Posted: Sun Aug 01, 2004 10:57 pm
M$ is so big now, I mean they claim Windows is the OS for 96% of desktops (or some similar incredible figure).
With figures like that, there isn't much chance they will be able to increase their sales figures. PC's also seem to have been stuck in the 3Ghz barrier for some time, and they probably won't go much further before the next great computer shift to the 64bit world.
The majority of M$ OS sales are captive, you buy a PC and Windows whatever is already installed, users after that might upgrade their OS, but rarely by buying an OS (if not you wouldn't see those same old copies of win98 sitting around software sellers) In principle this shouldn't realy worry M$, as long as lots of PC's are sold each year, and to make sure people upgrade you just write bloated software that will only run on next years PC's.
Evidently the theoretical limit for computers progression hasn't been reached, except that some are beginning to wonder if the do need such fast beasts, just to type letters, use a spredsheet and other typical uses of a PC in a bussines. Why have to change perfectly good hardware and pay a whole lot of new licences (corporations unlike home users DO have to pay everytime they upgrade)? The idea is catching on, and will snowball.
M$ knows this perfectly well, and they are rightly worried. Not only they have more trouble growing like before (difficult once you own more than 90% of the market) They are actualy in danger of loosing there share of the big/medium bussines market, and this could very easily lead to loosing the small bussines market. It is true that the big/medium bussineses were mostly UNIX but UNIX was too expensive for small bussines, now with Linux this whole thing could rapidly change.
Of course a company that grows slowly or not fast enough will have trouble getting money from shareholders, and right now M$ needs lots of money, they are having trouble it seems with their next OS. WinXP is nothing but a big headache full of security issues and on top of all they seem to be loosing the 64bit migration battle.
Now, are the people at the top of M$ aware of this? Yes of course it's easy to see by their coments and reactions that they are well aware of this. Are they using the right strategy? Well in my opinion they aren't, they are trying to win it all, instead of adapting and concentrating on the areas they could easily win. Not strange, big dinosaurs have trouble adapting to changes. Of course meanwhile they are pissing of many of their faithfull customers and more and more users are unhappy with M$ products.
What will happen? Only the future can tell.
With figures like that, there isn't much chance they will be able to increase their sales figures. PC's also seem to have been stuck in the 3Ghz barrier for some time, and they probably won't go much further before the next great computer shift to the 64bit world.
The majority of M$ OS sales are captive, you buy a PC and Windows whatever is already installed, users after that might upgrade their OS, but rarely by buying an OS (if not you wouldn't see those same old copies of win98 sitting around software sellers) In principle this shouldn't realy worry M$, as long as lots of PC's are sold each year, and to make sure people upgrade you just write bloated software that will only run on next years PC's.
Evidently the theoretical limit for computers progression hasn't been reached, except that some are beginning to wonder if the do need such fast beasts, just to type letters, use a spredsheet and other typical uses of a PC in a bussines. Why have to change perfectly good hardware and pay a whole lot of new licences (corporations unlike home users DO have to pay everytime they upgrade)? The idea is catching on, and will snowball.
M$ knows this perfectly well, and they are rightly worried. Not only they have more trouble growing like before (difficult once you own more than 90% of the market) They are actualy in danger of loosing there share of the big/medium bussines market, and this could very easily lead to loosing the small bussines market. It is true that the big/medium bussineses were mostly UNIX but UNIX was too expensive for small bussines, now with Linux this whole thing could rapidly change.
Of course a company that grows slowly or not fast enough will have trouble getting money from shareholders, and right now M$ needs lots of money, they are having trouble it seems with their next OS. WinXP is nothing but a big headache full of security issues and on top of all they seem to be loosing the 64bit migration battle.
Now, are the people at the top of M$ aware of this? Yes of course it's easy to see by their coments and reactions that they are well aware of this. Are they using the right strategy? Well in my opinion they aren't, they are trying to win it all, instead of adapting and concentrating on the areas they could easily win. Not strange, big dinosaurs have trouble adapting to changes. Of course meanwhile they are pissing of many of their faithfull customers and more and more users are unhappy with M$ products.
What will happen? Only the future can tell.
) but i can even live with that... but 'sneaking in' additional copy protection mechanisms under the misnomer of 'improved functionality' goes one step too far, especially when screwing up by releasing a wrong version first (which they did, grrr)
)
Advocate.
I wish macromedia had never gone activeX for their windows doofie.
