They really need to either spin off a separate business, sell some divisions or just stop trying to compete in some areas. Experience shows their OS dominance doesn't count for much in the phone, tablet, search or cloud markets.
But, there was a time when Microsoft entering a market would send all the existing players running for the hills. They used their OS dominance to control what software OEMs installed and killed off every desktop software competitor they ever had. Your best hope was to sell your company to them. But they couldn't do that with the phone, tablet, search or cloud markets. They've built some good products and some of them are doing ok, but they haven't had the kind of automatic win in those markets that those of us around in the 90s remember.
Maybe it was the delays in getting products out? Or false starts? Or that they just started playing nicer?
Nobody is close to unseating them on the desktop, but the excitement is everywhere else.