Microsoft's Bad Bet

Microsoft bet the company on an operating system that had a market share under 5%.  Why would they do such a thing?  Because the bloggers told them to.  But did they listen to what they wanted to hear or did they truly believe this was finally the time to change the paradigm of Windows that had been basically the same since 1995?

When Windows Phone 7 came out with the now defunct Metro monicker, the blogs went crazy.  "Microsoft has out designed Apple," they cried.  Microsoft was riding high in the blogs and with the tech pundits, probably a first for them.  So can you blame them for being so excited?  We are finally cooler than Apple, lets run with this!  Time to change Windows.

The blog was going crazy because it was different.  It had its own voice.  The tech pundits had been waiting for something new.  Android, WebOS and Blackberry OS's had done little but copy the spirit of iOS, yet here were these tiles that had live data, so different.

But there was just one problem.  Consumers weren't jumping to the new platform.  Even though Microsoft was spending millions of dollars to advertise the new platform, customers didn't have a connection with the platform.  They had a high defection rate compared with iOS and even Android and even though they dominated the enterprise, Windows Phone had little to no penetration in this cash cow segment.  

So it shouldn't be a surprise that Microsoft is now backpedalling on its Metro bet.  The next version of Windows is going to launch into the old desktop of Windows 7 by default, which relegates Metro as no more than the dashboards section of OSX.  So Microsoft will have to figure out their next steps.  Are they going to fork the OS's and create a true tablet OS (like they did with RT) or are they going to try and make their all in one solution with Windows 7 being the default?  I would say they need to brush off RT and make the phone and tablet more compatible, similar to iOS,    

Windows 8 and the Cost of Complexity

The WSJ – and prevailing wisdom – blames two factors for the decline of PCs: PCs have become “good enough,” lengthening the replacement cycle, and more and more time is being spent on tablets and other appliance-like devices.

However, I don’t think these factors are independent; it’s not just that tablets occupy more of a user’s time, but that by doing so they make any performance issues on one’s PC less pressing simply because you use it less. To put it another way, users are likely to have a higher standard for their primary computing device than they are a secondary one; as PCs become secondary devices for more and more people the standard for “good enough” becomes lower and lower.

Ben Thompson has been on a kick as of late talking about his Chromebook, but I believe he hits the nail on the head with the title of the article.  However I have to disagree with his statements above.  I don't believe it's that PC's are good enough because they are now secondary devices, I believe most people were using their computers to do things that are better served in the tablet form-factor.  

People have been using computers to do email, browse the web, go to Facebook.  Most people who owned computers were not using them up to their full capabilities and didn't need all the complexity that is inherent in a PC Operating System, Mac or Windows.  Most people just want to be able to do a few things on a computer and it has to be very easy.  While I am very computer literate, I love my iPad because it is totally simple.  I enjoy the simplicity because I just don't have the time to tinker.  So the iPad model solves problems for all levels of users.  

The downturn in the PC industry is simply because a technology (product) came out that made it easier to do what users wanted to do.  If the iPad was more complex (like Android or a Chromebook), we would not have seen this downturn in PC sales.