Microsoft’s OS Business Has Started to Decline
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
The same applies to their other cash cow - Office. Office 2007 has some improvements I like... Powerpoint and Excel have some usability improvements... but on the whole.. Word for me is still Word as it was in Word 2000. There is nothing in 2007 that is that compelling. For many people it's probably Word 98, or Word 2.0.
Apple has avoided this by keeping OS X and the evolving it. This model seems to be working much better for now.
The most complex single document I've ever worked on was my MSc dissertation, 30,000 words, lots of cross-references, figures, footnotes, etc etc. I can't remember if I used Word 97 or 2000, but it was more than sufficient for the task. I could have done it in Word 6 or Word 5.1, even. It truly baffles me why people (even within MS itself) want to keep upgrading it.
The security was pretty 'unsatisfying' to say the least. Vista came a long way in protecting users .. from themselves.
Regarding Vista, the reasons mentioned above applied to us as well...we didnt migrate and it seems that everyone is waiting on Win7 already.
OSs may eventually fade into the background. That's a possibility. But that has nothing to do with MS.
The Vista launch & the netbook sales as described in the article would have been a great opportunity for any competing OS to play. But none are there to rise.
Apple plays a different game. 1. Do we really think one company will do all the hardware & all the software of all PCs (or even half of them)? 2. They would need to cut margins. No reason for them to do that. . Linux had a run with the Eee PCs V1. Heard it got good reviews. But it didn't stick.
Anyway, it looks very possible that Vista is just a below average product that gets below average sales & the next windows will be released, Vista forgotten, & nothing (bar a couple of years of slightly reduced sales in one department) changed in the long run.
They were weak for a couple of years.It might have been a good time for an attack. But noone was there to do it.
What they are doing is book ending Windows at the low and high end of the market. Apple is doing an excellent job of sniping the high end part of the PC market. And Linux makes possible a lower end of the PC market that Microsoft would prefer not exist because of what it does to their margins.
Even there we see Microsoft's pitiful efforts get them a dominant position. Throw out a reduced version of XP that still adds 10% - 20% to the price tag (maybe more considering the hardware needs) & you take that market too.
I think we're really seeing a market crying out for competition.
There were two things wrong with Vista: 1) issues with 3rd party software & drivers, and 2) steep hardware requirements. The first was due to enhancements to user accounts & security, and is largely fixed today.
Anyway, people aren't going to be using Windows XP for the next 5 years, so they'll switch en masse to Windows 7 or to OS X. Apple still isn't competing at the lower price points, so unless Windows 7 is just really bad, I think we'll see the numbers pick back up when Win7 comes out.
If this trend continues to accelerate, the revenue Microsoft gets per PC will steadily decline and likely offset the increase in revenue from increased volume.
And Paul predicted this a while back.
Desktops would be replaced with a smaller web-focused devices. [1] Grandmas will be left using Windows. [2] Microsoft is declining in importance. [1] [2] [3]
[1]http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html