[dba-Tech] Steve Balmer's nightmare

There is something comical about the iPad being somehow the straw that would precipitate a series of events that would eventually break the camels back. Like some super villainous plan of Steve Jobs that took him years and years in a dark room to concoct.

But, to be honest, it was a self fulfilling prophesy. Microsoft as a business never understood its own consumers. What they were good at was understanding how to sell to businesses and corporations and governments. And for a long time, what was good for the goose was good for the gander. But thats all changing now with these fancy desirable devices and Microsoft is always late to the game (the first serious WP7 phones are coming out a good 5-6 years late?).

They can't keep trying to spread themselves too thin as they are, which means they will have to accept that they cannot keep growing profits for their shareholders with its current business strategy, which is always painful, but IBM made it in the end, did they not? They are still massively profitable and they sold off lots of their assets (although the sale of ThinkPad to Lenovo will always bring a tear to my eye).

- Hans



On 2011-11-24, at 2:46 PM, Jim Lawrence wrote:

> If you have been making your living for years on Microsoft products but have
> been watching the innovations of previous product version becoming less and
> less and them not keeping up with today's new computer world, then you will
> understand.
> 
> MS Access comes to mind. An incredible product, which should or could have
> been expanded with functionality, innovations in language, updated in
> capabilities/capacity and it had such a dedicated and loyal following of
> developers. Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, abandoned its followers by
> producing one shoddy product after another...and now that loyalty has been
> lost and will take a lot of effort to recover it.
> 
> http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmers-nightmare-how-microsofts-busin
> ess-really-could-collapse-2011-11
> 
> Above is "Business Inside's" take on Microsoft's woes and what will happen
> if it does not get its ducks in a row, pick what products to support,
> realize that it no longer controls the market and build some good solid
> products.
> 
> The consolation may be in that, Oracle, a long time adversary of Microsoft,
> is going through the same challenge.
> 
> Jim    
> 
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