Taking the bull by the horns
August 22, 2004 [General] | By Edward J. R.
Sometimes it may be useful that somebody takes the bull by the horns, no matter what are the costs...
Well, we are not doing it "just for fun" as some people do, or to pretend something that we are not (like The Register pretends to be anti-Microsoft while is being sponsored heavily by pro-Microsoft ads). We are doing it because we believe, that it must be done because otherwise our desire of Microsoft gaining any significant market share in cell phone industry may never materialize. Cell phone industry or not, we mention here also other (more or less) related areas...
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The fact of the matter is that Microsoft empire is falling. No big deal you might say - after all many empires in history of mankind have fallen apart. Well, the problem is however that Microsoft empire is falling because of Microsoft itself - not because of overly aggressive competition!
Microsoft has lost (as of now = August 2004) - as far as market share is concerned - the battle for server market (Linux, not Winodows Server is the winner), the battle for server-side application software platform (Java, not .NET is the winner, nobody even seriously believe in true scalability of server side .NET ...) and Microsoft for 2 years already has been failing to gain market share in smartphone market (Symbian is the winner and Microsoft is even losing, not gaining market share as time goes on). Apart from already lost battles, there are other ones that Microsoft could lose: user-friendly Linux versions can kill Microsoft Windows as an operating system for desktop computers, and OpenOffice can kill Microsoft Office suites.
Below we are outlining list of things that Microsoft is doing wrong (and thus shooting itself in its own legs) and we patronize Microsoft with solutions of problems that Microsoft failures are causing. Clearly guilty of these problems are Microsoft employees (see more about them at the end of this story), but first let's concentrate on the list of Microsoft failures and cardinal errors:
- cell phone industry:
- releasing Microsoft Smartphone platform as a handicapped version of Pocket PC - so, despite having enough of processing power, it doesn't have many features available in Pocket PC like Microsoft Reader, SQL CE (mobile database engine), Pocket Word, Terminal Services Client, support for Wi-Fi (vendors have to make it manually themselves but had technical problems with it), support for frames in Pocket IE, etc etc.
- treating Microsoft Smartphone platform like a shit! (in comparison to Pocket PC in general and Pocket PC Phone Edition in particular)
Microsoft is putting much more efforts in the Pocket PC
Phone platform than in the Smartphone platform. If this cranky state of things will continue, then we predict that in the next 2
years, the Pocket PC Phone market will grow a lot, while Smartphone will
continue to struggle. That's because one can be much more productive with Pocket PC Phone (enterprise market). Microsoft Smartphone based phones are not really nice to use
as a PDA or to surf the web, and all of them (!) don't have built-in WiFi. And (as of now, but with C500 situation is improving) most are
not so good cellphones either (poor battery life).
You will see smaller Pocket PC Phone devices that will
have all the advantages of being Pocket PC's, with built-in WiFi and
Bluetooth, and either a touch screen or a touch pad to emulate the touch
screen, and they will have two hotkeys like smartphones, for convenient one-hand operation.
For God's sake if Microsoft doesn't take seriously Microsoft Smartphone platform, why hardware vendors should?
- lack of common Camera API in Windows Mobile cell phones (both Pocket PC and Microsoft Smartphone) - a thing that is availble in Symbian phones for years, but first Microsoft phones with it will come to the market not before Summer 2005 (those based on Windows CE 5.0).
- other Microsoft mobile devices:
- portable media (music + video) players: Microsoft released new Windows Mobile platform: "Portable Media Center" (PMC) for mobile playback of sound (including MP3!) and videos. However Microsoft released it in closed form - despite the fact that it runs Windows CE core operating system and it has CLR runtime (a kind of Virtual Machine for .NET managed code - comparable to Java JVM) developers and users cannot create and run it 3rd party applications! Interestingly enough it is technically possible - Microsoft employees who have internal access to software tools can do it. This closing of PMC platform for 3rd party applications means that it doesn't offer anything valuable over other mobile multimedia playback platforms. The ultra-fashionable and ultr-stylish iPod players from Apple corporation, if extended to video and PDA and cell phone features (Apple corporation already has prototypes of such devices, everything is in the hands of Steve Jobs, who is a bit retarded mentally but has good feeling for style) could practically annihilate all Microsoft's efforts in these areas.
- SPOT watches: a watches with extended digital display, which allow you to receive MSN messenger messages at them. They too are not programmable and you can't run 3rd party application despite the fact that CLR (virtual machine for .NET) is also built-in in them. Again it is technically possible but Microsoft simply took another wrong strategic decision.
- Other services and platforms:
- MSN messenger service + Mappoint Location Server + Microsoft Portrait + ... : Microsoft fails to deliver innovative services that could take advantage of MSN messenger service as a basis for further services. There is location based service (commercial or free) for consumers (end users) that would inform by proximity alerts when some of your friends from list of messenger "friends" comes into range of your physical location. There is no videoconferencing software where videoconferencing sessions would be initiated invitation in MSN messenger. Many possibilities that MSN messenger could enable are not realized.
- General and overall observations:
- There is very low level of innovation among Microsoft employees. Actually we have impression that Microsoft employees with mediocre skills and low creativity are promoted and preferred! This leads to situation (as you can see above with Camera API) that Microsoft lags behind, technologically, the competition, sometimes even years behind!
- To a huge extend Microsoft fails to take advantage of synergy effect (where 2+2=5 shortly speaking) - so, as you can see from above example with MSN Messenger - various Microsoft's departments have technologies that are not being taken advantage of properly because they are developed and commercialized separately, not jointly.
- Microsoft has no style. While corporations such as Apple and Nokia understand very much that stylish design is very important, Microsoft fails to comprehend it. Sure, Microsoft doesn't produce hardware itself (usually) but Microsoft also doesn't support good style of products that run Microsoft software in any significant way. No Microsoft fashion shows, no Microsoft awards for stylish design of hardware. No nothing that would be stylish from Microsoft. Just boring geeky software stuff, with no style, that combined with lack of imagination (read: lack of innovation - see above) is very bad, particularly for market of mobile devices.
- if you have any suggestions of your own that should be added to this list please user our fully anonymous web form here or the e-mail mentioned there!
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Conclusions: Microsoft employees live in an imaginery reality:
... where they don't have to worry about being fired because of poor performance or bad results - you just move to another department of Microsoft or to another job position there, where you don't have to be innovative and creative, where you can be even mediocre but where you shoud avoid any crazy (creative, innovative) ideas. Where various departments don't have to get the most out of existing achievements. Where life is beautiful and colorful and abundant of money and full of "feel-well" illusions. Yes, that's true: the 2 main cash cows (not bulls!) of Microsoft - Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office - are still giving a lot of milk, but in long term, without faster rate of innovation, without better understanding of needs of users (not handicapping products, but empowering users by products) and more openess (to third party applications, etc), without all this, Microsoft in long term will fall, like many other empires fallen before it. Bill Gates will not live for ever.
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