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How is Microsoft that much more resilient, though? They're an absolute joke in the phone/device market. They're a market leader in the least exciting, fastest-declining market - the Desktop. On the server side, they're hovering at 30%-ish, and are almost completely absent from the start-up scene as well as the high-end super-computer space. The startup scene, which, I know, I know, but still, it is where the future is, is definitely not interested in anything MS, from what I can tell. Nothing bug a sea of MacBooks with people pounding away at Node/RoR/language-of-the-day. The hip 20-somethings pounding away at a thousand start-ups don't seem to be betting on the MS stack. And those are the tech leaders of tomorrow. Forget about the start-up space, fine. What about other institutions like banks/finance/airlines? That's all Java, running on some kind of Unix-derivative as well, most likely hitting a non-MS database. MS is doing ok in the video game console space, but Sony is doing better. They're doing ok with Azure, but nothing spectacular, AWS and Google Cloud and Dig. Ocean and the numerous others aren't feeling too much pressure. I guess really besides Office - what do they have that's a giant run-away success that will ensure their long-term survival? |
Just by being a significant "also ran" in those markets Microsoft ensures its survival in the medium term. They are diversified enough that the rug cannot suddenly be pulled out from under them and they are in a position to pump money and pivot into any of those markets where they see traction.
While Apple's situation is better today, their ability to respond to rapid changes in the business is under question.