Should Microsoft give up? | Hacker News Reader

Should Microsoft give up?

zdnet.com

16 pointsbriandear20 comments

I hope they don't. I have been critical of Microsoft in the past but Windows Phone is a credible phone OS.

I agree -- credible competition is vital to push industry forward.

And that's why the Mac came more than 30 years before the first viable tablet. No competition means incumbent-driven change.

There's already credible competition with Android. They have more market share than Apple. You aren't worried about Microsoft having credible competition on the desktop? They have 90% market share, which is still pretty much a monopoly.

Two goliaths splitting the market is not credible competition; it's a duopoly.

A third serious contender would increase the level of competition considerably.

I hope they don't, because if they end up with no product in the mobile arena they'll soon become an NPE with tons of very relevant patents and nothing to lose.

With the erosion of the relevance of desktop platforms, Microsoft's Windows will become a shadow of its past. Without Windows, Office will soon follow it, pushing their server offerings in the same direction. This is really a bet-the-company situation.

Microsoft should give up smartphone battles so we app developers can develop for just 2 platforms.

Microsoft should give up the browser wars so we web developers can develop for 1-2 browsers.

Microsoft should NOT give up the search engine wars because I am so screwed if Google bans my Adwords account or penalizes me =(

Microsoft should give up so consumers have fewer choices and software developers have less work?

I hope not, if nothing else because I really, really enjoy my WP7.

I could go point by point countering every false notion and innuendo in that article, by why waste time and effort arguing with bait?

They'd never do it but I wonder what would happen if they forked Android and put the Metro skin on it.

It would run like shit.

That's more or less what Nokia was doing. MeeGo was a Linux kernel with a mostly Nokia userland on top (albeit more desktop Linux-like than Android.

I doubt they would succeed. I'm not sure whether the carefully cultivated to be anti-Unix Microsoft development mindset would survive the allergic reaction this would cause.

If you judge your success by fidelity with your competitor's product you will NEVER win. The only way they can possibly gain double-digit market share is if they actually do something different/disruptive.

IMHO "metro style" isn't a differentiator.

What's the point? Microsoft makes money off of Android phones anyway - not just that, but I believe they make more off of Android phones than off of Windows phones?

Even if that >50% isn't true (though I believe it is), it helps to put things in perspective - what's Microsoft's larger goal, other than just get a bit of market share in another corner of the larger tech market?

Google and Apple both have visions behind Android and iOS, respectively, even if they're very different visions/goals. I still don't know what Microsoft's driving vision behind WP7 is - that is, if they have one.

Their "vision" is "me-too." They're getting killed by the app store(s) and they're looking for a way to expand their relevance beyond their desktop revenue streams. Their vision is quite simply to remain relevant. I can't say they don't care about innovation, but innovation seems to be playing second fiddle to catching up. Their entire company history is littered with being late to the party. They're operating on a multi-year velocity rather than shorter cycles. While that worked for Windows (due to Apple's late 1980s incompetence) it won't work now because Apple (and Google) are firing on all cylinders. They're chasing a moving target. Wayne Gretsky said, skate to where the puck is going to be. MS is building products around where the puck used to be.

> what's Microsoft's larger goal, other than just get a bit of market share in another corner of the larger tech market?

Survive. Microsoft (at least parts of it) realize the PC desktop is not going to last forever and that's the only market they really dominate. Everything else depends on this domination and the moment it ceases to exist, all the other BUs will fail. Except, maybe, Xbox and miscellaneous hardware.

> that's the only market they really dominate

Office

What is Office without Windows?

Microsoft "makes money" off of Android as a patent troll. Even ignoring the moral aspect there: that's a valid business model for a small law firm, not a $250 billion behemoth of a international megacorporation.

If MSFT's future revenue looks like the licensing fees they're getting from HTC, they're in very deep poo poo.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com