Steve Ballmer's Nightmare is Coming True

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/steve-ballmer-s-nightmare-is-coming-true-181558610.html

by sev • 14 years ago

163 166 14 years ago

finance.yahoo.com

colinshark• 14 years ago

"1. The iPad eats the consumer PC market.

This is happening right now. In the third quarter of 2012, PC sales were down 8 percent on a year-over-year basis worldwide. In the U.S., sales were down 14 percent. A big chunk of the decline can be attributed to the rise of the iPad."

Or just that PC speeds have reached a plateau, and common desktop applications no longer need the latest hardware. The continuous upgrade cycle is slowing. I think that speaks for the 8% on its own.

On second glance, this whole article is borderline troll bait.

mtgx• 14 years ago

I think the sales were down 21% for November compared to a year ago, according to NPD.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/11/29/npd-pc-sales-down-microso...

It also seems things are so bad, that they've already started to raise prices on enterprise customers, from 8% to 400%, trying to milk them as much as possible before they lose them:

http://semiaccurate.com/2012/12/03/sales-down-microsoft-rais...

recoiledsnake2• 14 years ago

That doesn't take into account Black Friday sales which more and more people are waiting for before purchasing.

http://microsoft-news.com/black-friday-boosts-windows-8-net-...

"While the days leading up to Black Friday had Windows 8 running below 1% US net usage, Thanks Giving and Black Friday saw a large number of new Windows 8 PCs hitting the market, taking its US share above 2%. While the number reduced over the next week,indicating that Windows 8 users are mainly at home rather than at work, it returned to 2.12% yesterday, indicating the new level was real and not just an artefact of increased usage over the holiday break."

Also, Steam's hardware surveys shows that Windows 8 is at 5% of the userbase, despite's Gabe's comments about the "catastrophe".

http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/windows-8-thunders-past-ma...

The lesser said about Charlie's rants and non-sequitir arguments on SemiAccurate(which should be titled SemiWrong) the better. Just reading his previous articles makes me want to add that site to my /etc/hosts blacklist.

s_henry_paulson• 14 years ago

Second glance? Even on the first glance this article doesn't pass the sniff test.

Nobody would predict Windows 8 would "stop" the iPad only a month after release. (not to mention the weird comparison of an operating system to a hardware gadget)

"Employees switching away from Windows PCs", and then citing a large iPad purchase by a company. Again, nobody with half a clue would think that these employees are replacing their work computer with an iPad.

Comparing the years old Apple Store to the brand new Windows Store, and trying to pretend like the numbers mean something.

Saying "office is losing relevance" and then citing absolutely nothing.

Saying Microsoft can't continue to invest the profitable Xbox.. because they can't make it the flagship of the company?

Saying their "platform business is collapsing", and then citing areas where they are doing well, and then just assuming they're all eventually going to fail.

This "writer" needs to be fired.

recoiledsnake2• 14 years ago

Not to mention harping on about an IDC report about last quarter Windows Phone sales while WP8 launched only last month and is selling okay according to many reports. People were waiting for WP8 to launch because of both the new OS and hardware but also because WP7 phones can't be upgraded, so sales weren't that great.

>This "writer" needs to be fired

The "writer" is more likely to get a pay hike or get promoted because his blogspam is garnering a lot of hits from sites like HN because of the headline and content.

wisty3• 14 years ago

Also, it's too early to call the Surface. The RT has flopped, but the Pro is very interesting. I can imagine it being very handy for students.

pyre• 14 years ago

  > This "writer" needs to be fired.

Why? The pageviews just keep coming in!

bobsoap4• 14 years ago

My thoughts exactly. The writer is comparing apples to oranges (PC / iPad, for one). I must have uttered "are you kidding me" a dozen times while reading that crap.

marshray8• 14 years ago

How many people do you know who have an iPad but not a PC (or a Mac)?

My sample is completely non-scientific, but I can't think of anyone I know like that. My impression is iOS and Android are taking eyeball-time and consumer purchasing money away from PCs, but I just don't see them replacing PCs any more than iPhones or Playstations did. Yet.

What am I missing?

brigade• 14 years ago

I know a number of old people that never learned how to use or were never confident in using a desktop OS that now only use tablets. My father as well, but for other reasons.

Also think of how long the shift from desktops to laptops took; for a decade they were just secondary machines and everyone who had a laptop also had a desktop. Now... the only person I know to even own a desktop built it himself 6 years ago and stopped upgrading it altogether a few years ago in favor of laptops.

A similar shift to tablets isn't as inevitable as the shift to laptops was (in hindsight), but if it's happening it's proceeding in much the same way, only faster.

kalid5• 14 years ago

> What am I missing?

How many people do you know under 10? That's the generation MSFT needs to worry about.

Anecdotally, the kids I've seen get tablets/phones/ipod touches and blast away on them. They'd vastly prefer a tablet to a laptop. Arguments like "You can do real work on a PC!" are not going to sway them. If anything, it reinforces "regular computers = drudgery, to be minimized as much as possible".

leak2• 14 years ago

Both my parents only use an iPad and never ever used anything else.

jarcoal5• 14 years ago

I know a handful of people that have completely left the PC market for the tablet market (read: iPad), but you know what they say about anecdotal evidence.

Sidenote: they are thrilled with the transition.

danso• 14 years ago

Isn't the problem that many of those iPad users eventually go from PC to a Mac? I've been in the Apple system enough to actually be ok with using different OSes. I recently got an Android phone and more than one person asked me if it was difficult to use Android while having an OS X laptop.

gamble• 14 years ago

An awful lot of people have new iPads and ancient computers they don't need to replace because the iPad does 95% of what they need day-to-day.

barrynolan• 14 years ago

I hear what you're saying but in my family (Irish so sample size is huge) Dad, my father in-law, my kids (<5), two teenage nieces (admittedly the have access to a Mac, but its probably a 20% use case) are iPad only.

baddox• 14 years ago

I know several people who have bought at least one tablet in the last 5 years, but not a PC or Mac.

InclinedPlane2• 14 years ago

That's actually not a relevant metric. What matters for MS is when someone buys an ipad instead of buying a new pc. That can mean not having a pc but it can also mean forgoing updating an older pc. That phenomenon seems to be occuring and it very much is affecting pc sales to the tune of billions of dollars per year.

MrFoof• 14 years ago

>How many people do you know who have an iPad but not a PC (or a Mac)?

Here's an edge case -- my parents' apartment community. This is a 2-building apartment complex (with about a dozen condo units in the front) with about 500ish total residents. When my folks sold their home a few years ago and moved in, no one else on their floor (two buildings, three floors each) owned a computer, and many never had owned one in the past. My parents today are still on the younger side of the spectrum (57 and 63), so we're talking about a population whose kids went off to college or moved out in 1992 or earlier.

However, there was a desire amongst people they met to own one as they were aware of what could be done, they just didn't want to deal with the hassle. My mother (a textbook technophobe) showed folks her Kindle, and people in the community felt that was easy enough to deal with (especially when getting to a library in the sticks can be a hassle). As a result, my parents helped get folks set up with 3G Kindles. My parents bought themselves iPad 2s about 18 months ago. My father, unlike my mother, was comfortable around computers, but his computer/iPad usage shifted to 10/90% after about 3 months. My mother was initially more 70/30, but is now more along the lines of 20/80. As of right now, they have no intention of replacing their computer with another one. Moreover, my mother who was always paranoid of someone "messing up" the family computer 15-20 years ago is eminently comfortable with her iPad. An even weirder outcome is she apparently follows Apple product news a bit, as do one or two of her aged 55-65 friends.

The new thing? The septuagenarians and octogenarians are now getting iPads. They're buying an Airport Express, calling Comcast to get internet access, and the iPad is the first computer they've ever owned. And they're pretty chuffed about it. And using them. Significantly. Do you have any idea how fantastic the idea of HD FaceTime is to grandparents who almost never get to see their grandkids (and that they'll use it every chance they get)? When I mentioned LetterPress to my mom, the next time I talked to her she mentioned how big a hit it was at her community.

I think to date my parents have set up a dozen other residents with Kindles and about another dozen so far with iPads + internet access. This number will continue to grow.

rsheridan62• 14 years ago

I don't know anyone who has an iPad but not a PC, but I know several people who have smartphones but no PCs. They're good enough for people who aren't heavy internet users and don't want to spend money on a PC or a separate internet connection.

pixie_• 14 years ago

I just tried the iPad mini the other night and was impressed by the office suite included with it. To people who have used it, how does it compare to MS Office?

nathos• 14 years ago

There's no office suite included with any iPad.

Perhaps you tried the iWork applications from Apple that they sell for $10/each?

Someone• 14 years ago

I guess you are refering to Pages, Numbers and Keynote. These are not included with the iPad, but sold separately (at $9.99 each)

Compared to MS Office (my comparison is desktop MS Office; I haven't even seen its tablet version), they have fewer features (fewer than Mac OS X counterparts, which already have fewer features). Whether that is an issue for you depends on your requirements.

Major lacking features are the ability to handle large documents and macros. They also are worse in importing MS Office files than MS Office itself.

On an original iPad, they also are fairly sluggy. I wouldn't write large texts in Pages, for instance, or create large spreadsheets in Numbers. Reading and revising existing not-too-large files is OK, though.

On the plus side, they look better and are somewhat easier to use (although the iOS versions, IMO, suffer from the limited interface that tablets offer)

Integration with iCloud for document storage and synchronization is somewhat spotty, but IMO has gotten better recently (my experience is syncing to Mac OS X Numbers and Pages; I have never synced with Windows or with Office documents)

adventured• 14 years ago

The iPad isn't even remotely a threat.

Android will dominate tablets for the same reason it is dominating smart phones. Android tablets will outsell the iPad five to one within a few years. The volume that Android tablets will bring to market will, however, remove volume from the laptop market.

w1ntermute• 14 years ago

> On second glance, this whole article is borderline troll bait.

If you look closely, the article was written by Business Insider[0], which is not what I would call a trustworthy source.

0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Insider

ceejayoz• 14 years ago

Yeah, I'd be skeptical of what's essentially investment advice from Henry Blodget.

MaysonL2• 14 years ago

Or just that PC speeds have reached a plateau, and common desktop applications no longer need the latest hardware. The continuous upgrade cycle is slowing. I think that speaks for the 8% on its own.

Except that Mac sales keep rising...

jpxxx• 14 years ago

Yes and no. They were marginally down YOY last quarter. There is a possibility that they're stalling too. Time will tell.

ekianjo• 14 years ago

Totally agree. This article is pure BS. I especially loved the part where the author says that, by using non-Windows devices, companies would consider switching to Macs for work. Yeah, sounds like the author has never seen how companies buy computers en masse. Usually they go for the cheapest models available. And those aren't Macs.

mbesto• 14 years ago

Funny, I just wrote long winded post precisely on this topic:

http://www.techdisruptive.com/2012/12/03/dear-microsoft-let-...

I actually don't think the MS nightmare is all that bad. I'm still seeing a lot of organizations try to move to Google Apps and then moving back to MS products because the lack of features and native functionality (Outlook is a big one). Even though I'm a heavy Apple user, I'm slightly rooting for MSFT.

darkhorn4• 14 years ago

I had some activity using gmail and hotmail. Microsoft revealed my IP address. Neither Yahoo nor Gmail reveals IP addresses. Now I'm in court for bullshit. This happened in a non US country. Now, do you think that I'll use any of their products anymore? I've closed all my Microsoft related accounts and I've promised myself never to use their products. I am going to make an open source application for https://tent.io/ just because Microsoft has shares in Facebook. Fuck them. Microsoft, go to Hell!

chimeracoder2• 14 years ago

> I had some activity using gmail and hotmail. Microsoft revealed my IP address. Neither Yahoo nor Gmail reveals IP addresses.

I don't know what you mean by 'reveal IP addresses', but I can assure you that your latter statement is very much not the case.

cynwoody• 14 years ago

Some mailers include an X-Originating-IP header, allowing a recipient to see the sender's IP address trivially. Gmail does not include that particular header. The headers it does include will simply lead back into the Google network.

More on the X-Originating-IP header, from 2001: http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2001/06/44567

As for whether or not Gmail reveals your IP address, it depends on who's asking. E.g., we have the recent example of LTC Paula Broadwell.

illuminate• 14 years ago

Perhaps they are talking about the X-Originating-IP header? "Revealed" is a pretty loaded term, either way.

robryan• 14 years ago

I actually think that attaching an IP address to web mail is a good thing.

MattRogish• 14 years ago

"If this happened and then these other ten things happened and if for some reason people stopped buying office (but they aren't) and some folks did some other things (that there is no evidence of happening) then MS is doomed!"

Look, I'm as bearish on MS as they come (I think Microsoft's cultural and technical dominance of the personal computer is at and end) but this is a whole lot of crap in an article.

I think Microsoft as being the "only" choice for personal computing is over, which is a net positive. But there are still tons of businesses (the people that really pay Microsoft gobs of money) that are not switching off of Microsoft any time soon. I think Google will nibble off a bit of Microsoft's services for the small and medium business (who needs Exchange any more unless you have strict auditing requirements, which most SMB's don't) and Apple will make inroads, but iPads won't be replacing shitty $500 Dells any time soon (although I know IT departments would love virus-free completely locked down computers; it's been their "Holy Grail" forever).

MSFT has seen declining Windows revenue as a proportion of the total for a while and will still have rev in the many tens of billions if even half of MSFT's consumer market disappears.

I don't think MSFT will ever go out of business. It'll just be smaller and a lot less relevant.

flogic• 14 years ago

I'm really curious to watch this whole thing unfold. I don't think betting against MS is a good idea. There are a number of factors that make me think MS could actually come out fairly well from all this. Apple doesn't have Jobs to demand innovative slick products. East Asian electronics companies want to be in the tablet game, but Apple won't license iOS to them. This is why Android is on more devices. However most people who can be choosy aren't excited by Android. Enter MS. Windows 8 has mixed reviews. However, Surface seems to review fairly well. And, we can be fairly certain MS will license Windows for tablets.

mindstab• 14 years ago

#4: loyal devs start to leave: they don't even cover half of it. What about all the game companies literally angry about windows store like valve who is leading the steam on linux charge? Or the unity game engine? Or Notch? Big names in windows game dev who have been very windows loyal are angry and investing heavily in new platforms. And they made this happen.

lucb1e• 14 years ago

I don't know enough about the others, but point number 5 is too early to say I think. Windows phones have been decent for how long now, half a year or a year? After having a reputation of sub-sub-zero?

Those at school who have one are very positive about it now, so the market share in this may still grow a lot. I would not think for two seconds about Windows on my phone a few years ago, but I would consider a Windows phone right now because they got so much better.

logn2• 14 years ago

Microsoft has 50 billion in cash. They need to buy their way back. Video platform: buy Netflix and Hulu. Music: buy Pandora, Spotify, and eMusic. Cellphones: start shipping the Mozilla phone platform on Microsoft hardware. Social: add social features to Skype and integrate it into aforementioned products, and buy MySpace on the cheap and integrate it.

Edit: I'm not saying I want this. As a user of all of these services (except MySpace) I like them the way they are. But if I were Microsoft CEO this is what I would do.

kmfrk2• 14 years ago

Please don't, Microsoft. They've made a royal mess of Skype - and the subsequent deprecation of MSN/Windows/Live Messenger.

They've also got more design talent than they probably know what to do with.

I do think that they should find something to do with the Xbox/media centre platform where some of your suggestions might apply.

As much as Microsoft have pissed off game developers and failed to lower the entry bar compared to iOS, console competitors like Nintendo and Sony are struggling a lot, which could put Microsoft in a much better position.

cooldeal• 14 years ago

How is Skype a royal mess after the acquisition? Also Skype is run pretty independently even now with Microsoft. Their entry badge IDs even say Skype and not Microsoft. Also, deprecation of MSN/Windows/Live Messenger is good. Why have two different platforms which basically do the same thing thus wasting resources within the company and confusing consumers? I can't imagine they've been making too much money from Messenger.

thematt• 14 years ago

They could also buy Valve and then integrate Steam and XBox Live. It would be horrible for end-users (they'd probably botch it) but would be lucrative from a business perspective.

sharkweek• 14 years ago

I am pretty certain Valve would reject even the most ridiculous of offers from MSFT

undergroundhero• 14 years ago

Gabe Newell is a vocal critic of Microsoft and Win8, and Valve is sitting on piles of money. This is the least likely of these scenarios.

mikeryan• 14 years ago

This is a completely horrible strategy, Hulu is a dog since without its current ownership it would pretty much lose all its content rights, Netflix is in a similarly precarious position though doing okay. Spotify is bleeding money because of its deals with the labels and Pandora is only scraping by. Don't tell me MS can get a better deal with the labels because Apple can't get a better deal with the labels. MySpace is intriguing at best but trying to crack Facebook's hold on the social space is not a great idea, go ask Google they've been throwing money at it for years.

Not one of these suggestions would move the needle for Microsoft at all.

logn2• 14 years ago

Regarding Hulu/Netflix, Microsoft would certainly have its work cut out to keep contracts and gain new ones. But they have the money to, and it's going to be a loss leader to get people to buy other things, like Xbox or in the future their cell phones. Microsoft already co-owns a network with NBC (MSNBC) so maybe they have enough connections to make TV contracts.

Pandora/Spotify are bleeding money because of the royalty structure. It's maybe a coin toss if the rates will change. A matter the congress can decide. I think it's worth the gamble. Plus they could leverage this on Xbox too as well as phones.

These businesses aren't that profitable which is why I think it makes sense to buy them. Microsoft if they bought all these companies (and if the SEC would allow) would greatly expand their ad network and open up possibilities for new integrations and businesses. Every other major tech company (Google, Amazon, Apple) has audio/video. Microsoft should want to compete too. I don't see MS Word and being able to run EXEs as enough reason to go Microsoft. I'm imagining them unlocking a wholly integrated entertainment setup.

Also, I see MySpace being what it once was. A place to friend all the weird and interesting strangers and follow new bands. It was great for that and a lot of fun. Social networks weren't all serious like they were before Facebook and LinkedIn.

kmfrk2• 14 years ago

Not that it's going to stem the tide nor anything, but someone made a very interesting point of the significance the Surface Pro could have for the medical sector: http://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/143vgu/the_windows_....

tl;dr: The medical sector is entrenched in ancient Windows-based software, but the backwards compatibility of Windows 8 will allow them to move from desktop computers to Surfaces (tablets, if you will).

Or maybe it might have some significance. I have no idea what the numbers are, but I assume a couple of the people here trying to disrupt the market could give us the low-down.

melling• 14 years ago

Microsoft's nightmare is really just a great boost for everyone. There hasn't been l balance in computers for almost 20 years. Microsoft has a monopoly that needs to be broken. It will be good for everyone, including Microsoft. They'll still be widely profitable and they will probably be more innovative and competitive. Given Microsoft's 90% desktop market share and domination with Office, I can't see them falling below 50% anytime in the next decade. They really are that entrenched.

doctorpangloss• 14 years ago

Honestly, my iPad is collecting cobwebs, along with lots of other friends' iPads. Maybe he has the fads backwards. After all, how many "employees" do real work on their iPads?

More disastrously for Microsoft, who needs a PC to make PowerPoints? Keynote will kill Microsoft.

neya5• 14 years ago

The iPad eats the consumer PC market?

Oh please, please stop this BS. The iPad sales are shooting up, true. The PC sales are going down, maybe true. But that could be due to several reasons - Maybe consumers are just 'upgrading' (like RAM, HDD, etc.) their existing PC's, or maybe existing PC owners don't want to even upgrade their PC at all because it's still working fine, there just could be a lot of reasons.

The statement that just the iPad alone eats the PC market is like saying, KFC is killing Ford's sales because it sells more chicken. Makes no sense, does it? Exactly, that's what the iPad vs PC comparison looks like too.

NO consumer would want to replace a PC with an iPad because there is a LOT of utility attached with a PC that it would be a blunder to replace it with a tablet like an iPad.

jmathai• 14 years ago

It's not that big of a stretch. Instead of looking at sales you should be looking at engagement. What are the #s looking like for time spent on the Internet by people who own both a tablet and a PC?

I assume it's leaning more and more towards tablets which really does imply that tablets (cough the iPad) is eating the PC.

jarcoal5• 14 years ago

This statement is just as inaccurate! You've completely dismissed the fact it might be happening based on no evidence at all.

My brother just tossed his laptop for an iPad and he loves it. There's one person who has, so you're already wrong.

pmelendez6• 14 years ago

Does your brother have access to a desktop computer? If so he didn't replace a computer for an iPad. He replaced his mobile gadget for a lighter option.

Tablets are great for consumption, but extremely poor for generating content. Even with an external keyword, writing a document (not even talking about a spreadsheet) in a tablet is least than pleasant.

rscale• 14 years ago

NO consumer would want to replace a PC with an iPad because there is a LOT of utility attached with a PC that it would be a blunder to replace it with a tablet like an iPad.

This is an innovator's dilemma situation, where the incumbent technology (PCs) are delivering far more value than some users need. As such, "worse" technology (tablets, phones) are acceptable replacements for PCs for some of those users.

To you, that extra value is important, but many people just want Facebook, Email, Internet, etc. Those people are often totally happy with a device like an iPad that doesn't have as much overhead or complexity.

klibertp7• 14 years ago

> Facebook, Email, Internet, etc.

I can only believe you're writing this as "a lot of people" would, and not seriously...

MaysonL2• 14 years ago

Ok, change it to: the iPad is eating the growth in the consumer PC market, plus a little bit more, plus the Mac is eating a little bit, and way on the outside, Ubuntu, 21 lengths back, is starting to make it a four-horse race.

gnaffle3• 14 years ago

It's a valid comparison because most people do very simple stuff with their PCs. Stuff that tablets also do today, and will continue to do better and better.

Do you think comparing minicomputers to PCs makes any sense? Of course not, you can't compare those, PCs are mere toys compared to a minicomputer. Yet the minicomputer market (and DEC with it) is dead today.

josephlord3• 14 years ago

Doesn't necessarily mean the PC is thrown out but where once they might have upgraded a computer or bought another (perhaps for a child/teenager) they might buy a tablet instead. The products are competing for the same disposable income and in very much the same field and also they compete for time and attention and the dollars will follow those.

What do most people spend most time doing on PCs? Web browsing, email, games, reading news and YouTube? All those things are well supported on tablets and for some they may be better suited to the tablet.

Sure the PC is better for development and serious writing but that is only a fraction of usage and writing doesn't need a very modern computer (or Windows 8).

seiji• 14 years ago

NO consumer would want to replace a PC with an iPad

Do you know many real people?

neya5• 14 years ago

I know you, so, I'm not sure. I'll leave that as an exercise for you :)

jbarham• 14 years ago

Google's currently generation of Chromebooks are getting good reviews and appear to be quite viable as second computers.

I know that everything my wife does on her current laptop (running Ubuntu) she could do just as well on a Chromebook, so when her current laptop kicks the bucket, my first choice for a replacement would be a Chromebook, in which case it would be first laptop I've bought that does not have Windows pre-installed.

rsheridan62• 14 years ago

I just got one for just that purpose and I can vouch for its suitability. I actually prefer the Chromebook to the $1700 Windows laptop most of the time because it doesn't take so goddamned long to start up when you open it.

redthrowaway• 14 years ago

The majority of the doom-and-gloom seems to be predicated upon their unrealistic expectations from last year.

"Windows Phone will become a viable 3rd choice behind iPhone and Android"

Really? Did anyone actually expect a product that came to market so late, with no OEM buy-in, to be successful?

"Windows 8 will re-establish PC dominance"

MS has an established track record for releasing a hit version of Windows, then a flop, then a hit, etc. Windows 7 was a hit. It's hardly scientific, but most of the people I spoke with expected Win8 to flop simply based on that pattern.

MS is only in dire trouble in relation to the overly-optimistic predictions Y!F made last year. In reality, they're continuing to lose ground as they have been for years. Yes, Ballmer's leadership is still questionable, but it's hardly like they've had a terrible year. They're just continuing to slip and lose dominance.

superbaconman• 14 years ago

The whole article is speculation and 'what if's. I understand a lot of people are worried about reactions to Windows 8, but I think the move to create a cross hardware development platform will distinguish them in the long run.

jack57• 14 years ago

This is incredibly sensationalist. iPads are great for the run of the mill soccer mom, but anyone who wants to get any real work done needs a personal computer(Mac or Windows, trying to be unbiased in this regard). Microsoft Office isn't going anywhere, and I don't think anyone expected the 1st generation of Surface to succeed. Windows 8 is a fine operating system primarily criticized by people who used it for a very short amount of time. The Surface Pro has not even been released yet, and Apple is slowly losing their knack for innovation. Let's not throw our stocks in the air and beg Apple to take our money yet. This article draws ridiculous conclusions on shaky data and successfully draws the attention of those looking for Microsoft's downfall.

nazgulnarsil2• 14 years ago

yawn, office is going nowhere anytime soon. There isn't even a plausible path by which office goes away right now.

protomyth• 14 years ago

Microsoft took over in the office suite realm in the transition from DOS to Windows. Plenty of folks said 1-2-3 and Word Perfect were not going anywhere. I do wonder if anyone is going to exploit the mouse/keyboard to touch transition?

nazgulnarsil2• 14 years ago

Computer use wasn't nearly as ubiquitous then. A disruption to MS Office would be several orders of magnitude larger.

josephlord3• 14 years ago

MS aren't about to disappear anytime soon but MS are no longer capable of dominating markets the way they used to. They are in decline at least in relative terms and I don't see any likelihood of that changing any time soon.

The Windows market is going to get nibbled (not gobbled - at least short term) from tablets in the consumer market and the corporate market is going to be increasingly web based for internal systems which over time will loosen the Windows grip there.

Exchange, Sharepoint, SQL Server can all remain major revenue drivers in the corporate world, they won't go anywhere quickly and they may even grow (I don't know the market well enough). IBM makes enough money in these markets.

Office is the big elephant, Excel is the tool for massive amounts of forecasting and modelling. Many people don't need the power and have alternatives but many do. PowerPoint strikes me as replaceable, most content created with it has a short lifespan. Word is replaceable for individual users but the network effect of people using it and exchanging files gives it hold.

Overall I think MS has a good decade or two of good profits if it wants to take them but the glory days are done.

gnaffle3• 14 years ago

Looking back, I think many of the big initial successes for Microsoft were propelled by missteps from their competitors. Apple, Lotus, Word Perfect, Novell, the list is long.

This time, their two biggest competitors haven't made many mistakes at all, and that is their big problem.

enraged_camel4• 14 years ago

>>*Apple, Lotus, Word Perfect, Novell, the list is long.

Heck, Microsoft came to prominence only due to a huge misstep on the part of the IBM. Bill Gates simply exploited the opportunity like anyone with half a brain would in that situation.

josephlord3• 14 years ago

Was WordPerfect a miss step or dirty tricks? Maybe both, but you are right.

Generally though I don't think that MS has the agility to capitalise on the mistakes that do happen. This still have massive scale and cash but everything I read about life in Microsoft says slow decline is the future. Over managed battling fiefdoms and bureaucracy that limit innovation and are likely to strangle any start up they buy.

jbooth• 14 years ago

With hindsight, anything short of prophetic genius looks like a misstep.

wvenable• 14 years ago

You could argue that Microsoft's biggest competitors are being propelled by missteps made my Microsoft. For example, MS could have easily owned the smartphone market; they breezed past Palm and Symbian but they massively dropped the ball.

hnriot• 14 years ago

The best thing MSFT could do would be to release a fully compatible, fully functional Office suite for iPad, charge $49.95 and profit for the next several years.

klibertp7• 14 years ago

I don't know for sure, because I don't own a tablet, but I'd guess that "fully functional" would be technical impossibility at this time.

snowwrestler• 14 years ago

The article is a very big stretch. Just because companies are buying iPhones and iPads, does not mean that their workers are moving away from PCs. My employer has issued iOS devices to a lot of workers--but they all still have a PC on their desk too. And those mobile devices all tie back into the corporate Exchange server and Active Directory.

xiaoma• 14 years ago

And from the video in the post:

"The iPhone business is now bigger and more profitable than all of Microsoft"

I still remember the interview in which Balmer outrighted laughed at the iPhone.

corporalagumbo• 14 years ago

That seems to be one of Microsoft's problems. They try and laugh everything off. To me it says "we're not serious." Ballmer doesn't seem like a very serious CEO either - based on his public attitudes (which I think are an important sign.) Microsoft would be best if it was a relatively humble, quiet company with extreme, unrelenting focus. Hopefully if the market kicks them enough they will learn their lesson and start taking things seriously.

BenoitEssiambre• 14 years ago

I feel that these recurring analysis of the OS wars are always ignoring the main factor influencing the markets for these software which is that closed ecosystems are getting less and less competitive with open ones as core OS functionality is maturing and being commoditized.

When you buy into a closed ecosystem, you buy a product that comes with a leash attached to your neck. Because of compatibility issues, you pay now and set yourself up to also pay more later. You agree to give a vendor near monopolistic powers over you in the future. You will have to continue buying from their ecosystem unless you are willing to lose access to all your apps and a lot of your media or buy them all again.

Microsoft does this, RIM does this and of course Apple is the worst offender. A lot of consumers do not want OSs that tie a leash around their necks.

Apple being first to achieve wide success in the market of phones with near desktop level computing power are able to maintain a big share of the market because of a large population already locked in its platform.

RIM and Microsoft's mobile OSs, judged on technical merits, are probably as good as Android and iOS. However, Android has the huge benefit of not locking users and developers with a particular hardware or software vendor.

I'm pretty sure that if Android was not a mostly open OS it would not have gained more traction than the others. I'm also pretty sure that if iOS was released as an open platform, there would be no significant competitors other than iOS forks. Google and its Android partners know this as does Amazon to a lesser extent (although they force DRM on a lot of their content including apps).

In the long run, the only conclusion to this war that makes sense is convergence toward competing Android forks that allow people to change vendors or coalitions of vendors without losing all compatibility with their accumulated apps and media. That is unless the others are willing to open their OSs and allow competing forks like Android does.

acex• 14 years ago

i couldn't read this diagonally let alone going through and around me only device that's isn't apple is xbox in the living room. bollocks.

sytelus• 14 years ago

Here interesting data point is that even as PC sales declined by 21%, the Mac sales have NOT increased by same margin. Reports says Mac sales grew only by 5% although these two rates are not comparable because later is % of Mac sales while former is % of PC sales which is much higher .

The reason people used to throw away their working PCs to buy new ones was newer better hardware and hyped up new OS releases. I think PC sales decline is greatly contributed by no new compelling hardware factor. The OS releases of course are less and less compelling because most tasks happens in browser which works fine even on old PCs. If IE was only game in town, people would perhaps still need to get new OS but that's not the case anymore.

I guess we are entering new era of PC/Mac refresh cycles were people are going to replace their machines only when it stops working instead of just because new release arrived. People would rather spend $500 on getting a tablet that they don't have than replacing their PC that is already working fine to check emails and browse the web.

Interesting thing here is that Wall street analysts would probably going to extrapolate this incorrectly instead of seeing that this is new "normal".

pmelendez6• 14 years ago

One reason that might explain why you don't see that decline on Macs is because is being cancelled for all those people trying to develop for iOS devices.

What it is true is that we don't need new hardware in the same way we used to. For instance, my 5 years old laptop is running faster with Win8 beta that it did with Win 7, and that is the only PC I use at home and probably that won't change any time soon. Before that I used to change PCs in a two years cycle.

DigitalSea• 14 years ago

And the award for link-bait author of the year goes to....

Seriously though, I can't believe I actually just read this entire "article". There's no proof of anything, just a whole bunch of over-exaggerated claims. Does the author really think that people in offices are going to ditch computers entirely and type 15 page documents on a device that has glass so weak if you sneeze on it you risk cracking the screen? No USB ports, so means for connecting multiple external monitors, no CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive, no means of connecting an external drive, lack of internal space, no keyboard...

I feel sorry for any business that thinks it's a great idea to stop using PC's and instead opt for expensive tablets with a minimal feature set, investing in potentially tens of thousands of dollars in software and infrastructure to support an office of iPads is not feasible. You know why PC's are the number choice for most businesses, especially in the corporate sector? Because PC's are dirt cheap, cheap to build and upgrade, cheaper software, better support. I've had my Core i5 machine for ages now and I've been able to run games on the highest settings since I built it 2 or 3 years ago. RAM is cheap, new hard drives are cheap, every component of a computer except the CPU is cheap. You can't upgrade the internals of an iPad.

As for Office, even Google Docs and Zoho (amongst others) have failed to beat it. Microsoft Office isn't going anywhere for the foreseeable future and the very fact Microsoft have launched cloud versions of Office as well, it's definitely still in wide use and evolving. There are many people who still don't trust the cloud, I don't trust the cloud.

It was a nice try, but this is ridiculous. Windows 8 has been out for one month and the author is making extraordinary claims that it has failed to stop the iPad? Windows 8 is not about just capturing the tablet market, it's a great decision from Microsoft to streamline their operating system offering instead of having 15 different versions of an operating system there's only a couple.

Remember when journalism used to mean researching and spending sometimes weeks or months on one story? Me either. It's all become a race to get page views to increase ad revenues as evident by this article.

jasonkostempski• 14 years ago

"Loyal developers start to leave the Microsoft platform."

I work with about 10 developers, not a single one has even mentioned trying Windows 8 or VS 2012. We all have our own MSDN licenses so it's not a money issue. Everything we do runs on .NET, SQL Server, Windows Server, etc, and it runs well, it's just no one seems to care about the new stuff. I stopped getting excited about MS stuff maybe about 2 years ago but that's because I became an OSS snob, that's not what's happening to the otherwise happy MS stack devs I know, I'm not really sure what it is.

JuDue2• 14 years ago

Given the massive, dominant install base of Windows, you'd of hoped for a better result after the first tablet friendly version was released.

Particularly the slashed OS price, and bundling of the previous cash cow, Office, in RT.

Agree it might take time to catch on, but these days that doesn't seem to be a truth either. Windows Phone looked like a sure winner to me a year ago - or, atleast, more than its current 1%.

Things are moving fast, and people have broadened their minds in the past 3 years of iPad exposure.

What MS needed was a product that took the iPad by the horns. Either that or released its Surface "compromise" (which it certainly is) 2 years ago.

Roybatty• 14 years ago

"2. Employees gradually switch away from using Windows PCs for work."

That's not happening.

shmerl• 14 years ago

Why specifically iPad and not just mobile computers in general? iPad isn't the only tablet around you know.

shaydoc• 14 years ago

This is such a nonsense article. But within it there is grain of truth albeit very small.

Taking my circle, several of my family have migrated to iPad or android tablets from PC/laptop setups and are not looking back because iPad fulfills all there computing needs. For me, my laptop recently passed away so I bought a nexus 7 to replace it, and you know what its brilliant for me. I do obviously still have a development PC, but for personal use its tablet all the way. So I think desktops and PC sales will suffer loss long term in the consumer market. So Microsoft do need a good product here, and they have a lot of catch up to do, but they have done it before!

The security blanket for Microsoft remains new innovation enterprise, business and maybe cloud. I think they have a long way to go to win back the consumer space.

bconway• 14 years ago

Original story: http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmers-nightmare-is-c...

JulianMorrison• 14 years ago

Where's Android in all this?

Steve Ballmer's Nightmare is Coming True

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