No, they will not recover.<p>Microsoft's fate is tied very tightly to the personal computer, and that type of computing is coming to end. Microsoft knows they're in very serious trouble and they're not pumping billions of dollars into Bing, Azure, Skype and Windows Phone for the hell of it. They're doing it so that the company will still be around (in its current form) 10 years from now.<p>But Microsoft has already lost the mindshare of developers. That's what really matters. Developers are moving en-masse to mobile and cloud computing and leaving Microsoft's platforms behind. And if they aren't using Microsoft technologies to write software, then nobody is writing software for personal computers, which means every way that Microsoft currently making money is a shrinking market.<p>Microsoft can still make money in a shrinking PC market the same way Phillip Morris makes profit as the last big tobacco company. And I think they may have no choice but to accept that fate.
Turnaround? Their revenue in 2000 was 23 billion and in 2010 it was 62 billion. They doubled their earnings over the decade. The commonly penned idea in the press that MSFT sucks and Ballmer needs to be ousted is horse crap.
They've had the Xbox, a successful image of cool for nearly a decade and it hasn't helped the rest of the business. They spent half a billion advertising some version of windows mobile (which was it? I never saw the adverts), another half billion on corny windows 7 adverts (which get worse and worse) that was pointless because anyone who didn't want mac would automatically get windows 7.<p>Some might say it's a turnaround soon purely because Balmer will get fired soon. There's no chance he'll get replaced by someone un-safe, un-boring.
Weird as it may seem, but Microsoft's change in focus from native code development to the .Net platform with all the associated hype, has been the single most important reason why they were left behind in the technology race.
And, I am sure this realization is dawning on them. :)
With all the focus these days on mobile, I think the product to keep them current is WP7. However, they don't seem to be pushing it as a real alternative to iOS or Android. And it's really a shame, it's a great bit of software. Without a big marketing push, though, it's unlikely to become a viable alternative.
No. Not as long as they embrace homegrown, proprietary technologies as opposed to widely-adopted (ala WebKit) or open standards. Interoperability is still their Achille's Tendon.