Can Microsoft Survive If Windows Doesn't Dominate? 497
Nerval's Lobster writes "In his latest Asymco blog post, analyst Horace Dediu suggested that Windows' share of the personal-computing market is declining at a faster rate than many believe, once Microsoft's cash cow is put in direct competition with Android, iOS, and other platforms built for tablets. In that context, Windows' share of the personal-computing market has dipped past 60 percent on its way to 50 percent. The big question is whether it'll keep plunging. 'If Windows tablets start growing as fast as the tablet market overall then Windows could stabilize in share,' Dediu wrote. 'But if Android and iOS tablets follow their phone brethren in growth then it will be far harder for Microsoft to maintain share.' Yet despite that gloomy scenario, Dediu doesn't necessarily see a market-share dip as a cause for concern on Microsoft's part: 'Even if Windows dips to only 20 [percent] of the world's computing market it will still be perfectly 'viable' for some time to come,' he wrote. But even if Windows can perpetuate, will its decline fatally undermine Microsoft as a company? All that Windows (and Office) money also allows Microsoft to launch projects that lose money for years before they gain traction. Without that monetary base, for example, it's possible that the Xbox (which bled money for the first few years of its existence) wouldn't have survived long enough to become a viable platform from a financial perspective—much less the center of Microsoft's future plans for living room domination."
Re:Yes they can (Score:5, Informative)
Explain how an iPad or Android tablet with a bluetooth keyboard is functionally different than a laptop running Windows?
less ram, less drive space, weaker prossesor, less powerful video card, less control of the system. thats how.
Re:os x just needs to remove the hardware locks an (Score:5, Informative)
There's no way Microsoft can fully test their products against the infinite combinations of hardware, old and new and forthcoming, that are possible in the world outside of their labs. Users are going to pay for this in the form of crashes and problems, it's unavoidable.
Apple, OS-X, iOS, etc., is not perfect. It has problems, but in my experience much fewer than Windows. I've used MS operating systems professionally since Dos 1.0 through Win 7 and currently use it, but I'm infinitely happier with my Mac equipment like the Air that I'm typing this on. OS-X has its limitations and problems, and though Win 7 is a very good product, I'm still a lot more frustrated with it than I think I should be. We pay a higher price for hardware, and it's fairly high-end hardware and lasts a long time. I would really like less expensive and expandable hardware, I'm just not sure that fits Apple's culture.
Time scales of traders and slashdotters.. (Score:5, Informative)
That's why the people with their own money on the line are buying up MSFT (stock went from $27 to $35 due to the last earnings report) instead of the air-headed armchair analysis that we see on here of 'lol my grandma ditched her PC and got an iPad so that means M$ is dying'.
The time constants of slashdotters discussing future of MSFT and the traders are vastly different. Slashdotter think 1 year is short term, 5 years is medium term and 10 years is long term. People buying MSFT @ 35 think 1 quarter as short term, 1 year as medium term and 3 years as long term. And the hedge fund honchos think 1 micro second as ultrashort term, 1 second as short term, and 1 minute as medium term and 1 hour as long term. And these hedge fund honchos will happily risk 1 trillion dollars for 1 micro second to pursue a possible profit of 25 dollars. And they will happily do it 1000 times a second. No wonder we are hosed.
Re:Server & Tools too... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yes they can (Score:4, Informative)
To be fair, iOS isn't "OSX" as Mac users know it on the desktop side of things either (you need the iOS emulator in Xcode to run an iOS app on a OSX environment).
Re:Parent has got it. (Score:5, Informative)
Think about it this way, Microsoft got started in the OS business by being an app provider whose apps a lot of people liked. They then leveraged that and the money to build an OS and then used the app business to build on their OS value. It was only later that the OS and the apps flipped in value, with the OS dominating everybody.
What the.... ?!@#$ parallel universe history are you talking about!??? Microsoft started as a language vendor (not typically considered an "app") selling BASIC, then got into the O/S business by buying QDOS and selling it at a ridiculous markup to IBM, who just wanted something quick for their (they though) ill-fated "personal computer".
They later used the profits from their DOS O/S to build "app"lications like Word to outcompete Word Perfect and Excel to outcompete Lotus 1-2-3. In the future, please take the time to have some clue what you are talking about before posting...
Re:Yes they can (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yes they can (Score:5, Informative)
There is no iPhone "emulator" for development. The "simulator" doesn't emulate ARM. It links your code to an x86 build of the iOS libraries.