
Microsoft hopes to bury iPhone, Android - abrudtkuhl
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6905PY20101002
======
jdoliner
I wish I could ask Steve Ballmer the following: You just said you missed a
generation in the phone market. You also missed a generation in the browser,
web services, MP3 player and operating system* markets. How does this keep
happening to you guys? I find it impossible to believe that with so many
talented engineers no one wants to push the envelope; engineers live to push
the envelope. So what exactly is the hangup? Am I wrong that your engineers
are hungry? Is your management so unwieldy that no one can get anything done?
Did you make innovative things that just didn't catch on?

When asked what your plan was for the tablet market (which you haven't missed
a generation on yet, but the clock is ticking) you responded simply: "It's
called Windows" and laughed. What exactly is the joke here? The absurdity of
the idea that Windows could ever fail to dominate a market? Wake the fuck up.

Recently you had a QA on reddit regarding your new browser. Your response to
almost every question of the form "Why didn't you include feature X?" was "Our
market research shows people don't want feature X, we make what people want."
__Again you're only lying to yourselves and insulting us along the way. We are
your users (at least we could be) and we're telling you what we want. What
those answers mean to us is that your product is just never going to do what
we want it to. Why do the QA with these people when all you're going to do is
marginalize the concerns they express.

I think I know why you keep slipping up here Steve. You're somehow under the
mass delusion that things are still going well.

 _This one less so than the others Vista wasn't a missed generation so much as
just not up to snuff._ *To be fair this this QA was done in 2 parts first with
marketing people then with programmers the prior having much more of this type
of response than the latter.

~~~
Lewisham
Everything I've ever read about Microsoft's problems always point the finger
at crippling management problems. Each department is out for themselves, not
for the good of the company as a whole (see the Kin/WP7 debacle), and yet many
departments have says and vetos on those of another (there's a good piece
about the Windows Start Menu shutdown behavior somewhere... it indicated all
sorts of problems with the kernel team telling the UI team what to do).

As soon as the inmates aren't running the asylum, Microsoft does much better.
The Entertainment and Devices division and MS has pretty much full autonomy,
and they come up with a very popular console line and a unique motion gesture
system within two generations, they take a chance on the Zune (particularly
the second generation UI... although the Zune didn't sell in the end, they put
up a good effort). Microsoft Research does great stuff, and is also completely
autonomous.

Ray Ozzie was supposed to move Microsoft away from monolithic development, but
it requires a full rebuild of Microsoft's structure, which I can only assume
Ballmer is stalling.

~~~
jfb
From friends on the inside, it sounds like a nightmarish political situation,
with powerful, long-established, and hugely profitable nearly-autonomous
fiefdoms at continual war with one another. There are excellent people there,
and excellent technologies, and a cripplingly awful corporate culture.

~~~
jdoliner
So do they just figure they'll ride the gravy train until it completely breaks
down? Do they acknowledge this is a problem or do they just think it's fine?

~~~
jfb
Probably depends on where in management you happen to be. If you're in charge
of, say, Office, and the huge profits that that makes, why change what you're
doing? Why exert the effort to integrate your product better, or take a short
term hit to profitability in the interest of a larger goal? It reads from the
outside like a real incentive mismatch problem. At the level of the people who
do the work, I think there's great awareness of the fuckedupedness, but that's
matched by their total lack of ability to change things. Honestly, I don't
really know, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft incapable of
stopping their slide into irrelevance.

~~~
Lewisham
That's the sort of managerial problems that can only be solved from the top
down. Shake-ups, reshufflings, and some good old fashioned ass-kicking can
begin turning the ship around.

A lot of Apple enthusiasts like to say "Apple's excellence isn't just Steve
Jobs," but I think in the case of Microsoft, one can reasonably say
"Microsoft's brokenness is just Steve Ballmer." I think he's almost completely
blind to pretty much everything that's happening in his company, and the tech
world at large. I'm not really sure what value the board think he adds. I
guess something to do with sales and marketing, given his background, but it's
not like Microsoft's image is doing all that well either.

One other MS subdivision I forgot to mention that are doing well is Bing.
They're doing some great work. I'm not sure who they report to, and what their
level of autonomy is.

------
rbanffy
This is denial. Next step is anger, then bargaining, depression and, finally,
acceptance.

It seems the mobile division is a couple years behind the server software
division.

~~~
joshu
Microsoft in second place might actually be a motivated competitor. Could be
good...

~~~
arethuza
I'd have said Microsoft in third place would be quite an achievement.

~~~
rbanffy
I think, considering recent events, such accomplishment would have more to do
with the legal department than with the mobile product division and their own
accomplishments.

In fact, I would consider it a miracle.

~~~
mahmud
Come on man, it's not like the mobile division has the power to unilaterally
chart the course for Microsoft's mobile strategy; with MS, every division is
subservient to the rest and they're co-shackled, usually in support of
Microsoft's core money makers (Windows and Office.)

The mobile division is not just coding for the present and the future, but
also the past. If they manage to get half the developer attention that the
iPhone gets, I am certain MS will demolish both iPhone and Android because
they have a _vast_ developer base to tap into.

If they manage to get the distribution right, control handset variety (or at
least require minimum specs; a la PC architecture), tame the carriers and open
up to developers just a tad, you will see millions of corporate developers
installing the mobile plugins for Visual Studio and cranking out apps.

But I am afraid it's not in MS' nature to motivate developers, but have always
relied on market demand and other people's $$$ to make their shenanigans
palatable to developers.

If I was in charge, I would assemble a team of 8 - 12 and write a nice .NET/C#
cross-compiler/wrapper given to any registered Windows Mobile developer; even
remote, hosted cross compiler. Make people write with your tools first, for
your primary platform, with the option to target other platforms from the same
source. Apple was afraid of this with the 3.3.1 policy: iOS getting wrapped
with Win32 API or Android SDK would have been a nightmare for quality on the
iOS.

The first tool developer to successfully target top N platforms (for N>2) is
gonna rake in cash, 3.3.1 permitting.

------
jfb
In all seriousness, if Microsoft can keep their phone software from getting
captured the carriers, that would be a good thing in my mind. IMO, it is
impossible to overstate the horror of a world run by the wireless carriers,
and I'm afraid that Android is merely serving to empower them at the expense
of the consumer.

~~~
recoiledsnake
True, Microsoft is trying to combine the advantages of iPhone (OS updates
straight from OS writer) with the advantages of Android (multiple hardware
choices from various companies, carriers).

It's just unbelievable that Sony is launching phones running Android 1.6 now
which can't be updated by Google directly like it can the Nexus One.

~~~
ergo98
>It's just unbelievable that Sony is launching phones running Android 1.6 now
which can't be updated by Google directly like it can the Nexus One.

Did you buy one of those Sony phones?

Probably not. In fact that major disadvantage of Sony's entrants is incredibly
well known, and has heavily worked against them. Which is exactly how the
market is supposed to work.

Having said that, it's humorous that Microsoft is now looked to as a _good_
example. For anyone who owned a Windows Mobile device before, there is a long
history of Microsoft grunting out a version onto the market, and then
abandoning. The amount of support for that Moto Q after it was released was
exactly 0, and that wasn't Motorola's fault. Microsoft gets bored quickly.

~~~
jfb
Obviously, it's too soon to tell which direction WP7 is going to go. Microsoft
certainly have form in totally screwing their partners and customers, so
skepticism is warranted. And it's not like there aren't sufficient internal
problems with the company to scuttle even an excellent product.

But more competitors focussed on the customer and not the carrier is a plus in
my book. I'm an iOS fan, but I don't want to live in an Apple monoculture.

------
steverb
I got hands on with a pre-release WP7 phone earlier this week. I think all the
"kill Apple" stuff is kind of stupid, but the WP7 phone was really really
nice. There were lots of nice features and flourishes, and I can honestly say
I liked it a lot better than my wife's iPhone.

MS has obviously put a lot of thought and a lot of work in WP7 and it shows.

Whether it will survive in the marketplace is a different matter.

------
dstein
Microsoft's mentality reminds me of a recent TedTalk:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHopJHSlVo4>

The researcher concludes that when you tell others what you are going to do,
that your mind tricks itself into believing that the task has already been
achieved, and reduces the incentive to do the hard work to actually achieve
it. Thus, when Steve Balmer gushes to the press and says that iPhone is going
to get obliterated, it probably reduces the chances of that actually
happening.

~~~
volida
well, Steve Balmber isn't the one who will actually build the competitive
device, and judging from demo videos I'd say Windows Phone 7 as an OS, looks
liike a serious competitor for people to build applications for.

------
listic
Microsoft's last chance? No way! Microsoft isn't going to run out of money
anytime soon; it can buy itself quite a lot of time, enough for several
chances.

Paul Graham also declared Microsoft dead
(<http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html>) 3.5 years ago. With all
reservations made to the meaning of the word "dead" in this fine essay, I
can't find the way around some ways in which this is simply wrong. For
example, if I want to play a computer game nowadays, I'd better have Windows.
The vast majority of games, from indie and experimental through proud little
independent companies all the way to established companies - are made for
Windows. It's like the only game in town. There's no sign of changing this in
sight. Granted, PC game market is a fraction of that of consoles, but in
consoles Microsoft established a good foothold too and not giving it up
anytime soon.

I'm afraid that many technology observers drink too much of some fashionable
kool-aid and over-dramatize things. Wherever some company or technology
appears that has non-zero chance to potentially displace established company
or technology X, they declare it "X killer" or proclaim X dead. I'm afraid I
can't fully trust the expertise and reasoning of said people after that.

Maybe Microsoft's hopes to bury iPhone and Android are just that, hopes. But
declaring it Microsoft's "last chance", even in mobile segment, is no less
wishful thinking.

~~~
xiaoma
>For example, if I want to play a computer game nowadays, I'd better have
Windows.

Try this site: <http://www.kongregate.com/>

~~~
listic
Try playing games from this <http://www.ludumdare.com/>, <http://www.tale-of-
tales.com/>, this <http://www.impulsedriven.com/> or this site:
<http://store.steampowered.com/>. That's what I mean.

Or, to go with the Kongregate example look at what's hot there:
[http://www.kongregate.com/games/kupo707/epic-battle-
fantasy-...](http://www.kongregate.com/games/kupo707/epic-battle-fantasy-3)
Humour is fine, but this variety gets old after 5 minutes. And this kind of
thing is no substitute of the games it is trying to mock, only supplement.

It's not that you cannot play any games on Linux or web. After all, there are
fine games like Tux Racer and Quake III and there are really lists like "25
Linux games". But it's like the selection you have is like the menu in prison
canteen vs all the world's restraints. Chefs don't come there. All the new and
exciting stuff is happening elsewhere.

------
MaysonL
John Gruber (noted Apple fan) recently had an opportunity to play with a
prototype Windows Phone 7 phone for 5 minutes. He felt that in many respects
the UI/UX was as good as an iPhone, substantially better than Android.

Listen at: <http://5by5.tv/talkshow/10> starting about 55:00

7 may be their magic number.

~~~
steverb
Interesting listen, and closely mirrors my own experience.

* The UI is very responsive on pre-release hardware. I've been told that the released version will be faster.

* The keyboard is very nice. One feature that I noticed is that if you hold down the letter key, you get accented versions of that same key. Makes it much easier to type résumé instead of resume. I can't compare it in over-all usability to other smart phones as I haven't lived day in day out with a smart phone.

* The way applications are organized is interesting. Instead of merely having a mongo huge list of apps, apps can also register themselves in app hubs. So applications that manipulate photos will show up under your photos, applications that deal with music show up there, etc. I'm not totally sold on this, but it seems like a good idea.

* Development for WP7 in silverlight is shockingly easy. And silverlight on WP7 runs super fast. Actually runs faster on the device than on my beefy desktop in emulator.

* There isn't yet an easy way to handle deploying WP7 phones in an enterprise, but I was told that this will be addressed later. There was only so much they could do before this launch though.

I'm in the market for a smart phone, and after handling the WP7 phones I am
sold. It is better than Android, and in my opinion at least as good as the
iPhone.

~~~
steverb
Just looked at my co-worker's Android phone and its keyboard does the same
thing. If you hold down a letter on the screen it will pop up the
alternatives.

------
jfb
jfb hopes for a Porsche 918, more than two weeks of sun in San Francisco.

~~~
Eliezer
Microsoft hopes for iPhone and Android burial, pony

~~~
mahmud
They could bury both with an Android/iOS plugin for Visual Studio. Make WinMo8
SDK a meta-API for mobile development. Wrap the fuck out of Android/iOS and
bundle top-notch, win32-only emulators.

They have an opportunity to be a wise-elder to the industry, if only they woke
up and realized they're no longer the prizefighter, but an _elder_.

With a move like that they can become a reference platform for mobile
adoption; first in big business and government, then academia, and once the
quality of their Qt-like API improves the game developers will start using it
to push the envelope (remember when DirectX was laughed as full-screen GDI,
and game developers still used their own hardware abstraction layers, by-
passing Win16/32 for the tried and true power of DOS underneath?)

[Edit:

I must add that they might want to naturalize Symbian refugees. Grab the top
10 ten Symbian app vendors and offer them a migration route to WinMo, next
comes J2ME which is effectively dead, thanks to Oracle's unapparent interest
in mobile.

Backward compatibility is something MS knows best. Take the refugees before
they commit mass seppuku and offer them a new home.

Take over StackOverflow or launch your own mobile Q&A site to centralize
mobile development knowledge and keep it under your watch.]

------
Mongoose
Microsoft: the Nikita Khrushchev of the software industry.

~~~
stretchwithme
at least the shoe still worked afterwards

~~~
tomjen3
What shoe?

~~~
listic
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-banging_incident>

------
gamble
I'm sure it won't hurt their chances to have burned Verizon on the Kin and
sued their key smartphone provider. WP7 is obviously going to be _so good_
that it won't matter that they'll launch as second banana on the two largest
networks in the US.

~~~
steverb
I've heard from reliable sources that Verizon will have a W7 phone, but it
won't be until early next year. Supposedly has more to do with Verizon's phone
system than anything else though.

------
nixy
Off topic: Why do headlines from some sources omit the "and" from sentences?
Shouldn't it say "Microsoft hopes to bury iPhone and Android"? It's not like I
can say "honey, can you buy some apples, pears, oranges at the store?". I
might be wrong, but this is something rather new, right? If so, when and why
did it come about?

~~~
DanielN
It's standard form for writing news headlines, by-lines.

~~~
gmac
...in the US, but generally not the UK.

------
ptn
Keyword: "hopes"

~~~
rbanffy
They really should go back to their medication...

------
Yaa101
What I find pity-full is that they are trying to bury their competition with
litigation instead of a good product, like many other companies out there they
are just a law-firm that pretends to sell products.

------
SwaroopH
Epic picture. Ballmer doesn't seem his usual comical self. I would say, he's
_lost_ hopes of progress, let alone a burial.

------
startupcto
I don't understand why Microsoft keeps having the mentality of killing their
competitors, burying their competitors.

It has become a "LET'S BUILD SOMETHING THAT WILL KILL THE <FILL IN THE
BLANKS>" instead of "LET"S BUILD SOMETHING THEY WANT". And that's why Google
and Apple are innovating and Microsoft is just playing catching up.

~~~
rbanffy
> that's why Google and Apple are innovating and Microsoft is just playing
> catching up.

Has it ever been different? Not Google and Apple, but Microsoft. Has it ever
invented something?

Even Microsoft's first successful product was a version of a language someone
else developed many years before they existed.

~~~
statictype
Google's first product was a version of a search engine, something that many
people had developed multiple versions of years before it existed.

Google's second most successful product was a web-based mail service,
something that existed about 10 years before their version.

Apple's most successful product existed a few decades before they entered the
market.

~~~
rbanffy
Google can have credit for building the first search engine and the first
webmail that were done right. Their real innovation is not in the end-user
side, but under the hood. Just making it work required a couple leaps in
understanding how thousands of servers have to be managed.

And Apple pretty much invented the personal computer as we know it. Unless Woz
is wrong, the Apple I had a very innovative feature: a keyboard.

~~~
ugh
The innovation game is a very boring game. People always redefine what exactly
they mean by “innovate” just so they can blame some company for not
innovating. It always works.

~~~
rbanffy
Indeed.

But I maintain my statement, which has nothing to do with Apple and Google
(something I made clear on my first message in this thread). Microsoft has
very rarely, if ever, launched a product that created or redefined a category.
They are always late movers, but, frequently, end up with the first successful
product.

------
napierzaza
Sounds accurate. They are only hoping now, not longer confident it will
happen. They can still dream.

~~~
rbanffy
> They can still dream.

Shouldn't they ground their goals in reality? I too want a warp-drive and
teletransporters, but I am not willing to bet my bonuses on impossible things.

