CNN Money: Microsoft is a Dying Consumer Brand

I firmly believe that most of Microsoft's failings in the consumer market come from their fear of the World Wide Web. Microsoft does everything they can to hide their users from the real power of the web, since everyone - including Microsoft - knows that a ubiquitous Web means fewer sales of Windows and Office.<p>Their logic in locking users to Windows-based experiences is old, tired, and not going to work anymore. People like the Web. And right now, you can't have a modern Web experience using only Microsoft products: no HTML5, slow JavaScript and a terrible, terrible browser experience.<p>If Microsoft wants to become relevant again, they <i>must</i> give their users the best experience on the Web they can.<p>Also, note that Windows Phone 7 ships with a modified IE7: what garbage is this? The phone will fail because it will suck at the Web.

As one of the largest software developers on the planet, MS has access to more cool stuff than anyone can imagine. With all that cash, I'm sure it comes across they're radar all the time -- and they do make purchases and investments.<p>The problem is the minute they implement new technology it gets some committee-driven marketing name that's so completely disconnected from what it does that it takes million$ to explain what should be obvious from the name.<p>Examples: IIS, COM, COM+, Visual Studio, .Net, BizTalk, SharePoint, MultiPoint, Windows Live, SilverLight, Zune, Bing, and now the latest -- Windows Phone 7 (dyslexic a fully name).

"Microsoft's attempts to build a social network through Windows Live have failed to gain traction. It has no real answer to Facebook. "<p>I take issue with this. Pretty much no one has a 'real' answer to Facebook. In fact, Microsoft didn't even really try. And whatever they did try, they actually gave up on. As I remember, when explaining the Facebook integration into the newest Windows Live "nobody wants another facebook".<p>It would simply be absurd to expect MS to "fight" FB. Waste of time and money like the rest of the activities that the article seems to be criticizing.

Since Bill Gates left his posts, Microsoft is being run by bean counters and has no real tech leader to lean on; not one with enough power to tell the bean counters -Balmer- to back off -- that was Bill Gates, and he was good at it.<p>As long as that continues, there will be issues.

Saying "Microsoft is a Dying Consumer Brand" is somewhat analogous to saying "Mitsubishi is a Dying Consumer Brand."<p>Though the structures are different, consumer products are only a part of their portfolio. Both have successful industrial lines, and both have flagship consumer lines that often draw flack. Importantly, both own highly successful consumer brands e.g Xbox and Nikon, respectively.<p>What the article misses is that Microsoft has an asset that it's competitors often don't: trust. Because of their B2B orientation, being trustworthy is a necessary strategy...that's not to say they don't make mistakes, but by and large they support they support their customers well beyond the typical three year upgrade cycle companies such as Apple enforce. Companies like Google and Facebook change their products in ways that are in conflict with the user's interests even more regularly.

The author of the Gervais Principle blog posts did a nice job of comparing Apple's marketing culture (we have the best stuff, come get it) against Microsoft's sales culture (personalized, i.e. Windows 7 was my idea). Thinking about it though, Microsoft has completely failed to connect with any customer persona despite their baffling product segmentation, other than personal vs professional which Apple is soon copying. Okay Microsoft, Windows 7 contains an everyman's idea, I'm genuinely interested, what is it? Not going to say? Vapid and inauthentic. Okay Microsoft, you're going to hack my attention with puppies and irrestibably cute things? Great PR stunt, but you failed to make any kind of impression about the quality of your goods. Now we get these ridiculous Windows Mobile 7 commercials.. once again, trying to sell to you at an individual level by appealing to your phone addiction problem. Decreased ease of use is a benefit? Well, I want the phone designed by someone who wants to use a well designed phone, not by someone who has to have a differentiated design for marketing reasons. Sell me that.

I hope Microsoft keeps doing exactly what they're doing. Microsoft's bad reputation is very much deserved. The web, and the world, is going to be a lot better off without this company.<p>Windows, MS Office, and Internet Explorer are examples of what happens when Microsoft wins markets. They let their products languish, make no improvements whatsoever in decade, while repainting the exterior and reselling it over and over again. Consumers have wised up, businesses are just slower to recognize when they're getting the raw end of a deal.

Microsoft can afford to fail many times before succeeding. It beat Lotus Notes, Borland C Compilers, Playstation, people continue to pay for Windows even though Linux is free. You don't measure what's going to happen in the future by taking a tiny slice of the present and projecting forwards.

I get the impression that Microsoft themselves are downplaying the `Microsoft' brand, in favour of market/product-specific brands: Windows, Office, Bing, XBox, etc.

I tend top agree...xbox excepted. I think Microsoft has worked very hard to get their platforms and tools into the enterprise space....and it has largely worked for them and been very successful. Has this been at the expense of a "consumer story"...maybe.<p>With that said, they can still be a very successful and growth oriented company but in the B2B/Enterprise space.

MS has some of the best engineering team in the world.<p>But MS does not have leadership with courage. That is the problem.

This article is overblown at best. Microsoft's core operating system and office suites remain absolutely dominant even if competitors are rising.<p>While Nintendo Wii certainly moves more units than the xbox, the xbox remains a successful competitive system with interesting innovations that largely focused on a different segment than the Wii did. While Microsoft is way behind in the phone segment, it is a bit premature to declare Windows Phone 7 a failure in the consumer market.<p>What this is showing is not so much that Microsoft is dying but that because other competitors are rising it is no longer the absolutely dominating force it used to be. This in itself is significant, but a far cry from dying.

I would actually argue that Microsoft has actually become a more consumer-oriented company over time. Xbox was only released 9 years ago and the Zune was only released 4 years ago. Prior to that, what was Microsoft's consumer focus? Their primary products, Windows and Office, have traditionally focused on selling to businesses (OEMs, VARs, etc). The majority of consumers do not go out and purchase Windows directly -- it is included on their computer.

The place where I start to get leery is when Microsoft take a product like Live Messenger, which had <i>finally</i> become a near-perfect product, and bloat it into a dreadful "social media" whizbang media applet interface aeroplane control panel. I later found out (after copious reinstallations and attempts at finding an earlier version at oldversions.com) that there's a tiny icon, of which the chance to find is several orders of magnitude smaller than that of the Higgs boson - that restores the bloated piece of crap to a an actual IM-only client.<p>Of course, Microsoft also made the effort of cramming in more awful toolbars (that can't be removed) and replacing all the emoticons with a new suite of something even worse than what you would expect to find in a ten-year-old version of ICQ.<p>This may sound silly, but <i>all</i> chat clients on- and offline have <i>dreadful</i> emoticons; emoticons are meant to disambiguate and diffuse in favour of the sender and represent their mood and tone. <i>That is their purpose.</i> It really makes interaction with friends and acquaintances much easier and joyous. There's a limit to how you can stand out from other IM clients, and this is perhaps the biggest yard stick.<p>Live Messenger had the best (the only good) set of emoticons, and now Windows have thrown it all away while bloating the client even more.<p>I am fine with them throwing billions at something that may or may not work, but why the hell are they destroying their biggest brand products in this futile attempt to becoming relevant and cool?<p>I shudder at the thought at what Windows 8 will be like. Will they implement Clippy in the terminal to compete with Mac OS?

CNN nails it again. Next up: Year of the Linux Desktop.

Was Microsoft ever such a big brand?<p>Google is, Apple is, Dell is, but with Microsoft it is more like many Brands: Windows, XBox, Zune.. I think the main things that people immediately associate with the actual word "Microsoft" might be mice and keyboards.<p>But, (at least in my perception) they are slowly beginning to address the problem of decreasing user numbers. See their marketing at "Colbert Report" and, recently, the How I Met Your Mother episode "Subway Wars", that was full of Bing and Windows product placement. Again, not promoting the Brand "Microsoft" directly, but rather its products. The shiny logo stands for Windows, while in Apple's case the logo refers to a whole company.

Why IBM, Cisco, Intel are not rolling out smart phones?

The article inadvertently hints at the reason why Microsoft is failing. It mentions all of the markets where they lost to competitors. Perhaps they lost in all of these markets because they didn't focus on dominating a single market like the competitors that they lost to did.<p>Apple: Mobile Devices<p>Nintendo: Platform Gaming<p>Facebook: Social Networking<p>Google: Search<p>...