

Is Microsoft poised for turnaround? - maverick2

With products like Mango [WP7], Kinect, Skype. And stake in Facebook and a partnership with Nokia. Is'nt Microsoft poised for a turnaround? Thoughts?
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dstein
No, they will not recover.

Microsoft's fate is tied very tightly to the personal computer, and that type
of computing is coming to end. Microsoft knows they're in very serious trouble
and they're not pumping billions of dollars into Bing, Azure, Skype and
Windows Phone for the hell of it. They're doing it so that the company will
still be around (in its current form) 10 years from now.

But Microsoft has already lost the mindshare of developers. That's what really
matters. Developers are moving en-masse to mobile and cloud computing and
leaving Microsoft's platforms behind. And if they aren't using Microsoft
technologies to write software, then nobody is writing software for personal
computers, which means every way that Microsoft currently making money is a
shrinking market.

Microsoft can still make money in a shrinking PC market the same way Phillip
Morris makes profit as the last big tobacco company. And I think they may have
no choice but to accept that fate.

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salman89
Just to play devil's advocate:

Who says the PC industry is doomed? I think with Apple's recent announcement
on what they envision cloud computing to be, I think that one can still argue
that OS is still in the forefront.

If PCs were doomed, we would not see a huge uptick in tablet sales (most data
points to that consumers want iPads, not tablets)? What are your criteria for
saying that PCs are doomed?

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dstein
The PC is doomed the same way mini-computers became obsolete. The PC was
simply a transition from mainframe enterprise computing toward smaller,
mobile, thin-client devices.

Mainframes -> Mini-computers -> personal computers -> mobile computers

The operating system and software is irrelevant with respect to the hardware-
side of things. From the software perspective, I see everything eventually
going full-on network-dependent, thin-client, web apps. Apple might still be
pushing native mobile apps because they make lots of money at it, but long
term that phenomenon will not last.

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salman89
I'd be interested to hear from software developers what can actually be done
at a web app level. Can we eventually have a fully functional Photoshop
webapp?

Take a look at a company called Kaviza (recently bought by Citrix). They have
been doing some good work in terms of deploying VMs onto thin clients.

Lets be honest though. Google Docs sucks compared to the Office suite. I've
tried to use Google Docs for serious work, but a lot of functionality is still
missing. Even if the world moves to web apps, I don't think Microsoft is
doomed. An OS still has to run on the thin client, and Microsoft can develop
web apps. I'd be very interested to try out Office 365 when it goes live.

Cloud based apps don't have to be web apps. Just ask Apple.

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printerjam
Turnaround? Their revenue in 2000 was 23 billion and in 2010 it was 62
billion. They doubled their earnings over the decade. The commonly penned idea
in the press that MSFT sucks and Ballmer needs to be ousted is horse crap.

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mark-r
The peak always comes just before the decline. Past performance is no
guarantee of future results.

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sorbus
> The peak always comes just before the decline.

 _By definition_. If this is the peak, then they're going to decline. If this
isn't the peak, then they're going to continue improving. It's a useless
statement, is my point.

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tobylane
They've had the Xbox, a successful image of cool for nearly a decade and it
hasn't helped the rest of the business. They spent half a billion advertising
some version of windows mobile (which was it? I never saw the adverts),
another half billion on corny windows 7 adverts (which get worse and worse)
that was pointless because anyone who didn't want mac would automatically get
windows 7.

Some might say it's a turnaround soon purely because Balmer will get fired
soon. There's no chance he'll get replaced by someone un-safe, un-boring.

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codeprimer
Weird as it may seem, but Microsoft's change in focus from native code
development to the .Net platform with all the associated hype, has been the
single most important reason why they were left behind in the technology race.
And, I am sure this realization is dawning on them. :)

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socially-distnt
that would be highly ironic, considering .Net was MS's response to Java.

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winsbe01
With all the focus these days on mobile, I think the product to keep them
current is WP7. However, they don't seem to be pushing it as a real
alternative to iOS or Android. And it's really a shame, it's a great bit of
software. Without a big marketing push, though, it's unlikely to become a
viable alternative.

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runjake
No. Not as long as they embrace homegrown, proprietary technologies as opposed
to widely-adopted (ala WebKit) or open standards. Interoperability is still
their Achille's Tendon.

