Sales down, Microsoft raises prices radically | Hacker News Reader

Sales down, Microsoft raises prices radically

semiaccurate.com

13 pointsmtgx9 comments

> The company is repeating the one still working play they have [raising prices], circling the wagons around the enterprise market, effectively raising the barriers to exiting.

Raising prices lowers the barrier to exit because the costs of switching to another platform become that much less expensive relative to staying with the Microsoft stack.

Maybe his logic is that people get more invested in a platform by spending more and thus don't want to switch.

Okay that doesn't make any more sense either, but it's a trademark Charlie Demerjian rant, logic goes out of the window. You should read some his anti-Nvidia rants, it's like Microsoft-Nvidia-Intel ran over his puppy or something.

What I took from that quote was that this was the effective MS strategy before and it worked, but that it won't work this time. So I think your response is in agreement with the article, at least the way I read it. It's hard to know for sure, though, with so much sarcasm in the article.

EDIT: Changed OP to article.

Why is this site not perma-banned? Every article is just anti-Microsoft, hate-filled drivel.

I would have taken the article seriously if not for the website name.

Ugh, another ranting raving Charlie Demerjian hitpiece on Microsoft(other candidates include Nvidia and Intel) low on facts and analysis and high on hyperbole and juvenile language. I regret clicking on the link, just like always. I don't want to even bother wasting my time on debunking this crap. The only redeeming factor in his blog is that he sometimes gets a few good leaks from industry sources on graphics cards, CPUs etc. Other than that it's just a pathetic tabloid.

Yup, this is a crude piece just preaching to the choir, full of negativity and not worth reading for everyone else.

"deep trouble" "irrelevant" "brilliant move" (sarcastically) "overhyped" "devastating" "widely disliked"

It may not be the best article on the subject, but, well...let's be honest: Microsoft is in trouble. Not, as in, "going out of business" trouble. But, definitely in the Innovator's Dilemma sort of trouble, and a price hike is exactly the sort of thing you'd expect from a company that isn't going to figure it out in time.

The hard fact is that Windows device sales are down 21% from last year (desktops only 9% down, but desktops are not where the market is going). Devices with a shiny new Windows version are selling significantly worse than devices with several year old Windows 7 was last year. We can't blame the sluggish economy; it was sluggish last year. (http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/29/npd-u-s-windows-device-sale...)

I wouldn't necessarily want to bet against Microsoft, as they've managed to correct major trajectory errors in the past (Internet, though one could argue their early mistakes resonate through the industry today in the form of almost no major website running on Windows tech), but I'm not seeing an immediate way forward for Microsoft that doesn't end in their utter irrelevancy in a few more years. No one wants their phones, or their tablets, compared to Apple and Android (both of which are outselling Windows devices by an order or magnitude or two). The desktop is in a long slow decline. Even laptops are transforming into the thin clients long ago envisaged by Sun (even running a variant of Java in many cases), via tablets and hybrids, and Windows has no foothold there and less and less value proposition for end users.

So, if you were to waste your time "debunking this crap", you'd have to put forth some kind of compelling argument for why those scary facts about Microsoft's future aren't going to be a big deal in the long run. It'd require some pretty imaginative fortune telling about what Microsoft will do over the next couple of years to turn the tide back their way.

I regret clicking on the link, just like always. I don't want to even bother wasting my time on debunking this crap.

Just think about how much time you could have saved not reading it or writing an angry comment about it!

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