Microsoft Has Turned The Corner

http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2009/07/microsoft-has-turned-corner.html

by markbao • 17 years ago

46 38 17 years ago

minimsft.blogspot.com

a2tech• 17 years ago

I'm not sure you can say Microsoft has turned any corner. I do agree that Bing is a fair piece of software (even if it is long, long over due). However, Bing is too little, too late. IE 8 is a solid browser compared to IE 7 and I'm glad MS is taking steps to produce a browser that can compete with the features of the other 'name brand' browsers. Those ads MS is running though? I thought the Apple ads were smug-they have nothing on the price-comparing ads MS is running.

old-gregg• 17 years ago

This is ridiculous. You're attacking them for not being an effective internet media company. Are you going to go after GM and Chrysler because they haven't launched their own search engines too?

To "turn the corner", Microsoft needs to stop its Apple bleeding and make the Office, Windows Server and .NET stack more competitive in the cloud. That's their core business.

bep• 17 years ago

Windows 7, Azure and Office 2010 are steps in that direction

endtime• 17 years ago

I'm working on Office web stuff this summer. I'll just say that I think Office 2010 will indeed be "more competitive in the cloud", as you put it.

profquail2• 17 years ago

I do most of my development in C#/.NET, and I have to say you're right. I think their next step should be towards getting all of their desktop programming into the .NET API; they didn't have time to do it in Windows 7, but perhaps for Windows "8". I'm talking about things like drivers (which can be programmed using the now-free .NET Micro Framework) and lower-level APIs (like writing a screensaver...it should just be a class implementing IScreensaver or whatever, and not written in C any longer).

Getting everything (or as much as possible) switched over to the .NET framework in Windows would also help a great deal as far as mitigating security risks as well.

scj• 17 years ago

Mini has been getting soft in his old age.

At least with Vista in 2006, he had the sense to say: "Of course, the proof is in the pudding..."

Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if the guy was caught and is now nothing but a mouthpiece.

mattmaroon3• 17 years ago

Anyone who calls the Xbox a failure has no clue. It's the big winner in this round of console wars. It's the only multimedia device that's networked to millions of PCs and hooked up to millions of computers.

It maybe hasn't sold as many units as the Wii, but the games per console stat is a blowout. As are paid downloads of content, third party games, etc.

And yeah, the red ring of death sucks (has happened to me a few times) but that's how they beat the PS3 to market and won the generation. In the end the 1 year lead is worth whatever they had to eat on that.

imajes• 17 years ago

@matt:

what's their per unit cost vs their income of the consoles?

i thought they were mostly loss leaders. so how have the games been selling?

inerte• 17 years ago

Lifetime, Xbox lost money. Their bet is that Project Natal will crush Wii. MS lost on the first years, they're making a profit since Halo 3 launch (yearly, at least until 2008 fiscal quarter)

The Xbox 360 has been a success for MS, it displaced Sony. But they made the mistake of focusing on replacing the number one, and forgot the whole, which Nintendo acquired.

If the market was a cake, 360's won a slice, but Nintendo baked more.

axod3• 17 years ago

What's the total profit from Xbox? Considering the complete package - total investment etc from start to finish? Quite a large loss.

There's been one clear winner and that's the wii - unless you're looking for something other than cold hard cash profit, and I suspect number of units in peoples living rooms.

In terms of hardware, the xBox absolutely sucks. I use it rarely because the thing is so loud with its 100 fans. I have a quieter washing machine. If MS were going after the 'living room multimedia device', they failed spectacularly. The large HDD is also rendered useless, since you still have to put game discs in for 'copy protection purposes'.

berntb3• 17 years ago

You miss the point of a monopoly -- Microsoft is able to eat losses to take over markets as long as they have a safe cash cow.

Then, the monopolist have a new "owned" area to milk money out of, for taking over the next application type.

The result is that in the process of getting a monopoly of something, there is lots of development. Then, the developers/money is being sunk elsewhere and the development speed in the monopoly areas are really low.

That is why you haven't seen any revolutionary changes in e.g. office products for quite a few years. Which we all lose by, since productivity isn't increased.

(Or maybe there just haven't been any new possible ideas in writing documents? Hardly. Computer linguistics hasn't been standing still the last decade.)

Edit: Clarity.

encoderer• 17 years ago

If you include the 1st generation, you may well be correct. But the 2nd generation has been profitable.

And that first generation as a loss-leader was essential to produce the results of this current (and future) generations. So that seems far less like a loss than it does an investment.

Truth is, every company in the hardware space (Apple, Microsoft, Sony, and lesser companies like Tivo) all understand that when it comes to moving hardware units, we've got them in the cubicles first, then the home offices, then the bedrooms. The big untapped markets are the living rooms, pockets and cars.

And it seems obvious as anything to me that the xBox, PS3, etc, are not about gaming consoles. They're about getting a multimedia PC attached to your TV. Gates saw this as the next big thing 15 years ago. That's why they bought WebTV! Microsoft and a score of other companies have determined that the living room will be a very profitable market and they've been willing to drop a few dollars to get there.

ZeroGravitas• 17 years ago

How did such a lame fanboy rant get upmodded so highly?

Wii sales are double Xbox 360 and PS3, the sales of Wii Fit (bluetooth connected bathroom scales!) are more comparable in number.

Microsoft invested Billions in this and after two generations they're sparring with a self-destructing Sony for a distant second place.

I agree that it's not all about games or marketshare, but building a big, noisy, failure-prone box and backing the wrong horse in Hi-Def media aren't exactly great moves in the media centre space even if the latter failure got them belatedly onto the right track of movie downloads.

_sh• 17 years ago

When I read pieces like this, I'm reminded of a Cringely article (http://www.cringely.com/2009/02/the-bentonville-mafia/). To wit, on the subject of Microsoft stores:

  Why even do it, then?  Why have these stores? 

  Propaganda.

  Phil Schiller of Apple made the point back in January
  when he explained that Apple stores had 400,000 visitors
  per day or the equivalent of 20 Macworld shows EVERY DAY.
  Microsoft wants the same thing.  They want to bypass the
  press machine that they feel has tainted users against
  Windows Vista, making sure the same thing doesn’t happen
  to Windows 7.

  If Microsoft can achieve that one goal – just that one –
  then the Microsoft stores will have been worth doing even
  if they never have a dollar of retail sales.

Vista failed partially because of poor development (and all the other usual reasons proclaimed a thousandfold), but also because Microsoft lost control of its perception to bloggers. The pundits were able to set the perception of the software, and they said it was crap. I'm not arguing that it wasn't crap, I'm just saying it was perceived as crap from the get-go by people who'd never tried it.

Not so with Windows 7. After reading Cringely's article I became attuned to signs that Microsoft might be tweaking the perception of the OS through its gloved hands. Not by ghosting outright shills (this failed notoriously with Vista), but through more subtler means.

Like what? Like the perception that the Windows 7 experience on netbooks will be similar to the desktop experience. Although this has never been proclaimed outright (Microsoft said Windows 7 'will be designed to work with' netbooks), the murmur from the great unwashed that I'm getting is that Windows 7 will be the snappy because they've 'sunk the bloat' and made it work on netbooks.

Well hang on a moment and let's see. The only thing of which I'm convinced is that Microsoft has done a far better job of managing the perception of Windows 7 this time around, and I expect to see more of these types of articles ('Microsoft has finally become insanely OK again!') leading up to the release of Windows 7. (Please note these are merely my observations and I'm not implying 'mini-microsoft' is a shill, see your doctor if pain persists).

drhowarddrfine2• 17 years ago

I forgot all about those stores! Did everyone else? I haven't Googled for it but was that more FUD action by Microsoft?

litewulf• 17 years ago

I think that the idea was basically shelved, but theres a "demo" store somewhere on the Microsoft campus...

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

Vista failed

Vista failed? That's news to me. Care to elaborate on your definition of success?

I've been using it since it came out and like it just fine.

I can understand saying Vista had problems, or bugs, or that it had a lot of PR issues, or even that some vendors didn't like or want it. But fail?

I think maybe you've been listening inside the web echo chamber a little too long.

krschultz• 17 years ago

As a product it clearly failed. It did not meet its sales numbers at all, they had to extend XP's life over and over and finally killed the gift horse so that Vista would be installed on machines by default. Many people would choose XP over Vista if they could on their machines. I think most people would reasonably call it a failure from a business perspective.

johngunderman• 17 years ago

Quite frankly, the only software of Microsoft's that I've ever been impressed with is their Office Suite, and even that has gone down hill in the last few years. What they really need to do is stick to the basics. They need to stop wasting resources in fields they are obviously not good at. They /had/ a strong Office platform, they should improve on that. (and by improve, I don't mean "add more features"). If they want to succeed in the OS market, they have to find a niche. Its hard to compete with free. Apple does it by having excellent design and customer service. Apple sells the experience. What does Microsoft sell? Software that companies are too entrenched in. That's no market at all, at least not for long. Now if Window's could claim to be truly secure, and truly quick, and truly light on resources, I might actually use it. In the meantime, free satisfies all my needs.

mhansen2• 17 years ago

How has the Office Suite gone downhill in the last few years?

Office 2007 was a major innovation from my point of view. The company threw out an established, yet underperforming UI, taking a huge risk. But it's payed off in greater usability and learnability. The Ribbon user interface (imho) blows away other office suite interfaces.

thismat2• 17 years ago

And the ribbon is a relatively new user experience for such a product as well. This was a huge risk for them considering how widespread office was, but it goes to show you that Microsoft can indeed produce a quality product.

I use open office on my home computers, but at work I use Office 2007, I loathe having to spend time in OpenOffice now, because the interface and usability for Office 2007 is just so pleasant to me.

Microsoft Has Turned The Corner

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