The irrelevance of Microsoft | Hacker News Reader

The irrelevance of Microsoft

ben-evans.com

17 pointsNimi9 comments

Here we go again. The same story on how PCs are dead and will be replaced by tablets and smartphones and Google Glasses. Never mind there is a sizable amount of people who need huge screens for what they do everyday, who need a mouse to do proper work, who play high end games in Full HD and full details with graphics cards that consume more watts that you can ever hope your whole ipad10 to use, and you'll see this story is seriously outdated.

PC sales may go down. A bit. So what? The PC will not die. You're just looking at a more fragmented market. End of story.

Sure, but that doesn't guarantee Microsoft's relevance in that space. I still have a feeling that many of MS's cash cow products in many cases could easily be replaced by FOSS, and increased irrelevance on other platforms could make things suddenly swing that way. Though I guess I'm kinda talking about the year of the Linux Desktop here, so yeah...

Totally agree with you, but the article was clearly mentioning Microsoft is losing relevancy because the PC is dying... which is not the case.

I don't think this article is claiming the PC is dead or that there's no need for anyone to do work at their desks using keyboards and large monitors. No, the irrelevance of Microsoft is they no longer influence the market. They are no longer perceived to be the leaders of change. This is quite different from the height of their influence in the 90's.

Microsoft's share of connected devices will continue to drop as connected home appliances become ubiquitous. I'm sure what this number proves. How about Microsoft's share of computing power, say n connected devices x m processing power. I'm sure Microsoft dominates in a world full of under powered "smart" phones.

Saying Microsoft is dead is a bit like saying working at a desk is dead. Habits change, but neither the desk nor Microsoft is going away any-time soon.

They'll be around longer than me no doubt. The default OS on a PC will be Windows for many years to come, but that won't last forever, and obviously the percentage of sales of traditional PCs to all other consumer computing devices will decline. Their other businesses may or may not thrive.

But to address the title literally, the relevance of Microsoft to me is about the same as the relevance of General Electric to me. I just don't care.

PC division != Microsoft

MS will do just fine.

Well, I want to agree with other commenters here, but the way I see the PC market is similar to a bicycle: accelerate or fall to the ground. PCs are an absolute necessity for maybe 20-30% of the consumer population. Whereas until now a household of 7 people would require 5-6 PCs, it's getting to the point of only needing one or two, and then only occasionally. This is, I believe, the fundamental driver behind the weak PC market.

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