Why Microsoft is abandoning the PC and Android tablets are expensive? | Hacker News Reader

Why Microsoft is abandoning the PC and Android tablets are expensive?

technocures.blogspot.com

Add to this the fact that Android is free (Google makes no money in it) and you can see why all hardware manufacturers are moving like droves to the tablet market.

Google does make money on Android, through selling the eyeballs of it's users. The entire goal was to make a new advertising platform they could control.

Another result of this - hardware vendors have no motivation to keep the OS up to date after they've stopped selling that model - why add value to an old model that will then compete with your new models?

Nobody is looking out for the end users in either case, other than tangentially in ways to further their own business goals or prevent PR nightmares.

>> The entire goal was to make a new advertising platform they could control.

That's the way it was supposed to work. But surprise! It turns out that search is not big on mobile... mainly because typing is not easy on mobile. That explains why apps dominate -- one touch and you get to where you need to go -- no fiddling with on-screen keyboards, searches or URLs.

Have they ever heard of bookmarks or shortcuts?

I don't get this fixation on margins. There are plenty of good businesses with low margins (Walmart being an extreme example). A quick check seems to tell me Dell actually has a better return on equity than Apple does (49.4% vs 42%).

http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Dell_(DELL)/Data/ROE http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Apple_(AAPL)/Data/ROE

Kind of have to disagree with this blog post. He predicts that the PC will be a relic of the past. By saying this, he fails to take into consideration the huge end-user market, PC gaming, and that pretty much all businesses use desktops running on Windows. The tablet market is undeniably booming but it's not going to replace the desktop. The tablet is meant to have as a device of convenience and casual use.

Source: 400 million Windows 7 copies sold thus far

In a few years, phones will likely be powerful enough to displace laptops for their ability to run a full desktop OS. The transition will be seamless -- you just wirelessly connect your phone to your keyboard, mouse, and monitor and you'll be able to use a desktop OS like how you're using it today. The Metro UI gives existing Windows users the option to make that transition.

I think this guy got off the rails. The tablet is going to kill the notebook/netbook market which is what most consumers buy.

Killing the PC will take a long time in corporate environments except maybe in the C level where all they need is email and document/presentation software and web apps.

It will still be served to them from Linux/BSD and even some Windows boxes.

I have to disagree with you on the business market front. Most companies(excluding some obvious examples) use PC's/Netbooks only for doing basic data-entry and specialized enterprise software that usually runs of a browser anyway. Tablets when priced correctly will offer a significantly lower TCO to these companies compared to traditional PCs. Google, tried(unsuccessfully) with the Chromebook to tap into this sentiment, though I think their overall vision was right. If we are going to live with data on servers or cloud, why need a full blown PC. Its the pricing that is the current challenge to all vendors. Once, cheap tablet options come companies will realize that their TCO's will be significantly lowered by adopting these devices.

Given that he made no mention of touch screen PCs I think he's totally missed where MS are betting the market is going to be in 2 or 3 years.

Watch the key note. See the load of touch screen PCs on stage. Realise he wrote a whole blog post of nonsense.

MS are trying to anticipate the next big market AFTER the tablets.

Whether this will actually happen is another guess, but I think this guy is so far off the mark in his prediction of the demise of the PC.

Personally I can see MS pulling some stunt like encouraging PC manufacturers to give away a Windows 8 Tablet free with your new all singing Touch Enabled Windows 8 PC, cutting the entire market out from underneath Apple.

So, I suggest MS are actually hoping that touch PCs will actually give consumers a reason to upgrade their PCs again after the flagging sales of the last few years.

In the end I don't see it as compelling enough until they start talking about touch and gesture enabled PCs.

EDIT: part of the reason I believe this is because of the massive emphasis MS were making on the cloud based login anywhere, file available anywhere. The point will be devices that talk to each other with the same apps available on all of them.

I should have defined PC more clearly. To me a PC is any device that runs Intel's(or AMD's) X86 Architecture, Is windows based and is non-touch. Touch-based PC's are just an evolution of Tablets. See Lenovo's new Thinkpad Tablet, where for $100 you get a keyboard and it converts to a Touch-Based device running "Android"!!. Microsoft, in their new Touch-Based PC's is going to mainly use ARM processors, which means all the old windows software is not going to work. MS might just invent a new OS and Device for the same, but I guess for marketing purposes is calling these devices "PCs".

Very inventive definition of a PC there. And totally wrong. What do you call Linux PCs? Or NeXT PCs? The Amiga? Spectrum? BBC Micro? Acorn?

The term PC was about long before Windows and Intel rose to dominance, don't pretend you meant anything else.

If you think that ARM is going to suddenly win overnight just because windows is offering a Windows that works on ARM you're wrong. Intel's here to stay a while precisely because most software won't work on ARM. You're a whole generation too early on your prediction.

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