How Satya Nadella Turned Microsoft Around In A Year

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Personally, I think it is way too early to claim Microsoft has been "turned around" in a year by its new CEO. What do you think?

Satya Nadella, Microsoft's new chief executive, hasn't entirely avoided controversy during the nine months he's been at the company's helm. But he's already managed to steer the company back onto a direction that's healthy for the company, after years of stagnation under his predecessor.
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The thing is Microsoft was never in that bad of shape. Indeed financially it's be a fortress for a long time. Everyone looks at their failure in mobile and mistakes in execution like Windows 8 and think that world has ended for them. And while Apple has blown by them in terms of profit and value from their high margin personal computing products, Microsoft is now still the 2nd most valuable company on the planet.

I do think Nadella has been more open to aggressive pricing on the consumer end when needed and considerably more open supporting competing platforms, indeed when it comes to cross platform support Microsoft is doing a lot more than Google and Apple, but that a lot of that is simply necessary when you're a minor player in the mobile device platform world.

Still, their enterprise business is as strong as ever, their cloud business is booming like anything, no one has really made any big gains in the consumer desktop even with Windows 8 unpopularity, and now that Windows is free in the low end consumer space, it's unlikely that anyone will.
 
I think he is more saying the right things at the right time, and a lot of stuff that has been in the works for awhile is now coming out while he is in charge.

That being said, I like him and I hope he keeps up the good work.
 
I think he's done a lot to improve Microsoft's image (minus some possibly sexist remarks), and it seems like he has a much better understanding of what customers want. MS was never really in trouble though.
 
WAY too early! Windows Phone is still an unmitigated failure, Xbox division is STILL losing money (more so due to the bundles and price cuts for the holidays), Windows 8 is still barely treading water, and the average consumer sentiment towards MS is at an all time low. Let's see where MS is sitting in 5 years...THEN you can claim a "turnaround" if they are successful!
 
jnemesh said:
WAY too early! Windows Phone is still an unmitigated failure, Xbox division is STILL losing money (more so due to the bundles and price cuts for the holidays), Windows 8 is still barely treading water, and the average consumer sentiment towards MS is at an all time low. Let's see where MS is sitting in 5 years...THEN you can claim a "turnaround" if they are successful!
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Windows phone isn't that critical if the Surface succeeds ... they could then use Intel mobile chips to get back into the phone business leveraging the Surface compatibility with a new line of phones ... XBox will do well if they can get consoles on the market so that they can make their money back on game licensing fees ... Windows 8 may be a goner but no other OS has stepped up to replace it and they can lock in their position with a successful launch of 10 (like 7 redeemed Vista) ... consumers don't hate MS so all they need is some good launches and some better PR and they will be as strong (or stronger) than ever ;)
 
jnemesh said:
WAY too early! Windows Phone is still an unmitigated failure, Xbox division is STILL losing money (more so due to the bundles and price cuts for the holidays), Windows 8 is still barely treading water, and the average consumer sentiment towards MS is at an all time low. Let's see where MS is sitting in 5 years...THEN you can claim a "turnaround" if they are successful!
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How would you know that the XBox is losing money from holiday sales and bundling? Those numbers won't even get reported until late next month and the latest Microsoft quarterly report indicated a positive gross margin for XBox. Windows 8 still barely treading water though its market share has increased considerably the last two months? Average consumer sentiment towards MS at an all time low? http://www.forbes.com/powerful-brands/list/

Where will Microsoft be sitting in 5 years? Not the first time someone has asked that. My guess is that most that ask that are generally not bragging about their predictions. Microsoft has it's problems, certainly handsets is a very weak spot but you're exaggerating them by several magnitudes.
 
kbrickley said:
Windows 8 may be a goner but no other OS has stepped up to replace it and they can lock in their position with a successful launch of 10 (like 7 redeemed Vista) ...
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The story of Windows 8 is considerably different than two years ago. In a place like this were we're always talking about buying an OS or upgrading the OS on an existing the device, we tend to ignore the by far the #1 vehicle of Windows distribution, new PCs. PC device prices are at all time lows for decent hardware and we have much better mobile devices across the price spectrum, from things like the HP Stream 11 to the Surface Pro 3. One of Windows 8 failings out of the gate was consumer hardware and it's just so much better now and free Windows now has Windows in price competitive spots with Android and Chromebooks. Giving Windows away could be considered a failure, but on devices running under $100, there's just no other way to make Windows viable on such cheap hardware if it cost the OEMs, no matter how good Windows 8 was or wasn't.
 
jnemesh said:
WAY too early! Windows Phone is still an unmitigated failure, Xbox division is STILL losing money (more so due to the bundles and price cuts for the holidays), Windows 8 is still barely treading water, and the average consumer sentiment towards MS is at an all time low. Let's see where MS is sitting in 5 years...THEN you can claim a "turnaround" if they are successful!
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What is interesting is I have yet to run into someone who didn't like their windows phone.

While I know it is far behind in major app support, been thinking about moving from the "google" world to an MS one with integrated cloud etc.
 
dandirk said:
While I know it is far behind in major app support, been thinking about moving from the "google" world to an MS one with integrated cloud etc.
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App support the Achilles heel of Windows Phone and Windows tablets, though as kbrickley, there is perhaps an opportunity to leverage the desktop on Windows Phone somehow as it they did with Windows tablets. Indeed while tons of mistakes were made in Windows 8, the overall concept of making it hybrid wasn't one of them. Without desktop app support, Windows tablets would have ended up like Windows RT devices.
 
So this guy happens to be in charge when Microsoft is working on, but hasn't yet released an OS that might have a less controversial UI (which they would have done anyway based on the sales of 8 alone despite the fact that some people are slowly coming around to using it -- like you can even see that here with the increasing numbers of supporters) and suddenly he's turned the company around? I think that would have happened anyhow.
 
What the hell is this MS PR fluff piece?

Yahoo's search has been powered by Bing since 2010, and Azure was also developed during Ballmer's tenure. ZDnet: still worthless.
 
The product roadmap was put in place before Nadella's reign started. Their most recent product release, the Band is a mediocre 'also ran.' The increased Xbox One sales, due to a holiday price drop, is losing money for them. They will have to permanently drop the price to remain competitive. They have to give away Windows 8 licenses to tablet makers, to compete against Android. Higher-end Surface tablets failed to capture any significant market share and resulted in fire-sales.

I don't see any turnaround.
 
bloodypulp said:
Higher-end Surface tablets failed to capture any significant market share and resulted in fire-sales.
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There haven't been fire sales on the Surface Pro 3. There was a Black Friday promotion of $100 to $150 that's ended.
 
Microsoft made billions in profits the last year, and all during the Win8 debacle (Even after taking almost a $2B charge absorbing Nokia this past year!) That's *strong.* Financially, Microsoft is as solid as a rock and always has been--the general press has confused people's lackluster reception of Win8 (Metro, actually) with the company's financials. To my knowledge, Microsoft has consistently been billions of $ in the *black* every single quarter--no red ink in sight anywhere.

Turn them around? Hardly, because fiscally Microsoft was never going backwards to begin with. Nadella has made some good decisions, however--the latest Surface Pro, far more a laptop than tablet, has been very successful. Breaking away from Metro was a solid decision, too--but that was coming almost no matter who was named the Microsoft CEO.

Basically, all Microsoft has to do is two things to keep ahead of the curve:

1) Whatever Apple does, do the opposite
2) Keep the core of the company, Windows/Office as strong as always

Microsoft should be able to do both of those things, its hands tied behind its back. Ballmer & Sinofsky's ill-fated moves to copy Apple would indeed have put Microsoft in hot water, eventually--*if* Microsoft had stubbornly followed those paths for another few years. Fortunately, Gates is back, and he personally vets everything Nadella does, so chances of a continuation of those mistakes are nil, imo.

Like the PC as the #1 desirable computing form factor; Microsoft isn't going anywhere...;)
 
bloodypulp said:
They have to give away Windows 8 licenses to tablet makers, to compete against Android.
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This is true. But this has made Windows devices even cheaper than Android and Chromebooks in many cases and that would have been impossible with the free licenses. And the thing is that a lot of these devices are pretty amazing for the money. Walmart is selling a $180 convertible netbook hybrid. It's amazing how good a device this is and what it can do at that price given the resource constraints of the device. I'm sure that Microsoft would have rather been able to sell licenses than not but this kind of hardware at this price would be impossible otherwise. And with this kind of low cost hardware Microsoft can get more devices out there where Windows Store apps make sense. Plus when the year of Office 365 expires, some people will renew. The free Windows with the opportunity to sell services versus the loss of the one time license fee might be at worst a wash, it could even be more profitable in the end.
 
WaltC said:
Turn them around? Hardly, because fiscally Microsoft was never going backwards to begin with. Nadella has made some good decisions, however--the latest Surface Pro, far more a laptop than tablet, has been very successful. Breaking away from Metro was a solid decision, too--but that was coming almost no matter who was named the Microsoft CEO.
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The larger size and much better kickstand and keyboard solution definitely improved the device as a laptop. But it also got lighter with a much better screen and aspect ratio (3:2 is fantastic for a tablet) and a lot of work on the pen moving from Wacom to N-trig technology. Microsoft focused on both sides of the hybrid formula. This device is a great ultrabook and tablet, I'd never have bought it otherwise. That's why I didn't go for the first two. While I liked the design, the execution as a tablet and a laptop wasn't there.

As far as Metro, not sure why people are saying that Microsoft it breaking away from it as it's kind of the opposite. Metro is being improved to fit more in with the desktop paradigm and the tablet and desktop experiences will be smarter in that 10 will handle the experience based on the input type. If the Continuum stuff works well 10 will be a success. If in addition to that, 10 is a free upgrade for current Windows 7 users, 7 will not be the new XP.
 
... By taking credit for the shit taken to 90% completion by the last guy.
 
If you look at just their struggles in the mobile sector and the lackluster sales of Xbox, then yes, I can see where all of this dooms-day talk is coming from. But let's not forget that Microsoft is far more than just Windows Phone and Xbox.

They just appear to be struggling because there have been a large number of lackluster performers in the consumer sector. The failures are just more public, so Microsoft appears to be "sinking". It's all in how one perceives the situation.

Let's not forget all of the money they make off of the enterprise side of things. Such as Cloud services (Azure), Windows Server, licensing for Visual Studio and all of their other products that most consumers won't ever touch, let alone hear of.

That being said, can they improve and do better? Absolutely, and they appear to be making strides towards improving. But I'm not ready to sound the siren anytime soon.
 
heatlesssun said:
The larger size and much better kickstand and keyboard solution definitely improved the device as a laptop. But it also got lighter with a much better screen and aspect ratio (3:2 is fantastic for a tablet) and a lot of work on the pen moving from Wacom to N-trig technology. Microsoft focused on both sides of the hybrid formula. This device is a great ultrabook and tablet, I'd never have bought it otherwise. That's why I didn't go for the first two. While I liked the design, the execution as a tablet and a laptop wasn't there.
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My thinking, exactly...;) The latest iteration is the one that's selling so well. I just cannot stand those teeny-tiny screens...! The last ~13"-15" screen I had was in 1987 with my Amiga 2000...;) I thought it was too small, then, and could never go back. But then, I've never been a portable-computing customer or fan, mainly because I don't like making compromises in my environment for the sake of mobility--and mobile is all about compromise for the sake of power conservation (battery life.)

As far as Metro, not sure why people are saying that Microsoft it breaking away from it as it's kind of the opposite. Metro is being improved to fit more in with the desktop paradigm and the tablet and desktop experiences will be smarter in that 10 will handle the experience based on the input type. If the Continuum stuff works well 10 will be a success. If in addition to that, 10 is a free upgrade for current Windows 7 users, 7 will not be the new XP.
Click to expand...

Basically, the start menu is back, and the side-scrolling monstrosity of a start-page is effectively gone (you can banish it if you wish)--the two major objections to Win8 (mine, certainly.) I've pulled the tiles from my start menu in Win10TP as I prefer it that way--but in a sense I agree with you...Microsoft is doing with Metro what it should have done with it in the beginning...make it *optional* according to the desires of the end user--the customer.

I'll put it this way, then: Metro as it shipped in Win8 would never have flown. I like Win8/.1 better than Win7 for several reasons, but one of the reasons I do is because I could move Metro completely out of my way with a little configuration work and at least one 3rd-party app (the Classic Shell start menu, in my case.) Win10 will be a resounding success, I predict, because it will return to Windows the degree of configurability present in Win7 but absent in Win8/.1 (chiefly because of Metro.) With Metro effectively out of the way for the Windows desktop user (like myself), it'll allow people to use the core of the OS without the distraction and limits of Metro. But, as you say, Metro will still "be there," albeit greatly improved over its Win8 incarnation, for those who wish to invoke and use it.
 
I think he is short term minded and this will come to light soon. No one has explained to me how exactly the hell windows 10 is suppose to do in a mobile world. I guess they are just going to keep selling windows 8 along side it?

This guy has only done one thing that I have seen so far, slash the living shit out of prices. Of course things are going to look better market share wise. But at the very same time he has been making long time MS customers like me feel like shit. What am I paying for when everyone else gets the shit for free?

In the same time that he has been CEO most of the works just happened to come together that were already in place. But windows phone has stagnated. And the entire future of MS relies on its ability to get into mobile and right now and for the forseeable future they have nothing. No catalyst, and the only long term catalyst they were supposed to have which was metro / RT, just got dealt a death blow by windows 10.

For all you people saying OH but enterprise is great. You obviously cannot see how important it is that mobile be won because enterprise will easily crumble following consumer if google and apple are allowed to continue to dominate. Its already happening. 5 years ago if you said apple in enterprise people would laugh you out of the room, today company after company is bending over and deploying iphones and ipads.
 
He certainly understands technology and its trends better than Ballmer did.
 
WaltC said:
My thinking, exactly...;) The latest iteration is the one that's selling so well. I just cannot stand those teeny-tiny screens...! The last ~13"-15" screen I had was in 1987 with my Amiga 2000...;) I thought it was too small, then, and could never go back. But then, I've never been a portable-computing customer or fan, mainly because I don't like making compromises in my environment for the sake of mobility--and mobile is all about compromise for the sake of power conservation (battery life.)
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I guess I look at something like a Surface Pro 3 and don't really see that many compromises for all that it can do in 2.5 lbs. with the Type Cover. I have the i7/8 GB/512 GB version which isn't cheap but it's more powerful that 90% or better of the laptops out there, much better built with a much better screen. Get's 8 hours of battery life in more normal usage, 10 point multi-touch screen and very good digital pen. The compromise was the money for something that does all of this in 2.5 lbs. This this is WAY more computer than the average non-hard core gamer would ever need.

But I've always been a fan of hybrid devices and was an early adopter of the Tablet PC and bought one of the first convertible Tablet PCs when they came out in the fall of 2002. Microsoft often gets criticized for dropping things. But they've kind of stuck it out with the Tablet PC, the Surface Pro is just a version of the same concept they launched 12 years ago.

WaltC said:
Basically, the start menu is back, and the side-scrolling monstrosity of a start-page is effectively gone (you can banish it if you wish)--the two major objections to Win8 (mine, certainly.) I've pulled the tiles from my start menu in Win10TP as I prefer it that way--but in a sense I agree with you...Microsoft is doing with Metro what it should have done with it in the beginning...make it *optional* according to the desires of the end user--the customer.

I'll put it this way, then: Metro as it shipped in Win8 would never have flown. I like Win8/.1 better than Win7 for several reasons, but one of the reasons I do is because I could move Metro completely out of my way with a little configuration work and at least one 3rd-party app (the Classic Shell start menu, in my case.) Win10 will be a resounding success, I predict, because it will return to Windows the degree of configurability present in Win7 but absent in Win8/.1 (chiefly because of Metro.) With Metro effectively out of the way for the Windows desktop user (like myself), it'll allow people to use the core of the OS without the distraction and limits of Metro. But, as you say, Metro will still "be there," albeit greatly improved over its Win8 incarnation, for those who wish to invoke and use it.
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But the big thing about Metro is really the apps. Sure the shell is going to be improved for desktop use and the Start Screen, full screen Metro apps, hot corners and charms will be gone on the desktop. But those aren't really Metro, they were conventions in the shell for getting the full screen Metro apps to work on the desktop.

Of course for desktop only folks, Metro apps don't really offer a lot in terms of productivity but as the Windows Store has slowly grown, there are some pretty decent tablet apps out there that a fantastic for touch and hybrid devices like SP3. And even for desktops, I think a lot of these would be much more used on desktops if they fit better on the desktop as Windows 10 allows. We shall see.
 
kbrickley said:
Windows phone isn't that critical if the Surface succeeds ... they could then use Intel mobile chips to get back into the phone business leveraging the Surface compatibility with a new line of phones ... XBox will do well if they can get consoles on the market so that they can make their money back on game licensing fees ... Windows 8 may be a goner but no other OS has stepped up to replace it and they can lock in their position with a successful launch of 10 (like 7 redeemed Vista) ... consumers don't hate MS so all they need is some good launches and some better PR and they will be as strong (or stronger) than ever ;)
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I'm not sure if they hate 8.x either. The graphic [H] posted earlier today shows that 8.x total market share is up 80% in the last year. Yes, that's only about 8 points more than the 10% last year, but it grew faster than 7. My gut tells me most 7 installs are businesses, which notoriously hate changing the OS. The only reason my company went to 7 was because they had to. I'd like to say they did it for great memory of an x64 OS, but they didn't buy more than 4GB of ram for machines with 7 until recently.

The bottom line is that Windows is the OS. Apple is flat, Linux is flat or in decline (on the desktop). For servers, I don't know. We run a variety of Server OS's and Windows Server is in that mix.
 
rudy said:
I think he is short term minded and this will come to light soon. No one has explained to me how exactly the hell windows 10 is suppose to do in a mobile world. I guess they are just going to keep selling windows 8 along side it?
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Microsoft has explained it, Continuum, but they've not shown anything publicly yet. We should soon start to see leaks of it as it's being reported by some of the usually good Windows rumor sources that partners are about to get the first builds with Continuum. Which makes sense as the first public builds with Continuum are supposed to come out next month.

How well Continuum will be the key to Windows 10's popular opinion I believe. If on a desktop users get what is essentially Windows 10 with whatever refinements and improvements are yet to come but on a tablet the experience is similar to what Windows 8.1 is now but on a device like the Surface Pro the experience will automatically switch based on the keyboard being attached, if that all works well, it would almost be revolutionary. Indeed plenty of people have said that it can't be, that you can't have both a tablet and touch experiences in one OS with the experiences compromising each other. We should know soon if Microsoft can pull Continuum off well or not.
 
nilepez said:
The bottom line is that Windows is the OS. Apple is flat, Linux is flat or in decline (on the desktop). For servers, I don't know. We run a variety of Server OS's and Windows Server is in that mix.
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When are we going to hear about the failure of non-Windows OSes to capitalize on the failure of Windows 8. Windows 8 is only a failure in the context of other versions of Windows. Compared to non-Windows OSes it would be a historic success.
 
Wasn't Satya Natella the one who said that women who don't ask for raises get good karma or something? I couldn't care less about that, but I don't understand articles like these as there is no evidence that he has done anything significant yet that was not already put into motion by the last guy.
 
kbrickley said:
Windows phone isn't that critical if the Surface succeeds ...
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I can't say exactly what you mean but surface is a tablet or a laptop its not a phone and the world buys hundreds of millions of phones not tablets. Every person I know carries a phone on them maybe 1 carries a tablet all the time. Phones are going to be KEY absolutely KEY to securing your place in the future of OS makers.

Now days roughly 50 million tablets sell each quarter and it is going flat. In comparison we are hitting numbers as high as 300 million smart phones and its still growing. MS making a big deal out of surface is stupid its fighting for scraps. More regular PCs still sell than tablets.

In the future if not already every single human you interact with will probably have a smart phone on them nearly all the time. Not everyone will have a tablet, not everyone will have a laptop / desktop. And whomever wins the smartphone war will then be able to use their power to force everyone into their ecosystem in tablets, laptops, and desktops.I don't know why people do not understand just how critical this is, its not about market share, its not about profit, its about the very survival of your company. If you fail you will see a constant steady decline like apple saw when it failed to win in 80s.
 
amdgamer said:
I couldn't care less about that, but I don't understand articles like these as there is no evidence that he has done anything significant yet that was not already put into motion by the last guy.
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It's sometimes hard to say when the old person ended and the new one started in a company the size of Microsoft. Ballmer was so maligned that the day he announced his retirement Microsoft's stock went up 7% that day.

To this point Nadella has only done tactical things, we certainly haven't seen any realization of his long term strategy, but the stock is up over 30% since he's started 10 months ago. I think his first important test will be how the holiday season goes for Microsoft. Looks like he's instituted a lot of aggressive pricing in the consumer space from XBox cuts to free Windows 8.1 that's now showing up on these low cost devices to unlimited OneDrive storage for Office 365 users to the bundling of XBox Live, Skype XBox Music and Office 365 in a $200 for a year package. This aggressive pricing across the board could come back to bite him.

But the first major test will be the continued development and launch of Windows 10 and not only PCs but tablets and phones and how just how truly One Windows Windows 10 actually is.
 
rudy said:
And whomever wins the smartphone war will then be able to use their power to force everyone into their ecosystem in tablets, laptops, and desktops.
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I don't disagree with your stressing of the importance of devices but I don't see how phones are going to force the desktop. Indeed if that were the case then Apple and Google should have made some big inroads into the desktop market and to date they haven't. Indeed with Microsoft offering Office and its services across platforms, there's no reason why one can't have a Windows desktop/tablet and an iPhone and be pretty well in sync. To your point, I think this is why Microsoft is being more open about making it's software and services cross platform. They may not ever be big in the handset device, but their services and software will be on all of them no matter what. And then you get to keep that desktop or laptop that does things that phone never will.
 
Win10TP doesn't suck... it has some interesting improvements.
Would use it if stuck on 8 or no OS at all...
...and there are always OS's
Whatever the change is... its been good so far.
 
erexx said:
Win10TP doesn't suck... it has some interesting improvements.
Would use it if stuck on 8 or no OS at all...
...and there are always OS's
Whatever the change is... its been good so far.
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Windows 10 development started before Windows 8 was released to the public. It's very unlikely that most of the UI changes weren't in the works while Ballmer was CEO.

This is remarkably similar to the Apple is dying because Jobs is dead and Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs. He's not, but Apple makes more today than they did when Jobs was alive (and he really wasn't running the day to day operations for a long time prior to his death. Ballmer likely was until they decided on a new CEO.
 
nilepez said:
Windows 10 development started before Windows 8 was released to the public. It's very unlikely that most of the UI changes weren't in the works while Ballmer was CEO.

This is remarkably similar to the Apple is dying because Jobs is dead and Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs. He's not, but Apple makes more today than they did when Jobs was alive (and he really wasn't running the day to day operations for a long time prior to his death. Ballmer likely was until they decided on a new CEO.
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There's planning and prototyping and other work that's ongoing and I'm pretty sure the return of the Start Menu in the future was made before Ballmer left but the actual coding of a Windows release starts with the last released version. So what is know called Windows 10 didn't start in earnest until Windows 8.1 Update when RTM in late winter this year.

Indeed the work being done right after Windows 8.1 Update was released was initially being targeted for a "Windows 8.2" or "Windows 8.1 Update 2" (actually that did come out last month, though it wasn't was planned early on). So scrapping of a major Windows 8.x update and the jump to Windows 10 was on Nadella's watch.
 
heatlesssun said:
I don't disagree with your stressing of the importance of devices but I don't see how phones are going to force the desktop. Indeed if that were the case then Apple and Google should have made some big inroads into the desktop market and to date they haven't. Indeed with Microsoft offering Office and its services across platforms, there's no reason why one can't have a Windows desktop/tablet and an iPhone and be pretty well in sync. To your point, I think this is why Microsoft is being more open about making it's software and services cross platform. They may not ever be big in the handset device, but their services and software will be on all of them no matter what. And then you get to keep that desktop or laptop that does things that phone never will.
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I think its incredibly amazing that people do not see how obvious it is. Its basically what MS did to everyone else. Apple learned and didn't repeat with iPhone well they only learned half the lesson google actually learned the whole lesson.

Google is just getting started, some might say they are actually being a little hasty. how about how calendar used to sync with exchange and now it doesn't. Currently I can find no good way to get my google calendar to sync with MS calendar in windows 8 and 10 funny because I had no problem before a year or 2 ago. Once they get everyone in the bag they start breaking compatibility then someone goes to the store and says, well my gmail, calendar, google plus and phone just works better with an android desktop. Simply look at how well they have done with chrome as an example You cant use hardly any google service without chrome being shoved in your face. There are things like google translate that have seen features stripped and made so you can only get them if you use chrome. What we have seen so far is just a sliver of what they will start doing in the coming years.

Apple has already made massive inroads to the desktop / laptop space. You go onto universities or various places and there are more macs than PCs. No one touched a mac for years until apple hit huge with ipod and iphone. Now apple has successfully increased their market share to a number that is no longer a rounding error. You can now get lots of programs and alternatives on mac and more games are made for mac on steam than Linux. And that is with the small share they have. And all of this has been done without their massive move into enterprise which has been taking off in recent years.

Even in the worst case scenario where google cannot get much traction they can always just wait MS out if they own mobile. Wait till ARM cpus are as powerful as x86 and people just start running android on the desktop.
 
heatlesssun said:
Microsoft has explained it, Continuum, but they've not shown anything publicly yet. We should soon start to see leaks of it as it's being reported by some of the usually good Windows rumor sources that partners are about to get the first builds with Continuum. Which makes sense as the first public builds with Continuum are supposed to come out next month.

How well Continuum will be the key to Windows 10's popular opinion I believe. If on a desktop users get what is essentially Windows 10 with whatever refinements and improvements are yet to come but on a tablet the experience is similar to what Windows 8.1 is now but on a device like the Surface Pro the experience will automatically switch based on the keyboard being attached, if that all works well, it would almost be revolutionary. Indeed plenty of people have said that it can't be, that you can't have both a tablet and touch experiences in one OS with the experiences compromising each other. We should know soon if Microsoft can pull Continuum off well or not.
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Just wait til Windows Phone 7.. that will fix everything
Just wait til Mango.. that will fix everything
Just wait til Tango.. that will fix everything
Just wait til 7.8.. that will fix everything
Just wait til Windows 8 with Metro and unified apps.. that will fix everything
Just wait til Windows 8.1.. that will fix everything
Just wait til Threshhold.. that will fix everything
Just wait til Universal Apps.. that will fix everything
Just wait til Continuum.. that will fix everything


....SMFH. Hard to get excited about Microsoft's latest mobile/touch ideas and promises with a stumbling track record like that.
 
rudy said:
Even in the worst case scenario where google cannot get much traction they can always just wait MS out if they own mobile. Wait till ARM cpus are as powerful as x86 and people just start running android on the desktop.
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If people didn't like Windows 8 on the desktop because it was a fisher price tablet OS then it's hard to see the appeal of android on that space where everything is a touch app, touch apps designed mostly to run on 6" and smaller screens. If one want to run Android on their desktop the option is there today. I have DuOS installed on my Surface Pro 3 if I want to use an Android app. And I still have all of my Windows desktop and modern apps as well.
 
DPI said:
Just wait til Windows Phone 7.. that will fix everything
Just wait til Mango.. that will fix everything
Just wait til Tango.. that will fix everything
Just wait til 7.8.. that will fix everything
Just wait til Windows 8 with Metro and unified apps.. that will fix everything
Just wait til Windows 8.1.. that will fix everything
Just wait til Threshhold.. that will fix everything
Just wait til Universal Apps.. that will fix everything
Just wait til Continuum.. that will fix everything


....SMFH. Hard to get excited about Microsoft's latest mobile/touch ideas and promises with a stumbling track record like that.
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The thing is that Windows 8.1 actually did a lot to fix a lot of Windows 8 RTM's issue. And the other is that there is some very good low cost hardware out there that makes a lot of sense with 8.1. This Nextbook 10.1, at a $180 dollars with the ability to run things like desktop Office with a keyboard dock and then pull it out of the dock and have a tablet for Angry Birds, email, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. I know you're not a fan of 8 but this kind of hardware and this kind of price with all that it can do, it simple become a matter of economics.
 
rudy said:
Even in the worst case scenario where google cannot get much traction they can always just wait MS out if they own mobile. Wait till ARM cpus are as powerful as x86 and people just start running android on the desktop.
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Haven't you said many times that Microsoft can't take a shortcut to mobile by leveraging the desktop? So how would the reverse work for Google? Slapping Android apps in a window, the vast majority which we never designed to work with keyboards and mice would be any more effective don't you think?
 
heatlesssun said:
Haven't you said many times that Microsoft can't take a shortcut to mobile by leveraging the desktop? So how would the reverse work for Google? Slapping Android apps in a window, the vast majority which we never designed to work with keyboards and mice would be any more effective don't you think?
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In the context of the discussions no that's not what I said they could do it if they altered some part of their product lineup or strategy. What I was saying was with MSs current strategy they aren't going to be able to pull it off. 1 because there is no significant reason for people to develop for RT when almost every windows device programmer isn't going to leave the millions of windows 7 (as seen in this thread) and XP clients off the table as potential sales.And this means no one will buy windows phone because it has no apps, oh the irony. 2 because MS has no one making compelling smart phones for them. So MS has limited options either take huge losses, port RT to windows 7, or make windows 10 the absolutely most amazing selling OS ever converting most windows 7 clients in a short time. Which one of those do you think is likely to happen?

Google on the other hand is pushing hundreds of millions of smart phones per quarter and it doesn't look like anything is going to stop them. So there you have it Google can just sit at their current position and outsell MS ~3:1 in the worst case foreseeable scenario unless Satya Nadella has some big ass trick up his sleeve to get OEMs AND cell phone networks to make and sell windows phones way better than they are.
 
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