Why Microsoft Is Being Left in the Dust

Alex Goldfayn’s new book is called Evangelist Marketing: What Apple Amazon and Netflix Understand About Their Customers (That Your Company Probably Doesn’t). He is CEO of the Evangelist Marketing Institute, a marketing consultancy with clients that include T-Mobile, TiVo, and Logitech. Follow him @alexgoldfayn.
There are now a number of companies — Apple, Google, Amazon, and others — that have Microsoft in their rear-view mirrors, disappearing quickly on the horizon in a cloud of dust.
That kick of dust in the company’s face is being emitted by Apple’s iPhone and iPad, Amazon’s Kindle, and Google’s search and cloud domination. Microsoft’s own wild lunges into various technology segments are also contributing considerably to it being left behind. Take the company’s recent partnership with Barnes & Noble, where it took 18% of the Nook e-reader for $605 million in cash and future guarantees. This was a move to compete with Amazon, but can it really compete?
If you want to know why Microsoft’s share price has been flat for 11 years while Apple, Amazon, and Google shares have soared, this is why. Microsoft is not innovating aggressively. It is not leading categories or blazing trails. No, it’s acquiring aggressively as a shortcut to innovation. That isn’t working. Its own history suggests as much.

---

Microsoft Has Not Capitalized on its Partnerships and Acquisitions

---

Last year, Microsoft announced a broad strategic partnership with Nokia, presumably to use Windows operating systems and software on Nokia’s smartphones. This was 15 months ago. But last week, a report found that Apple and Samsung generated 99 percent of the profits in the mobile phone category. Nokia, which once enjoyed more than half of all mobile phone profits, made zero.
In 2009, Microsoft acquired a 10-year license to use Yahoo’s core search technology, which later became the Bing search engine. Today, Google’s search market share is a dominant 66%, with Microsoft’s Bing a very distant second at 15%. After spending billions building and marketing Bing, Microsoft is barely visible in Google’s rear-view mirror.
Finally, what of Microsoft’s Skype acquisition a year ago? It’s too early to tell, but here’s a fact worth noting: The Wall Street Journal reports that 85% of Microsoft’s revenue comes from Windows and Office software. The rest of it? Barely a blip.
And so, Microsoft is proving, like many have before it, that acquiring companies outside your core competencies are recipes for failure. Remember when Cisco purchased the Flip video camera, at the time one of the most popular consumer electronics products on the planet? How did that work out? In 2010, HP bought Palm for $1.2 billion, but we haven’t seen any industry-altering smartphones from HP.
Conversely, consider Apple’s acquisition of Siri: a technology that immediately and profoundly complimented and enhanced its iPhone. It fit obviously and very successfully.

---

Microsoft Does Not Need to Compete with Amazon

---

Another major problem with Microsoft’s partnership involving the Nook is that there is simply no need for it to compete with Amazon. This is like Best Buy focusing all of its efforts on its ecommerce site while neglecting its one major competitive advantage: its brick-and-mortar stores. This is also like Research in Motion spending a year building its atrociously received tablet, the PlayBook, while neglecting its core competency of Blackberry smartphones.
Microsoft dominates the competition in computer operating systems and software. Computers are dying, right? And yet, in May 2012, there is no Microsoft Office for tablets and smartphones. Millions of iPads and Android tablets are being adopted in corporate environments, and most of those customers would be happy to spend $70 on Microsoft Office for each device. Except, it does not exist.
I can only guess why: because with its many categories, acquisitions and partnerships, Microsoft is physically incapable of putting its full focus behind converting its desktop products to mobile devices.

---

Microsoft is Going Wide, Not Deep

---

Which brings me to the third and final big problem with Microsoft’s Nook play. It is keeping with the strategy of going as wide as possible. Microsoft is not, and cannot be, all things to all people. In fact, no company can.
Here’s the truth: The wider you go, the more priorities you focus on, the less chance you have to be successful. But when you go deep, you can dominate. (See Apple, and Amazon.) When you go deep, you can continue perfecting. You become the world’s expert on a certain specialty. Apple is seen as the world’s expert on smartphones and tablets. Amazon is the accepted leader in online shopping and electronic reading. It’s because these two companies relentlessly focus on their strengths, saying no to nearly everything else. No. That’s a word Microsoft should consider trying out before it gets left in the dust permanently.

12:05 by Robert dawne · 1

How to Get the Windows 8 Consumer Preview Right Now

Microsoft just launched the consumer preview of Windows 8. That means anyone who wants to check out the latest version of Microsoft’s new operating system — unveiled on Wednesday at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona — can download it right now and start scrolling through Metro apps in all of their tiled glory.
How can you get this groundbreaking piece of pre-release software? Just head on over to Microsoft’s site and download. Microsoft has said repeatedly that Windows 8 would run on any machine that can run Windows 7, so theoretically you should be able to install it on your Win7 PC with no problems (of course, be sure to back up all your stuff thoroughly).
Be warned, though: this is pre-release “beta” software — not ready for prime time yet. As we found in our detailed look at the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, the OS still has many bugs, and some of the functionality isn’t fully baked. Most notably on the “under construction” list: OS-level sharing, which right now can only be done with the Mail app.

However, for those bold enough, using Windows 8 on a touchscreen device or with a traditional mouse and keyboard is a fascinating experience. Many Metro apps, with their full-screen nature, look gorgeous, and Microsoft has built bridges into the OS for connecting with services such as Facebook and Flickr. Of course, the traditional desktop is always just a click or two away.
When will you be able to get the final version of Windows 8? Not till this fall, when Microsoft is expected to release it to the public — along with an nearly identical version of Windows for low-power ARM devices and a big update to Windows Phone that’ll bring it more in line with Windows 8.
Until then, you’ve got this to play with. What do you think of Windows 8? Have your say in the comments, and watch for our Open Thread post later today.

Windows 8 Consumer Preview: An Overview

Start Menu

Here's what greets you every time you log into your Windows 8 machine. Yes, the tiles are customizable, though it's a little unwieldy in practice.

 

Sharing in Metro

Sharing is arguably Metro's most powerful feature. Although the sharing option is only populated with Mail right now, once Windows 8 apps get going, you'll see options here like Facebook, Twitter and all the rest -- in every app.

 

 

Finance Metro App

Many apps, like the native Finance app, look beautiful in Metro.

 

Traditional Desktop

You can still get back to the familiar desktop anytime you want in Windows 8. Note the absence of a Start button, which you get to by mousing into the lower-left corner.

 

Bing Maps

Bing Maps, like all Metro apps, makes use of the entire screen. Right-clicking brings up options.

 

Multitasking Menu

You can see which apps are running by pointing your mouse to one of the left corners and then moving it alongside. Right-clicking an app lets you stop it.

 

Action Menu

The side action menu slides out via the side and is the same no matter what app you're in.

 

11:35 by Robert dawne · 0

Will Windows Phone 8 Launch Microsoft Back In the Game?

I think we can all agree to the fact that Microsoft has rushed its new Windows Phone 7 mobile platform to the market in the last quarter of 2010. The initial iteration was lacking some basic features — not only present on competing platforms but imperative to the user experience — some of which were later addressed by the NoDo and then the Mango update.
There were several voices (not only) on the Internet that criticized Microsoft and its Windows Phone 7 platform because of several reasons including, but not limited to, the low number of apps in the Marketplace, the lack of copy and paste operations, missing video calling options, but mainly because we never got the chance to see official numbers representing sales of Windows Phones. The marketplace is growing fast (and now, at the time of this editorial, it already has close to 70,000 titles), the NoDo update brought copy and paste functionality, Mango and some wave-two devices added video calling and Nokia’s recent financial report talks about over one million devices sold from the end of October until the end of January (but still no global numbers).

Windows Phone 7 is still well below a two-digit OS market share, increasing ever so slowly but steadily (and even decreasing recently); however, Apple’s iOS at 43% and Google’s Android at 47% seem very far away. So, will a platform refresh like Windows 8 put Microsoft back in the game (for real this time)?
After seeing details of the upcoming OS refresh codenamed Apollo we can all agree that it will be as big of an update as Windows Phone 7 was when it replaced Windows phone 6.5. Not only will it be a new mobile platform but it will very well blend in with Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system for PCs, slates and convertibles.
The lack of support for removable storage was probably one of the most criticized Microsoft moves with regards to Windows Phone 7. Users wanted to be able to manually sync all sorts of documents while Microsoft considered it was best to sync music, videos and pictures via the Zune software. Additionally, a huge part of the user base (or future possible users that refrained from going Windows Phone 7) was complaining about the limited internal storage space on devices. Eight gigabytes were not enough and 16GB were still too little to accommodate huge multimedia libraries for some users.
Windows Phone 8 will bring back removable storage. What does this mean? You will most probably be able to expand your storage with a microSD card to a yet undisclosed total storage supported by the platform. Not only that but you will probably be able to use your phone as mass storage and sync all sorts of documents.
While Windows Phone 7 users were quite happy with the way the OS performed on single-core CPUs clocking anywhere between 1GHz and 1.5GHz – because of the way the platform was built to be fluid – their friends using Apple’s iPhone and Android were rocking dual-cores (and soon quad-cores). Now that Microsoft is preparing dual-core support for Windows 8, people using other platforms are already criticizing Windows Phone users; we need to get one thing straight: Windows Phone 8 will be a completely new OS and experience. It’s not Windows Phone 7 that needs dual-core; it’s Windows Phone 8 that will support dual-core. And, looking at the current Windows platform (and how well it is optimized) chances are Windows Phone 8 will be buttery-smooth with its new chip support for which it will be specially built.
Four screen resolutions are rumored. We currently have WVGA but Windows Phone 7 Tango was rumored to lower the bar to HVGA (a resolution that was mentioned in the very early stages of Windows Phone 7). What could be the other two screen resolutions? Well, qHD and 720p seem valid candidates. Let’s take a look at those: HVGA (320×480) with aspect ratio of 1.5; WVGA (480×800) with aspect ratio of 1.6; qHD (540×960) with aspect ratio of 1.7; 720p/HD (720×1280) with aspect ratio of 1.7.
We can already see the diversity in hardware but on the other hand we can already hear the critics call out fragmentation. While we could easily brush that off with Eric Schmidt’s argument about “device differentiation” we’ll just say that anyone who used Windows Phone and its Metro user interface knows how scalable it could be.
We’ve seen that on the hardware side, Microsoft seems to listen to the community feedback: adding the option for external memory, higher screen resolutions (and probably lower ones for budget phones) and just as much horsepower as it is needed to deliver a fluid user experience (and maximize battery life). Hardware-wise, Windows Phone 8 will be right there and fans will definitely continue to defend it against the competition which will by then probably need and support quad-core processors.
On the software side Microsoft seems to plan on seriously pushing the concept of “Windows reimagined”. In a somewhat similar way to Google and its Ice Cream Sandwich OS (which is a unifying one for smartphones and tablets) Windows Phone 8 will do much more. It will be part of the Windows 8 family for PCs, slates and convertibles. It will not only lend its looks to Windows 8 but it will use many components from the PC OS; developers will be able to “reuse — by far — most of their code” and port applications from the desktop to the phone, as Joe Belfiore said. The Marketplace will see an impressive growth giving users plenty of choices. And with native code, apps will be easily portable among platforms like iOS, Android and Windows Phone.
Skype, now part of Microsoft, will have deep integration with the OS; you’ll have the same experience when answering a Skype call like the one you currently have when picking up a normal phone call. In addition, native BitLocker encryption as well as business apps (with the ability for corporations to deploy and manage) will definitely push Windows Phone 8 in the business and corporate segment.
It looks like great things are coming to Windows Phone 8 software-wise too. If Microsoft can couple all of these with an improved cloud and online experience they might have a winner. The company appears to have targeted the average user with its Windows Phone 7 platform; this saw many of its old Windows Mobile users (mainly the power users, hackers, tweakers, etc.) go Android. Sharing features like the kernel, networking stacks, security, and multimedia support with Windows 8, Microsoft can crack the ice once again for its new platform; whether it will become what Windows Mobile and Windows phone was back in the day is anyone’s guess.
Let’s not forget about Android Ice Cream Sandwich (and the probably upcoming letter “J”-named refresh); we should not forget about Apple’s iOS and the upcoming iterations. The competition never sleeps. However, those who are tired of seeing a grid of icons, those who want better battery life, seamless PC-tablet-phone integration, a fluid experience, shared apps, and so on will probably consider Windows Phone 8. Microsoft won’t turn die-hard iOS and Android fans but they can gain back some of the users lost in favor of the competition once Windows Phone 7 hit the market (and that’s a solid starting point).

This article originally published at Pocketnow here.

15:11 by Robert dawne · 0