[zdw]

There are two Microsofts:

- The one that does interesting, innovative stuff but a failure/modest success in the marketplace (online, xbox, sync interface for cars, zune, windows phone 7)

- The "legacy" one that makes windows, office, and server apps, which makes a ton on licensing.

Nobody likes "legacy" microsoft, and it's the most vulnerable, but also has the most momentum behind them. People develop on or support the dominant platform to earn a paycheck, thus the dominant platform stays in place.

Until the PC goes away, and there's a huge shift to do real work off our phones/tablets/other non-legacy devices, MS will most likely be dominant in terms of market share.

[wh-uws]

I feel like products like Windows 7 and the Kinect among other things are a sign of a rally from the Microsoft camp.

Agree / disagree?

[Zak]

I don't think Win7 is a sign that MS is making a comeback; it's the final product that Vista was a massive public beta for. I don't know anyone who loves it - the usual opinion of people who choose to use it is "good enough".

The Kinect is pretty impressive though. I wonder what the per-unit cost is for MS - are they making a direct profit on sales?

[te_chris]

I disagree. I know lots of people who love it but, really, neither of us are being scientific and we're both just making sweeping generalisations on an internet forum that are based on hear-say.

[sedachv]

You have to compare Windows 7 to XP instead of Vista. The only difference I noticed is that 7 is slower and looks more like OS X compared to XP. If there's any "innovation" going on, I haven't noticed it.

[techdmn]

>Until the PC goes away

I have a sneaking suspicion this may happen much sooner than I initially expected. Currently working on business software for a non-U.S. market, word is that our customers have more smart-phones than PCs.

[bergie]

I just came back from Kenya, and it was interesting to see how everything was done with featurephones using quite primitive (but efficient) menu-based applications. Banking, etc. In every village there were kiosks with diesel generators or car batteries selling phone charging.

Being a developing country means they have been able to skip unnecessary dead-end technologies like landline phones and desktop computers, and go straight to an untethered personal computer: the mobile phone.

[getsat]

That is a really interesting observation (about skipping dead-end technologies). I wonder how many business opportunities there are like that that are unexploited, even in first world countries.

I've added it to my brainstorming list. Thanks!

[brudgers]

>"Until the PC goes away, and there's a huge shift to do real work off our phones/tablets/other non-legacy devices, MS will most likely be dominant in terms of market share."

In the past year with Windows Phone and "the next Windows" support for ARM, they have shown just how competitive they intend to be in those markets. They have spent the last 10 years moving toward hardware independence via .NET, and they are shipping it.

[zdw]

How portable is .NET?

Is it as simple as with Java - ie, the same .jar that has minimal requirements, such as a CLI-only program, can be taken from one platform (say Windows) and run on another (say Mono on Linux) without a recompile?

Or is it more complex than that?

[Aaronontheweb]

.NET compiles everything down to an intermediate language which is then JIT-compiled to assembly - the assembly can either be generic (something that will run across a wide array of Intel 64bit processors, for instance) or it can be something that takes advantage of very specific chip features (like special math instructions or caching features.) Depends on the build instructions you send to the CLR.

I believe the issue with porting is that there's some key components in the .NET framework that rely on the Windows OS kernel behavior and won't play nice with POSIX, but I haven't taken a close enough look under the hood to say that with 100% certainty.

[TeHCrAzY]

From a package viewpoint, generally you can use the same .net dll built on windows in mono and vice versa.

There are some considerations to make when writing code for both platforms, just to ensure you won't use features not yet implemented in mono.

[Stormbringer]

You may have a good point in there, but my parser chokes on your assertion that the Zune is innovative.

[Jeema3000]

Yes, you're correct, and that's how it should be for any successful technology company I think: they should have their legacy products which may or may not be fading into irrelevance, and their new stuff which embraces the future.

There's nothing wrong with that, though. No aspect of technology remains dominant forever and the web is not the end-all of computing, just as the mainframe and the desktop were not the end-all of computing either. Something else will inevitably emerge in the future which will supersede the web, however slowly it may occur...

[Someone]

I agree with that. However, Microsoft's problem is that the volume of its new products is too low relative to the volume of its established products.

It is a bit like population pyramids; every country has one, but some are signs of (future) population decreases. Microsoft's, according to one viewpoint, looked like it was on track to expand forever and occupy the whole world (oops; mixing metaphors here), but now looks as if it will/already has reached a plateau, or even will/already has started shrinking/collapsing (there are many variations here; I think they still have chances to win big in another field (for example, XBox or .NET seen as 25-year investments may turn out to be huge cash cows) but I doubt whether that 'big' will be big relative to their current size.

[encoderer]

How is xbox and sync only a "modest success"?

Perhaps only in the context of Microsoft where they're not a billion dollar business so therefore their success is "modest."

[chrismealy]

A few years ago I read that xbox had lost $10 billion so far.

[Lewisham]

That's the nature of the game; loss on the razors (consoles), profit on the blades (game licenses).

Microsoft ate a huge amount of cash to push Sony into a game they thought Sony wouldn't win: they invested heavily in the Xbox being a software hub that connected with media over the Internet. I would argue they were pretty much successful.

The belief is that 360 launched with HD-DVD not because Microsoft didn't think Blu-Ray was a worse bet, but because Microsoft wanted to delay HD physical media long enough for digital distribution to take hold. They made a huge loss on marketing and manufacturing a losing piece of hardware, but like I said, it probably worked.

So, by the games Microsoft was playing, I would say they view Xbox as a major success.

They are now making a profit [1], but the cyclical nature of console lifespans means money is now going to have to get sunk into R&D then the marketing of a new console, which will push profits down in about 2-3 years. I'd also expect the WP7 push to eat up revenue as well.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-op...

[Encosia]

The Entertainment and Games division started turning a profit in 2008. They may still be in the red overall (I don't know for sure), but they're turning a steady profit now.

[aristidb]

I like your analysis, but this statement is self-contradictory: "it's the most vulnerable, but also has the most momentum behind them". I think that Windows, Office... is the least vulnerable part of Microsoft, but it's also low-growth.

[zdw]

There's a format lock-in in place. Microsoft's greatest asset is the fact that it controls the file formats used by business (.doc/.xml, and the new xml based ones aren't better or more open).

This creates a de-facto requirement to buy microsoft software - in many cases you need a copy of MS Office to render or interact with a document in a way they're used to, and all the documents in a company already are in that format, so the path of least resistance is to buy another copy of MS Office.

The web avoids the issue as it embraces non-proprietary formats (or ones that are well understood). Once people get their data in a better place, that's the beginning of the end for MS.

[kenjackson]

Office is low growth with respect to percentage growth. It makes massive money now, and needs massive new revenue to grow quickly. With that said, their growth in absolute dollars is money that every other company would love to have, including Apple, Google, and Facebook.