I just read this article and checked to see if someone had submitted it.<p>I think shaking the death-rattle for Microsoft is a bit premature, but I find it interesting that at some point in a company's growth, making a truck-load of revenue every quarter isn't sufficient.<p>Microsoft has a wonderfully lucrative cash cow that allows them to not be successful at their other endeavors (with success for this argument being defined as a similar market share as their primary business).<p>It reminds me of the starving artist dilemma, as in, if you live a comfortable life without the danger of starving, are you as motivated to make it.<p>I flip flop about whether I believe in that argument, although at the risk of using a statistically insufficient sample size (my own personal experience), it would seem to be true.
<i>The “device” people saw in the video isn’t going to ship, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t learn a bunch and innovate a bunch in the process.</i><p>So if a Microsoft team innovates in the Redmond forest and no one ever sees a product...
"Well, tablet is an area that will evolve going forward. Certainly it’s a focus for what we’re doing in the Windows space, and how they’re thinking that space. We’re going to have a bunch of netbooks and tablet stuff that’s in the works there. We’ll just see how that evolves."<p>Isn't that a lovely and inspiring statement from a tech visionary? Don't you get all tingly just reading that? (Oops, sorry, thats the circulation in my legs going out again...)<p>Whats wrong with most tech execs is they are waiting for something to evolve, and then hoping to jump on the band wagon. In the mean time, they are reacting by running around in circles and trying to turn the crank on the old machine faster and faster. Oh, and let's reorganize a bit. Yeah, that'll do it...<p>Embarrassing.<p>Jobs meanwhile, love him or hate him, is _making_ the next generation tech, one piece at a time. And he's making it well. And he's making it closed and proprietary.<p>I really wish our choices weren't between openness/freedom and quality/innovation, but that's how it sits right now.
I think that Microsoft could become awesome if they'd just quit trying to be cool. They're very good at selling to enterprise customers, but they're terrible at marketing to consumers. It strikes me as odd that this reorganization is happening in the area where Microsoft has had the most success marketing to consumers. We are talking about the division that makes XBoxes correct?
Microsoft has some amazing enterprise products. Excel is absolutely amazing. Access is a great development tool for paperwork personnel. SQL Server is so so simple to get up and running, and scale up to tremendous volume.
>Over the last decade, Wall Street has declined to reward Microsoft for its superior profit. The explanation is simple: Professional investors don’t believe Ballmer, and they don’t see bigger profits in Microsoft’s future.<p>This seems to suggest Wall Street has been wrong about Microsoft for the past decade.<p>Likewise, I started seriously worrying about - and predicting - a housing bubble-based recession in 2004. [1] I was wrong about it every year between 2004 and 2009.<p>[1] <a href="http://www3.sympatico.ca/taylormcgreal/thecomingcrash.html" rel="nofollow">http://www3.sympatico.ca/taylormcgreal/thecomingcrash.html</a>
My guess: in 5-10 years Microsoft will be a service company.<p>We've seen this movie before and it's not just Microsoft that's shape shifting. Google is becoming the new Microsoft, Microsoft is becoming the new IBM, Facebook is becoming the new Google. Twitter is becoming the new Facebook.<p>EDIT: why downvoted? Would it be so strange if Microsoft followed its former arch enemy IBMs footsteps?
With regard to microsoft I think these days that Project Natal is going to be huge.<p>If they play their patent cards right then that might very well push them back to the top of the list.