new to the market doesn't make it bad. When the Apple addicts were waiting in line for hours to get their Iphone 2s years ago my bet is they never would have predicted that in just a few short years they would have their market share destroyed by a company out of Korea. Apr 04 14 09:57 am Link Looknsee Photography wrote: Shot By Adam wrote: Yeah, I think we should have a special forum devoted exclusively to Apple / Android / Microsoft Haters. I'm not sure why this thread belongs in the "General Industry" forum. These hater threads are very tedious. Apr 04 14 10:06 am Link  . Apr 05 14 04:56 am Link Critical thinking at a premium once again on MM! First of all: "Most Android stuff is cheap crap on the hardware side." No it isn't. second: MegaPixel war. So what? IQ in sensors is determined by the size of the individual sensor. Grossly increasing pixel density is a marketing bullet. Nothing more. /rant I'm interested to see if Satya Nadella can get it right where Ballmer got it so horribly wrong. For an OS point of view MS has since their first forays into cell phones been obsessed with IP reuse at the expense of the user experience. First they tried to cram XP into a cell phone. I had a Windows mobile 6 device for a while. What a disaster it truly was. They followed this some years later with the Windows 8 fiasco. This time instead of trying to force a windows OS into a phone, they took the opposite approach and in the name of keeping IP common, they forced a mobile OS into the desktop. Apple success is on the back of the user experience. Mobile OS for mobile devices and a desktop OS for the desktop. Back when the iPhone was being developed, Apple took the view that if the OS required all new coding, then that's what it got. If Nadella can steer Microsoft away from this tremendously damaging IP reuse mindset and focus on the customer instead - he might just be able to turn MS around. I'd give him a 20% chance of succeeding with the handset market, as opposed to 0% under Ballmer. My feeling is that Nadella is a pragmatist and as such he may well cede the handset segment and go after more lucrative opportunities that aren't already saturated. As for the fanless computing segment - a change of hardware to focus more on energy efficiency combined with their demonstrable leadership in business applications could pan out very well if played right. Apr 05 14 05:39 am Link I think that it will be very difficult for MS to gain market share in this market (mobile devices and the OS to run them). They have been trying for years and have spent lots of money (ads, etc) trying to make a dent. They haven't. It is very hard to get market share in a "mature" market. Perhaps with new leadership MS will be able to get ahead of the "next big thing" that is coming. If they do, they will dominate it. But, I just don't see them gaining much traction in mobile. Apr 05 14 05:42 am Link In my opinion no-one has done anything innovative in the smartphone market since 2007 when the iPhone launched. At the time Nokia and Blackberry had a fairly unassailable stranglehold on the market. Apple changed that, and all successful smartphones since then have copied the iPhone design, with its large touchscreen interface and flat candy-bar body. Remember flip phones? Keyboards? Dual-screen phones? Apple and android devices currently dominate the market. Is there room to change the status quo? Sure, but you won't do it by making yet another iPhone clone with a different OS. Apr 05 14 05:53 am Link I'm thinking that tablets and phones are to Microsoft what personal computers are to IBM. Just as IBM ruled the mainframe world and didn't jump on the PC bandwagon with enough conviction, Microsoft ruled the PC world and missed the tablet and phone bandwagon. Apr 05 14 06:08 am Link Ah, I see we have a lot of Microsoft fans! The company that thrust some of the worst ever OS's upon the world, and continues to release one turkey after another. As for the smartphone/tablet market, they missed the boat a long, long time ago, hence the announcement of desperation! Basically they are saying "please, please buy our crap product, and we are so sorry for Vista and Win8 and ME and, well everything we've ever done" with the exception of XP and 7. Even those clowns get it right some of the time! And before you question my IT knowledge, know one thing, this is my 28th year supporting MS, Oracle, Unix etc in major corporate environments! Apr 05 14 06:16 am Link  "I love Windows, it's perfect!" "I hate Windows, worst operating system ever!" Okay, everyone can have an opinion and that's fair. The facts are that MicroSoft Windows has dominated the personal computer business for decades, and as an operating system currently still has a 90% market share. In the world's most successful free market system, consumers both private and public, have for many decades consistently chosen MS Windows over all other available operating systems. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Windows is the worst operating system, except for all the others! Yes, MS missed the mobile market revolution. Windows 7 couldn't be adapted for tablets and smart phones. Windows 8, with all the issues PC users have had with the initial interface, was designed for the mobile market. I think it's fair to believe with Microsoft's enormous market base in desktops and laptops, it is poised to become a major player in the mobile market. While hardly suggestive of the larger reality, when I recently purchased my first smart phone, I chose a Nokia because it featured a Windows 8 operating system. I felt some comfort in looking at a familiar interface. I had previously purchased a tablet (almost three years ago) that has an Android operating system, and even three years later I still have problems navigating the system. If I buy a new tablet (and I'm thinking about it) it will almost certainly choose one with Windows 8. I doubt I'm alone, so yes, if for no other reason, I believe Windows will be competitive in the mobile market. John -- John Fisher 900 West Avenue, Suite 633 Miami Beach, Florida 330139 (305) 534-9322 http://www.johnfisher.com Apr 05 14 08:25 am Link MS was probably late (My last smartphone was a Windows Mobile 6, but I'm sans a smartphone now as the bills didn't match the usage.), but then so could Canon, Nikon, etc. too with the way the phones and tablets are going. I could see someone coming out with a tablet of say 300+MP sensor in size. Nokia has 41MP so shouldn't be much of a stretch as tech evolves. Once on the tablet, one could zoom in and out by squeezing their fingers and crop to what image they wanted and shoot it. Cropped output could be 30MP or whatever depending on the smartness of the software and compression. WiFi or BT to the studio lights too, or perhaps some magic ISO/lighting software to negate them too. Auto-sharpening and noise reduction done in the tablet. At that point, throw all the Nikons and Canons, etc. in the trash as they too missed the boat. Apr 05 14 09:02 am Link If they make a version for my HP Touchpad, maybe I'll actually start using it!  Just my $0.02 etc. etc. Apr 05 14 09:03 am Link Yes they are too late and they know it. You don't think Steve B was retiring because he hit the mark, his entire tenure was a series of missteps and mistakes. Years ago I worked for them, and Bill was always the thinker and Steve the doer. A good COO but not CEO, he lacked vision and now they are playing catch up. Apr 05 14 09:13 am Link |
