Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has confirmed that his company will amalgamate all major versions of Windows into one operating system. Speaking on the company’s quarterly earnings call today, Nadella told analysts Microsoft will “streamline the next version of Windows from three operating systems into one single converged operating system.” Describing the implications of the change, Nadella said “this means one operating system that covers all screen sizes.”
Not exactly news, but it’s good to have it explicitly out in the open like this. And if they’re going to want to keep focusing on consumers, they’re going to need some pretty big changes. They sold fewer than half a million Surface devices in the last quarter, and only 5.8 million Lumia devices. That last figure is misleading, though, as it only covers two months due to the Nokia deal. Even adding another month, it’s safe to say it’s well below 10 million.
This actually raises an interesting question: has Microsoft actually ever made any profit off Windows Phone? Especially taking into account the huge amount of money they had to pour into Nokia’s devices division every quarter just to keep it alive? And now they also need to earn the costs of the acquisition back.
At some point, someone is going to have to make the tough calls here. What is the future of Windows Phone – and how long will that future be? How long will Microsoft be able to pour resources into the bottomless money pit that is Windows Phone?
I’m pretty sure Microsoft will happily tell you that “Yes, we make a profit”, otherwise they might have a hard time explaining it to their shareholders (stuffing tons of top dollar into WinPho plus devices plus Nokia assimilation). That being said, I’m sure the statement will also happily omit that most of Microsoft’s revenue in the Mobile Department come from that ridiculous patent fees they <strike>extort</strike> get from Android OEMs.
What I don’t really get is why Microsoft still clings on to their Windows Phone experiment. Even if we assume that they sell ~10 Million devices within two months (and that’s a forged number as well – that are units they ship out to resellers, not actual activated devices within the specified amount of time – same trick Microsoft applies to “Windows <insert release version> licenses sold”); compare that to the figures of Android device activations within the same time frame … in that comparison “10 Million” look… “thin”.
I rather use Android where I can roll my own ROM if I feel fancy enough to whip up my own CM or Omni variant than use a phone OS that’s closed source and not customizable at all (do I need to say “Tiles”?).
That’s my take on it – it may not be in line with other readers and/or commenters.
Edited 2014-07-23 09:02 UTC
Good question. Ben Thomson at Stratechery has an interesting article on Microsoft that covers that very question of ‘Why?’.
http://stratechery.com/2014/making-sense-microsoft/
Making [Windows] Server less subservient to Windows? Is this guy brain damaged? That’s like asking RHEL to be less subservient to Fedora.
On the surface of things, it may seem that suggesting that Server be less subservient to Windows is a silly notion, but I’d argue that is largely down to how Windows Server was born and has grown up.
The name “Windows” implies a GUI toolkit, and accompanying infrastructure to support that toolkit. In principle a server OS does not need a GUI toolkit.
At the core of Windows products is the NT kernel. It would be quite possible to build a server OS on top of that kernel that did not include the vast majority of the Windows infrastructure, i.e. all the GUI-related bits.
They have a had this since Windows Server 2008, and they even call it Core.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd184075.aspx
And yet because Microsoft still can’t do anything right, it boots into a GUI with a single fixed command line window. It’s like raw X11 from the 80s, with no window manager and one xterm.
No, you got it wrong. He writes about the Server group, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Product_Divisions#Microsof…
Wndows Server, Windows Phone, Windows RT and Windows Desktop are merging together into one Windows OS.
Edited 2014-07-24 21:49 UTC
I like this quote: “…tech companies ought to be either vertically/platform focused, with software and services that differentiate hardware (like Apple), or horizontally/service focused, with the goal of offering superior software and services on all devices (like Google and Facebook). To try and do both, as Ballmer explicitly did with his “Devices and Services†strategy, is to do neither well.”
At this point, nearly five years in, I think it’s safe to say it’s no longer an “experiment”. That’s not saying it will be around forever (though I personally hope it is), but I’d say it’s pretty grounded at this point.
Windows Phone adoption is certainly slower than other phone OSes, but it’s following a similar track as the iPhone did:
http://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-iphone-sales…
The first three years the iPhone was out, Apple sold less than 10 million units per quarter, and it didn’t hit 20 million until a year after that, four years after release. Windows Phone isn’t quite that successful in its fourth year, but it’s not much worse either. The fifth year is when we really saw iPhone take off, so I wouldn’t count Windows Phone out of the game just yet.
With one big difference: profit. Apple made a huge profit on every iPhone sold from day one.
It will likely take Microsoft several years – starting now – to even get close to *breaking-even*. That’s a whole different ballgame.
You’re right, I didn’t touch on profit, just units sold. But as others have said, Microsoft is good at riding the unprofitable project for many years. And look at other companies like Amazon, who are also barely making a profit if at all, yet they are seen as successful.
Either way, I don’t think Windows Phone is going away any time soon.
Oh I agree – but I do think tough discussions like this are held or considered at Microsoft. During a massive reorganisation like this, you can bet that money pits like this are thrown on the chopping block during discussions.
Agreed, and rightfully so, sad as it may be for fans of the product like me.
You can’t just compare anyone to Amazon. Amazon is a behemoth who’s revenue continues to grow and it continues to re invest its profits into infrastructure and growth into new markets. And all of the new areas it gets into, supports its core mission of selling more and more stuff to you.
Jeff Bezos is either the luckiest ceo ever, or the most brilliant. Maybe both. I’d put him up in the pantheon with Bill Gates for his business acumen, and ability to build a huge company despite a swarm of highly funded competitors.
Umm, you kinda just did compare the two companies, by way of comparing their CEOs.
And anyway, Microsoft is just as much a behemoth as Amazon, just in different areas. I think it’s fitting to compare the two; one has the most ubiquitous desktop operating system in the world for over 20 years, the other is the largest consumer e-tailer in the western world. Beyond that, both are active in mobile computing, both are players in the cloud space (though Amazon is clearly the leader there), and Amazon is trying to break into the living room, where Microsoft has had a strong showing for well over a decade.
I think the reason he/she meant you can’t compare it to Amazon is. Because Amazon makes no profit, because they re-invest everything every time.
This makes it hard to compare it to other companies.
Amazon is a legal (near) Ponzi scheme. Its’ business ‘plan’ is to sell below cost until all its’ competitors go out of business. The problem is that this is a totally unsustainable business. Once the relentless growth slows Amazon will almost instantly implode because it has no intrinsic value. The only ‘value’ to shareholders is the ever increasing share price. There are no genuine profits and no worthwhile return on capital.
They are using WalMart’s tactics, yes. It also doesn’t help that they are anti union.
As others have said… they make LOTS of money. The reason most of that is not profit is because they reinvest the vast majority of it back into making their business more efficient. Jeff Bezos sees bottom line profit as a waste compared to spending that money on R&D.
Once Bezos moves on from Amazon (by whatever means it happens) then Amazon will surely change into a profit monger for a few years and then fade into irrelevance. It is precisely the investment of “profit” that makes Amazon a sustainable business.
I don’t know if Microsoft is any good at riding the unprofitable project for many years.
I heared the patent money they get from Android actually ends up on the xbox balance sheet and that actually is one of the reasons it is even in the plus (!)
Now I haven’t checked this and I’m not interested in doing that either. But if it is true, then I doubt they are any good at it.
And another big difference is that not only are smartphones the majority of handsets being sold now the absolute number of phones being sold has also gone up.
So the comparison, while historical, is nowhere near oranges-to-oranges.
One more big difference is that back then Apple did limit availbility to certain carriers for max profit. They could do cause there was not much competition. Only much later Apple actually started to open up, to sell everywhere.
Then there is the difference that market share wasn’t focus, profit was and that worked out well from beginning for Apple. For Microsoft its a money-hole and they just spend $7 billion on Nokia to expand that moneyhole. Apple focused and still focuses on highend segment. Compare that with Lumia where the cheapest entrymodel, that sells on lose per unit, is the biggest chunk of that tiny part of the cake they got.
On top the detail that Microsoft’s share in mobile market was not so long ago factors larger. Remember Windows CE? Aborted, WP7, aborted, WP8 going to be aborted for Windows vNext. There is no happy end in there.
Edited 2014-07-24 22:09 UTC
It’s almost as bad as their endless attempts at trying to get xBox to be successful in Japan.
They are desperately grasping at straws to diversify as they can already see the writing on the walls that their days are numbered.
Yes, Microsoft is a behemoth right now, but that doesn’t mean they will be around forever.
As more and more people start using alternatives the foundation of the castle will crumble, till one day the towers come tumbling down.
And right there’s the problem, with the alternatives that is.
Earlier this year I switched back to Windows (Windows 7) after many years of using Linux as my daily driver because all Linux desktops became about as bad as the Metrocalypse. The “major” desktops (Gnome 3, KDE, Cinnamon, KDE) do whatever they can to make the user experience as bad as somehow possible. Why would I want to “search” for an app? Why would I want to jump through hoops to see all my open windows? Why would I want to deal with highly moronic “program menus” to get to the program I need to start by at least 5+ clicks?
Yes, I know there are other WMs like XFCE and LXDE but, let’s face it, even Gnome 0.xx is better than them.
My point in terms of WMs is: Why, in the hell, do I have to deal with badly thought-out UIs and/or clones of smartphone UIs on a desktop (and that includes Windows 8.x as well). What was so fundamentally wrong with Gnome 2.3x or the Windows shell?
Back in Ubuntu 10.04 I ran Compiz + Metacity + AWN and not only had a blazing fast desktop but also all the eye-candy I wanted compiz to render (even making OS X highly jealous). With Ubuntu 12.04 all of that came down to either “Unity” (*yuck*), “Cinnamon” (“buggy be thy first name”) or “Mate” (yay for totally not supporting GTK3 while all of the apps are switching away from GTK2) or “KDE” (most stupid “Start” menu I ever used) – I disregard XFCE/LXDE here for “sooooo mid-1990’s”.
Also, media playback on Linux (for example Hi10P H.264) is just a pain in the rear. All of the gstreamer based solutions won’t play VDPAU accelerated but happily use the CPU, MPlayer/MPlayer2/MPV all happily crash when being launched through UMPlayer/SMPlayer unless being called manually on the command prompt. Compare that to MPC-HC in Windows … whatever I throw at the player, it just plays “DXVA accelerated” leaving the CPU almost alone (my 8-core FX8150 “idles” at ~12%@800Mhz even while playing a 1080p file).
To sum it up: There’s no real “alternative”. You can only pick the lesser craptastic evil. I, for one, will stay with Windows 7 for the forseeable future. The deterioating Linux user interface experience really drove me away (am I getting old or there are really just brain-damaged toddlers who can barely draw up a concept art with crayons coding UIs nowadays – includes the FOSS and closed-source OS worlds?). Windows 8.x is a plain joke (yes, ClassicShell yadda yadda yadda – but even with all of that, why do I have to have the Metrocalypse still running in the background when I don’t even want/need that crap), the Linux UIs don’t fare any better in regards of “usability” – the Windows 7 desktop is the last one giving me a desktop interface that doesn’t get into the way of getting the daily workflow done and switching from window to windows absolutely hassle-free.
Sorry for the rant, and kinda unstructured write-up … I think I could write a whole library about “All things wrong with user-interfaces nowadays”.
Assuming your 12% is the CPU usage in the task manager, that “idling” is actually one of your cores running at 100%! (100% / 8 = 12.5%)
If you approach it that way then the load would equal to one core running at almost full load. What you missed though is that the CPU is sitting there at the lowest clock-speed.
Playing back the same file in Linux (MPlayer2 outputting to the X11 “Nvidia” renderer because it happily crashes with VDPAU – that was back in the days as I still had Mint 13 (==Ubuntu 12.04) installed) lead to a totally different picture. At least two out of the eight cores ran at full 3500MHz (the “Turbo” where the CPU could jump to 4GHz with just 2 cores is disabled on purpose) and one more core would jump between 800 and 2200MHz. It played, but compared to how it works and performs in Windows the CPU was burning away Watts (125W… so that’s 15,625W per “fully loaded” core or 31.25W for the two of them doing the heavy lifing) just because hardware accelerated video playback which would “waste” a whole lot of power is just beyond making it happen.
And it’s not only Nvidia’s VDPAU, it seems va-api is in about the same situation (not really supported though somewhat working at least with Intel GPUs).
Why would you like to search for an application?
I use mac os X. As soon as spotlight appeared (Tiger-2005?) it became my launcher of choice. I know the apps by name, so it is waaaay faster to hit command+space and type a few letters for the application I want than anything else.
Note that I am a heavy command-line user, so I am quite used to launching stuff by naming it partially and tab-complete. I just wanted to mention that it makes a lot of sense for a lot of people to be able to launch programs by name (search helps with that), instead of using spatial memory or trying to find an icon somewhere.
That’s about the same as how Gnome 3 and Unity work … get to the “Applications” menu and type the name of the app you want to start into the “Search” box.
My Gripe: Why do I have to touch the keyboard to launch a program (going by “Type” -> “Launch”)? What’s so fundamentally wrong in clicking an icon in a menu or on the desktop?
Sure, that’s ok. The nice thing about spotlight is that Apple didn’t remove the previous way to launch applications by clicking icons. My bet is that unity programmers are heavy command-line users so they felt like I feel, and forgot about other users.
Before spotlight it was a bit like “why do I have to move my hands away from the keyboard to launch an application?”.
Yes, because Right Click -> Switch to Classical Menu is soooooooo aweful and unintuitive.
Reading you whole post it seems like you should be blaming your *distro* instead of *linux*.
And if you don’t like the gstreamer “crap”, go to VLC (and phonon supports VLC backend as well)
Didn’t even notice that option (and am also not sure if that’s even there in KDE4) … maybe that relates to the “customization war with that totally options overloaded Control Center”. Not that I have anything against being able to customize stuff to my likings, but KDE really went a whole lot over-board with it. Gnome 2, before they started to take away options, was the right mix of “stuff to configure through checkmarks” Vs. “using gconf-editor” to customize the lower-level stuff.
As for VLC: Please be so good and hop into any fansubber channel you fancy on Rizon and tell them you’re a VLC fan … prepare for some backslash and very good reasons against VLC – in case you get to read them because you’re not channel-banned right away. While I’m no fansubber VLC is about the last piece of software I would use. The only other player I can think of that’s worse than VLC would be Kaffeeine.
Edited 2014-07-24 11:39 UTC
KDE is easily one of the most configurable desktops ever. You can have a desktop full of icons as easily as a clean one. You have several options for “start menu” type functionality. You can have multiple tool bars (floating or docked), multiple desktops, multiple monitors, and multiple of just about everything else. Or you can keep it as simple as you like.
Yes, they’ve changed the defaults. But that doesn’t mean they’ve stripped your ability to make it into whatever you want it to be. Try that with any version of Windows. Microsoft changes their defaults and then makes it as hard as possible for you to get back what you were comfortable with.
I agree about about drivers on Linux. When it works it usually works really well, with the exception of hardware acceleration. Video and audio seem to be the two biggest sources of frustration. I’m seeing both getting a lot more attention these days because of projects like the Steam Box and the attention they bring to Linux development.
Microsoft would not gain from abandoning Surface or Windows Phone, except a relatively small amount of short-term cash. In the long-term it would be very negative for MSFT to have no platform for its wares.
In the long term they are risking not having *any* platform if they burn all the money in something that does not stick.
In other times, I would be very happy to see Microsoft sink into oblivion. I used to hate them for what they did (in my opinion) to computing in general by stomping competition abusing their monopoly. Right now I don’t care. And I think it is a very bad signal for MSFT if people that used to hate them no longer care… as it shows they no longer have the grip in the industry they used to have.
Part of the problem of having a monopoly is arrogance and hubris. They still need to change that, before they produce a platform that’s more attractive.
The idea convergence offers a possibility of removing unnecessary barriers between what is essentially marketed as the same operating system.
Edited 2014-07-23 10:34 UTC
+ 4 !
+ 1
No problem, they divert the Android royalties into their Devices and Services division to mask the losses.
Edited 2014-07-23 09:16 UTC
Came here to say the same thing. They “profit” from windows phone, by way of Android royalties. They have no dev costs for android, but get a share of the proceeds. If the oems made windows phones instead, its likely that Microsoft wouldn’t profit as much.
The windows phone allows them to not be seen as true patent trolls.
Only works while there’s incoming money there, and with the recent revelations about what the portolio is that they are trying to use against the manufacturers expect that one to dry up in the next couple years when the manufacturers stop renewing the license and demand more proof for needing it, or start fighting MS in court over it.
But it is so good and refreshing to have something radically different from the market compared to Android and iOS. Thats the reason I chose Lumia device for my first smartphone (although not using it like one, but more like a potentially capable feature phone for calls and SMSes).
After all, the WP is blazingly fast on low-end devices and I like blocky UI-s so WP interface is so good and clear to use.
“Radically different” would be Sailfish, FirefoxOS, OpenMoko etc.
Windows Phone is just a continuation of WinCE mixed with Metro and will never shake the stigma of either.
the UI of the WP is radically different to an extent that people either hate or love it. And for that I really applaud Microsoft for making such a bold move – divide the home screen into grid of boxes of different sizes – there is no other platform on the market like this. All else are pretty much the same, just icons on the screen but not Microsoft – they did it radically different.
Sorry to disappoint but there are a numbers of Tiles-launchers available for Android. Even Nokia wrote one for there NokiaX that emulates 1:1 WP8 Tiles.
Edited 2014-07-29 23:18 UTC
Windows Phone runs on the NT kernel. Since 8.0
Eh? Did you ever even see Sailfish, FirefoxOS, or OpenMoko? All are a grid of icons descending from PalmOS… (and nowadays clones of iOS or Android) All similarly unremarkable, perhaps except gestures on Sailfish (which have their own problems; anyway, they don’t make it “radically different”)
Perhaps “radically niche” is the expression you were looking for?
Microsoft are the masters of the long game. Think Office/Server/IIS/XBox they slowly chip away at the incumbents until one makes a misstep and they are right there to pick up the pieces.
At the moment they are waiting for Apple to fall or Android to fork (eg Samsung splitting off from google services). When that will come, we dont know of course but all empires eventually fall…
LOL @ the idea of Samsung splitting off from Google services. Android as an OS isn’t that great, and Samsung’s implementation is certainly not among the best. But Google’s services are good, and are well integrated with the platform.
Apple tried to deliver a competitive maps app and failed spectacularly. Samsung would do a lot worse.
Yeah, I know Amazon made a phone. They’ve got an app store already (launched well before the tablets, which don’t depend on services as much), and they’ve got a few Amazon-specific services. It’s also U.S. only.
Samsung wouldn’t necessarily need to make their own competing service. They could ‘simply’ use someone else’s with better terms than Google offers.
Microsoft’s Bing/Cortana combo instead of Google/Now?
HERE maps instead of Google Maps?
The point is, if Samsung wanted to leave Google’s ecosystem, MS are waiting with open arms!
I know you think they could, but they really couldn’t. Google’s about 10 steps ahead of that. They’re baking in apis to google play services. A lot of popular apps won’t work with out it now.
There is ALWAYS an alternative. It may not be viable for Samsung Today, but it doesn’t meant it can’t be.
Don’t forget that the Nokia X was able to run without Google’s services. MS basically created a like for like replacement for many of them.
http://developer.nokia.com/nokia-x/platform-overview
There is also Yandex in Russia accomplishing a similar thing
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/19/yandex-kit/
Obviously, at this stage these systems arnt as comprehensive as Google’s but with clout like Samsung’s they could become so.
75% of some sub set would work.
[q]If your app uses Google services for push notifications, maps or in-app payments, you’ll need to make a few changes, but it won’t take long (usually less than 8 hours). Nokia services have been designed to minimize porting effort from apps using corresponding Google services and enable developers to develop and distribute a single APK targeting multiple stores.[q]
Ah, here’s why its only 75%. They didn’t write drop in replacements.
The truth is, you’d be forever api chasing. Every new revision of Google Play services, devs focusing on android would rush to make use of the new apis, breaking them on the alternative platform.
Is it worth the effort as an app developer? I doubt it. Nokia’s andorid efforts are gone. Any developer that followed their advise on that lost that time and effort.
Well, yeah, except for mobile.
Its been fifteen years since windows ce/ mobile came out. They built it up to the number 2 pda behind palm, and then just got bored with it.
They had the first commercial tablet, and they never updated/improved it.
MS played the long game under Gates. Under Balmer, they really didn’t ( I don’t think Xbox qualifies as a long game & I don’t think the first one was bad). Who knows what they’ll do under the new guy.
The Lumia figures are for an incomplete quarter, as D&S technically still belonged to Nokia for part of this quarter. If you average it out, its just shy of 8 million total for the quarter (may know for sure when Nokia’s financials come out).
8 million is still bad, but it’s not the same disaster than 5.8 million would be. This entire acquisition, the CEO change, and the internal reorgs have been pretty damaging to whatever fleeting momentum Lumia had started to carve for itself.
As for how long Microsoft will keep “pouring” money into Windows Phone, that’s not really the right question to ask anymore. The question is how long will Microsoft keep pouring money into Windows, and the answer is for a very long time.
Windows is Windows Phone is Xbox now. They OS group is the same group. These are no longer siloed efforts within Microsoft.
The head of all devices at Microsoft is Elop and the head of Windows is Terry Myerson (Windows Phone head).
The WP execs have pretty firm control over Windows, post-Sinofsky. So any kind of disruption would have to come from the very highest levels of management.
I don’t think its likely that Satya would can WP, as he can likely appreciate a long investment. He’s an Azure/Bing man, after all.
Edited 2014-07-23 10:52 UTC
It ain’t happening, and this is going to get more, and more, and more painful. Windows Phone is a massive sinkhole that Microsoft will never get anywhere because the mobile market has the two operating systems it seems to require, and it took Android quite a while to gain traction in that.
It’s over.
Pretty bizarre phraseology there, but that’s the kind of mental gymnastics a lot of people are having to perform to convince themselves that everything is alright.
Hm, he’s a Bing man …is that why we’re apparently getting Bing forced on newer Lumias?
This could be written about every single project Microsoft does that isn’t profitable but they /require/ it to exist.
Bing.
Xbox.
Windows Phone.
Internet Explorer.
(wrong place)
Edited 2014-07-23 16:01 UTC
Judging from business history MS is likely to be still going strong long after Apple and Google have disappeared. Boring monopolies beat exciting tech companies in the long term.
MS is an entrenched monopoly with staggering barriers to entry (eg most commercial software runs on Windows). Google is an advertising business and Apple is a basically a one product (iPhone) company selling into a market with plummeting margins and almost unlimited range of competing products.
Edited 2014-07-23 11:08 UTC
Google is an advertising company now, but they are going into some very interesting directions with VR and automatic cars that could be insanely profitable in the future.
Apple was successful before the iPhone and will be successful after. There is still huge untapped potential in the power of mobile technology and they’re nowhere near the end of the line. As for margins, you forgot to mention that unlike the rest of the industry, apples margins are not plummeting. In fact they just improved in the last quarter
Thanks to the return of Steve Jobs, being acquired by NeXT and launching the iPod.
It won’t happen again.
Both products are little more than gimmicks at this stage. They are unlikely to generate much revenue for at least a decade.
If you think Apple will be able to maintain the current margins you are delusional. They will inevitably suffer the same fate as PC makers due to market saturation and commoditisation. Mobile hardware now has very little potential for major improvements.
Within five years a very capable phone or tablet (considerably better than the current flagship models) will likely cost $50-100. [My local supermarket is currently selling quad core 7″ Android tablets with KitKat, 1GB of RAM and 8GB storage for the equivalent of USD68.]
Very good point about monopolies. Even in computing we have IBM as an example. It has survived in part because its monopoly in mainframes. I don’t know if microsoft monopolies will last that long, as the web kind of disrupts their core businesses.
The web makes the OS way less important (windows disrupted). It also changes the way business organize which IMO is disrupting Office.
I do think that Google will outlast Microsoft. I am not so sure about Apple, as its core markets could fade really fast, but right now Apple is doing fine (again, my opinion).
Isn’t that statement very 2007?
Windows is down to 14% market share for devices shipping this year, while Android has 48%. Consequently, business applications seem to be focusing on portable web and mobile clients now rather than old-fashioned fat Windows-only clients.
Perhaps I’m just ahead of the curve, but IMHO Windows is quickly becoming the mainframe / Cobol of the 21st century – profitable, sure, even in the long term, but a mere shadow of the influential entrenched monopoly of yesteryear. Thank God.
Virtually all professionals and businesses rely on very expensive custom applications that only run on Windows desktops/laptops.
Try and convince and engineer or accountant that they can work on a tablet or phone and watch their reaction.
I get the response you expect when they see Windows 8x too, useless for real work
The corporate market has only recently switched to Windows 7. They will completely skip Windows 8 and move to Windows 9/10 in the next 3-5 years.
I think Microsoft’s Monopoly position has always been defined in terms of the PC (Desktop/Laptop) space and not the overall Professional/Consumer IT marketplace.
I personally don’t think that Microsoft is a monopoly, in the past perhaps absolutely, but now it’s becoming clear they may not get to control the boat in the fastest/largest segment this time around. Somebody else has the better business plan this time.
Currently all of these OSses already run the same kernel. That was the big change with XBox One and Windows Phone 8. It is purely the layers on top of that kernel that are different. If they are indeed going to make “Modern/app/store” and “Desktop/programs/installer” into features that will be available in SKU’s you might get this:
Windows Mobile (Phone/Tablet): no Desktop
Windows Home: “Modern by default, Desktop available”
Windows Pro: “Desktop by default, Modern availabe, domain enabled”
Windows Server: no Modern
Mobile would also be mostly single user, full screen app to reduce complexity but not because of the technical underpinnings of the OS. So side-by-side apps and kids-corner or work/private separation would be possible
Of course Microsoft is going to make it much more “tailored” with way too many SKU’s and of course Windows Mobile is a name they cannot use anymore but this would be the main idea. The absolutely most important thing will be Universal Apps which should give all current platforms a boost and finally get rid of the “there isn’t an app for that” mantra.
Universal applications are an absolute pipe dream. Google and Apple know this which is why they have separate platforms. They are completely different user interface paradigms.
Microsoft still haven’t learned that they are not going to leverage the installed base of Windows to gain a foothold in the mobile market. They tried to do that with Metro and Windows 8 and all it did was hurt Windows itself.
It seems to work pretty well in a browser. Nobody makes WEP/Mobile sites anymore, we just use the regular website on any device and screen. Websites have been made “responsive” to accommodate that change. And for the best experience we have apps.
Out of curiosity: How would you split mobile and desktop? Apple has 11″ MacBooks and 10″ tablets that use a different OS. The Tablet actually has the higher screenresolution in some cases.
Has been the Microsoft motto for quite some time.
Due to their size and money in the bank, the company is able to preserve long enough until the competion looses it somehow.
It does not always work, but many lost to Microsoft thanks to it.
In the mobile market, this is certanly not yet the case, but at least in Europe, Windows Phone already won the third place.
No Tizen, Blackberry, Jolla, <place your brand here> will take that place from them.
In countries like Portugal, with an average income of 400€, it is starting to be Android vs WP, unless you want to marry with your operator for an iPhone.
I would like to see them still investing on it, specially if the focus continues to be on WinRT OS architecture.
Microsoft, alongside Google, are the only mainstream OS vendors pursuing programming stacks that aren’t yet another 70’s POSIX clone.
FYI POSIX did not come into the scene until 88/89.
I should have written UNIX System V clone, POSIX is just shorter.
FYI bis; System V is from the mid 80s.
Edited 2014-07-23 23:03 UTC
I wouldn’t call 1983 the mid 80’s, besides it was the first commercial release.
Until then, it was a research OS used by AT&T hipsters.
I wouldn’t call SVR1 a “commercial” release per se given USL had not gotten fully off the ground by that version. In any case I most definitively wouldn’t call 1983 the 70s.
That may very well be. But now it’s clear you were throwing around buzzwords whose meaning you did not necessarily comprehended. Thus the whole argument “WP/Android new, iOS old” may not be as straightforward as your assumptions may have led you to believe.
Cheers.
Edited 2014-07-24 17:12 UTC
http://www.unix.org/what_is_unix/history_timeline.html
UNIX architecture hardly changed in the last years in terms of overall architecture.
As Rob Pike puts it
Still, the 80s are not the 70s. Besides, Sys V bears no consideration since iOS is not a straight/direct descendant of that system. It may be part of its heritage.
But in that case, WP lineage can be tracked down to VMS which is even older than Sys V. Ergo Microsoft is offering an even older “programming stack” (whatever it is that you wanted that to mean). Which would be a ridiculous claim.
All of these systems, be it iOS, WP, Android, Whatever, have new and old elements. Some may be a few quarters/semesters or a year perhaps behind/ahead in terms of overall functionality. But to try to imply one is a living relic from 3/4 decades past is a bit ridiculous.
Elop found it very profitable, he got a $25 million bonus for destroying Nokia.
(See Communities Dominate Brands blog for the long story)
Lumias were heavily pushed and subsidized. It will be interesting to see market share if they don’t give the phones away.
Blackberry might come back if the NSA thing keeps up – and they and Windows Phone might fight.
I don’t see how that would help them, they are backdoored too:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-08/nsa-has-full-back-door-acc…
Basically, all consumer networking devices are, or at least that’s the assumption you should make if that kind of thing is important to you. I’m sure my Windows Phone is as well, and I think that sucks, but the most incriminating thing I do with it is post cat memes on Tumblr, so they can look all they want.
Yeah, they’ve lost their shirts on the Nokia purchase. $692 million from April through June alone.
People only think that Windows is a huge barrier to entry. The reality is a lot more complicated. Yes Windows has a huge library of software, but how much of it do you actually use? For me the only software I want is Caligari Truespace, and maybe some remote desktop software like goto assist. But I can get along without it thanks to RDP/VPN and VNC clients. The odd game that windows XP/7 won’t even run are the other things I want running. Frankly the reasons to run windows for me are less and less every day. This holds true on Mac OSX as well as Linux. Most business software I see in retail is easily replaced with Linux software.
There are thousands of professional programmes that only run on Windows. They are never going to be ported to other platformss. Users won’t even consider using FOSS alternatives to programmes like AutoCAD.
Many of those programs will just fade into oblivion. There are selected ones, like Autocad (as you mention). Believing that they will never be ported is naive to say the least. For example, there is a port of Autocad (your very example) for the mac. It may not be feature complete, but this port is relatively recent.
AutoCAD LT for Mac is a much cheaper (free for students) basic 2D design product. It has far fewer features than AutoCAD.
http://www.autodesk.com/products/autocad-lt/compare/compare-product…
But not only Autocad LT is available for the mac:
http://www.autodesk.com/products/autocad/overview
AutoCAD 2014 for Mac, no LT in there.
they said that about Visicalc and Wordstar
Darkmage,
Often times a lot of Linux alternatives exist; some are quite good, some are even preferable. However it’s kind of a hollow victory so long as the businesses end up continuing to run proprietary software anyways, invariably on windows.
I don’t necessarily blame the companies for running windows. Many don’t “choose” windows, it’s just there as a defacto standard. Our pediatric doctor runs his patient tracking software on windows, same for the dentist, same for my mechanic, the local hardware store does too. The hospital’s EKG machine ran windows. Vendors cater to windows because that’s what businesses have, businesses buy into windows because that’s what vendors cater to. It’s extremely difficult to break this cycle, and microsoft knows it. It’s why they are able to put off so many customers with releases like windows 8 and still be alive.
I can admit that web apps are making alternative platforms more viable, but IMHO we’re still a very long ways from platform irrelevance in the business space.
Basically this is from M$ guys back in 2010 September at a private event in ISB Hyderabad. M$ has been pushing to be ubiquitous across all the consumer screens way back since 2005 and they introduced WindowsCE (on phone), XBox (on TV), Zune (on entertainment device) and MSN Search/Bing (on browser).
This was and is their world domination strategy. In 1990s they went from 70% share to 99% because of their licensing to OEM based on Total computers sold rather than Windows computers sold. They were successful and they want to repeat that success on every screen so that they can (later) milk the customer in licensing fees. They went to Warren Buffet (of Berkshire Hathway) with their grand plan to be the Coke of the electronics industry and have the ultimate license to print money in electronics.
They did pioneer ebooks and a lot of other stuff, but it didn’t work out. The rest of the stuff is from my B-school days but the this article is new:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/07/nadellas-one-…
A short quote:
Even before that, the notion of “three screens and a cloud” championed by former Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie presaged this development, with the idea that Windows and its apps would span smartphones, PCs, and TVs. The tablet adds a fourth screen, but the concept is the same.
Nadella’s “single converged operating system” isn’t a new idea: it’s the restatement of Ballmer’s “Windows Everywhere” dream”
I guess they are internally still wedded to that proprietary dream and their artificial gimmicks and restrictions are still alive. Again a quote:
These differences may in some sense be artificial, imposed not by any technical concern but rather by the economics of Microsoft’s business. Still, they’re not going to go away. Nadella said as much in the call;
In the ends this is Office365, a subscription service similar to Creative cloud where M$ is charging a fees for doing almost nothing annually, because the product is now a almost a commodity like an umbrella
They have NEVER been successful with ANY hardware, outside of keyboards and mice! They need to DITCH Windows Phone, Surface (except MAYBE the Pro models), and Xbox and focus on providing SOFTWARE for the successful hardware on the market…Android and iOS.
They need to “fix” Windows…give us back our damn Start Menu and get rid of “Metro” on the desktop…go back to being OPEN (to develop for) and quit trying to be a content “gatekeeper”.
Sadly, they won’t do any of this…and they will continue flogging dead horses for the foreseeable future.
Xbox.
And you are speaking from experience running a software/hardware/services company…right? Sounds to me more like you are making wishes based on your personal preferences. And I’m sorry, but you’re not important enough to Microsoft to dictate their product line.
They are: http://www.osnews.com/story/27816/Windows_Threshold_no_more_Metro_f…
I’m not sure what you mean, and I wonder if you are either. If you mean open source, they never were. If you mean easy to develop for, well I’m not a developer so I can’t speak to that.
See above. They are (thankfully) removing Metro from traditional desktops, and converging future OSes into one OS across all devices.
I get that you don’t like Microsoft. I don’t either, but I can’t deny that Windows Phone is the only mobile OS I’ve been able to be productive with since classic Palm died. I’m not going to go parading up and down the streets proclaiming that Microsoft is the best company in the world due to that, because they aren’t. Far from it, actually. But by that same token, I’m not going to make up a bunch of bullshit to bash them, just because. That would be silly.
So all two of you are productive then? Microsoft’s ‘investment’ was well worth it.
Actually over 50 million Windows Phone users as of about six months ago; just a little more than two.
But what is more telling is that you chose to make a tired, unfunny joke instead of refuting anything I said. It sure looks like you didn’t find anything in your original comment defensible.
Edited 2014-07-24 22:50 UTC
50 million sounds impressive, until the context of it being 5.5% of the 900 million android devices.
So yeah, it’s a joke and implies some uncomfortable realizations which is why it’s funny for some, and awful to others. Just like how “this is the year of the Linux desktop” is also funny.
Oh I get the joke, it’s just that it has become this year’s version of “why did the chicken cross the road”. It’s old and overused, come up with another insult already!
And again, if someone’s only argument is “hurr durr two users hurrrr”, it’s quite telling.
But that’s the thing, it’s just a joke… about a thing. It’s not a personal affront.
Personally, I recommend not getting emotionally vested on a specific gizmo or the corporation you paid your hard earned money to.
I don’t see it as a personal affront though. I call out trollish behavior when I see it, even if it’s about a product or company or person I have nothing to do with. If you read enough of my comments here you’ll see that. I’ve called out trolls bashing iOS and I don’t even like or use that OS.
I also don’t go around telling people how to “feel” about their possessions, but hey, maybe that’s your thing. 😉
Well, following your same flawed comprehension approach you’re the one telling others what they can “joke” about sooo that makes us even, I guess.
Fair enough.
The mobile phone market has the two operating systems it needs – one made for a specific device and one that’s used on multiple devices, and it took Android quite a while to break into that.
There will not be a third operating system and Microsoft is going to keep getting smashed over the head with that fact until they’ve lost all of their Windows and Office profit money in that hole.