Steve Ballmer's Nightmare is Coming True

"1. The iPad eats the consumer PC market.<p>This is happening right now. In the third quarter of 2012, PC sales were down 8 percent on a year-over-year basis worldwide. In the U.S., sales were down 14 percent. A big chunk of the decline can be attributed to the rise of the iPad."<p>Or just that PC speeds have reached a plateau, and common desktop applications no longer need the latest hardware. The continuous upgrade cycle is slowing. I think that speaks for the 8% on its own.<p>On second glance, this whole article is borderline troll bait.

"If this happened and then these other ten things happened and if for some reason people stopped buying office (but they aren't) and some folks did some other things (that there is no evidence of happening) then MS is doomed!"<p>Look, I'm as bearish on MS as they come (I think Microsoft's cultural and technical dominance of the personal computer is at and end) but this is a whole lot of crap in an article.<p>I think Microsoft as being the "only" choice for personal computing is over, which is a net positive. But there are still tons of businesses (the people that really pay Microsoft gobs of money) that are not switching off of Microsoft any time soon. I think Google will nibble off a bit of Microsoft's services for the small and medium business (who needs Exchange any more unless you have strict auditing requirements, which most SMB's don't) and Apple will make inroads, but iPads won't be replacing shitty $500 Dells any time soon (although I know IT departments would love virus-free completely locked down computers; it's been their "Holy Grail" forever).<p>MSFT has seen declining Windows revenue as a proportion of the total for a while and will still have rev in the many tens of billions if even half of MSFT's consumer market disappears.<p>I don't think MSFT will ever go out of business. It'll just be smaller and a lot less relevant.

#4: loyal devs start to leave: they don't even cover half of it. What about all the game companies literally angry about windows store like valve who is leading the steam on linux charge? Or the unity game engine? Or Notch? Big names in windows game dev who have been very windows loyal are angry and investing heavily in new platforms. And they made this happen.

MS aren't about to disappear anytime soon but MS are no longer capable of dominating markets the way they used to. They are in decline at least in relative terms and I don't see any likelihood of that changing any time soon.<p>The Windows market is going to get nibbled (not gobbled - at least short term) from tablets in the consumer market and the corporate market is going to be increasingly web based for internal systems which over time will loosen the Windows grip there.<p>Exchange, Sharepoint, SQL Server can all remain major revenue drivers in the corporate world, they won't go anywhere quickly and they may even grow (I don't know the market well enough). IBM makes enough money in these markets.<p>Office is the big elephant, Excel is the tool for massive amounts of forecasting and modelling. Many people don't need the power and have alternatives but many do. PowerPoint strikes me as replaceable, most content created with it has a short lifespan. Word is replaceable for individual users but the network effect of people using it and exchanging files gives it hold.<p>Overall I think MS has a good decade or two of good profits if it wants to take them but the glory days are done.

Funny, I just wrote long winded post precisely on this topic:<p><a href="http://www.techdisruptive.com/2012/12/03/dear-microsoft-let-me-show-you-how-to-sell-your-surface-tablet/" rel="nofollow">http://www.techdisruptive.com/2012/12/03/dear-microsoft-let-...</a><p>I actually don't think the MS nightmare is all that bad. I'm still seeing a lot of organizations try to move to Google Apps and then moving back to MS products because the lack of features and native functionality (Outlook is a big one). Even though I'm a heavy Apple user, I'm slightly rooting for MSFT.

The iPad eats the consumer PC market?<p>Oh please, please stop this BS. The iPad sales are shooting up, true. The PC sales are going down, maybe true. But that could be due to several reasons - Maybe consumers are just 'upgrading' (like RAM, HDD, etc.) their existing PC's, or maybe existing PC owners don't want to even upgrade their PC at all because it's still working fine, there just could be a lot of reasons.<p>The statement that just the iPad alone eats the PC market is like saying, KFC is killing Ford's sales because it sells more chicken. Makes no sense, does it? Exactly, that's what the iPad vs PC comparison looks like too.<p>NO consumer would want to replace a PC with an iPad because there is a LOT of utility attached with a PC that it would be a blunder to replace it with a tablet like an iPad.

I had some activity using gmail and hotmail. Microsoft revealed my IP address. Neither Yahoo nor Gmail reveals IP addresses. Now I'm in court for bullshit. This happened in a non US country. Now, do you think that I'll use any of their products anymore? I've closed all my Microsoft related accounts and I've promised myself never to use their products. I am going to make an open source application for <a href="https://tent.io/" rel="nofollow">https://tent.io/</a> just because Microsoft has shares in Facebook. Fuck them. Microsoft, go to Hell!

Microsoft has 50 billion in cash. They need to buy their way back. Video platform: buy Netflix and Hulu. Music: buy Pandora, Spotify, and eMusic. Cellphones: start shipping the Mozilla phone platform on Microsoft hardware. Social: add social features to Skype and integrate it into aforementioned products, and buy MySpace on the cheap and integrate it.<p>Edit: I'm not saying I want this. As a user of all of these services (except MySpace) I like them the way they are. But if I were Microsoft CEO this is what I would do.

The majority of the doom-and-gloom seems to be predicated upon their unrealistic expectations from last year.<p>"Windows Phone will become a viable 3rd choice behind iPhone and Android"<p>Really? Did anyone actually expect a product that came to market so late, with no OEM buy-in, to be successful?<p>"Windows 8 will re-establish PC dominance"<p>MS has an established track record for releasing a hit version of Windows, then a flop, then a hit, etc. Windows 7 was a hit. It's hardly scientific, but most of the people I spoke with expected Win8 to flop simply based on that pattern.<p>MS is only in dire trouble in relation to the overly-optimistic predictions Y!F made last year. In reality, they're continuing to lose ground as they have been for years. Yes, Ballmer's leadership is still questionable, but it's hardly like they've had a terrible year. They're just continuing to slip and lose dominance.

Microsoft's nightmare is really just a great boost for everyone. There hasn't been l balance in computers for almost 20 years. Microsoft has a monopoly that needs to be broken. It will be good for everyone, including Microsoft. They'll still be widely profitable and they will probably be more innovative and competitive. Given Microsoft's 90% desktop market share and domination with Office, I can't see them falling below 50% anytime in the next decade. They really are that entrenched.

I feel that these recurring analysis of the OS wars are always ignoring the main factor influencing the markets for these software which is that closed ecosystems are getting less and less competitive with open ones as core OS functionality is maturing and being commoditized.<p>When you buy into a closed ecosystem, you buy a product that comes with a leash attached to your neck. Because of compatibility issues, you pay now and set yourself up to also pay more later. You agree to give a vendor near monopolistic powers over you in the future. You will have to continue buying from their ecosystem unless you are willing to lose access to all your apps and a lot of your media or buy them all again.<p>Microsoft does this, RIM does this and of course Apple is the worst offender. A lot of consumers do not want OSs that tie a leash around their necks.<p>Apple being first to achieve wide success in the market of phones with near desktop level computing power are able to maintain a big share of the market because of a large population already locked in its platform.<p>RIM and Microsoft's mobile OSs, judged on technical merits, are probably as good as Android and iOS. However, Android has the huge benefit of not locking users and developers with a particular hardware or software vendor.<p>I'm pretty sure that if Android was not a mostly open OS it would not have gained more traction than the others. I'm also pretty sure that if iOS was released as an open platform, there would be no significant competitors other than iOS forks. Google and its Android partners know this as does Amazon to a lesser extent (although they force DRM on a lot of their content including apps).<p>In the long run, the only conclusion to this war that makes sense is convergence toward competing Android forks that allow people to change vendors or coalitions of vendors without losing all compatibility with their accumulated apps and media. That is unless the others are willing to open their OSs and allow competing forks like Android does.

Not that it's going to stem the tide nor anything, but someone made a very interesting point of the significance the Surface Pro could have for the medical sector: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/143vgu/the_windows_8_sales_data_is_in_and_its_bad_news/c79qxlo" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/143vgu/the_windows_...</a>.<p>tl;dr: The medical sector is entrenched in ancient Windows-based software, but the backwards compatibility of Windows 8 will allow them to move from desktop computers to Surfaces (tablets, if you will).<p>Or maybe it might have some significance. I have no idea what the numbers are, but I assume a couple of the people here trying to disrupt the market could give us the low-down.

Honestly, my iPad is collecting cobwebs, along with lots of other friends' iPads. Maybe he has the fads backwards. After all, how many "employees" do real work on their iPads?<p>More disastrously for Microsoft, who needs a PC to make PowerPoints? Keynote will kill Microsoft.

Given the massive, dominant install base of Windows, you'd of hoped for a better result after the first tablet friendly version was released.<p>Particularly the slashed OS price, and bundling of the previous cash cow, Office, in RT.<p>Agree it might take time to catch on, but these days that doesn't seem to be a truth either. Windows Phone looked like a sure winner to me a year ago - or, atleast, more than its current 1%.<p>Things are moving fast, and people have broadened their minds in the past 3 years of iPad exposure.<p>What MS needed was a product that took the iPad by the horns. Either that or released its Surface "compromise" (which it certainly is) 2 years ago.

I don't know enough about the others, but point number 5 is too early to say I think. Windows phones have been decent for how long now, half a year or a year? After having a reputation of sub-sub-zero?<p>Those at school who have one are very positive about it now, so the market share in this may still grow a lot. I would not think for two seconds about Windows on my phone a few years ago, but I would consider a Windows phone right now because they got so much better.

Here interesting data point is that even as PC sales declined by 21%, the Mac sales have NOT increased by same margin. Reports says Mac sales grew only by 5% although these two rates are not comparable because later is % of Mac sales while former is % of PC sales which is much higher .<p>The reason people used to throw away their working PCs to buy new ones was newer better hardware and hyped up new OS releases. I think PC sales decline is greatly contributed by no new compelling hardware factor. The OS releases of course are less and less compelling because most tasks happens in browser which works fine even on old PCs. If IE was only game in town, people would perhaps still need to get new OS but that's not the case anymore.<p>I guess we are entering new era of PC/Mac refresh cycles were people are going to replace their machines only when it stops working instead of just because new release arrived. People would rather spend $500 on getting a tablet that they don't have than replacing their PC that is already working fine to check emails and browse the web.<p>Interesting thing here is that Wall street analysts would probably going to extrapolate this incorrectly instead of seeing that this is new "normal".

The best thing MSFT could do would be to release a fully compatible, fully functional Office suite for iPad, charge $49.95 and profit for the next several years.

Google's currently generation of Chromebooks are getting good reviews and appear to be quite viable as second computers.<p>I know that everything my wife does on her current laptop (running Ubuntu) she could do just as well on a Chromebook, so when her current laptop kicks the bucket, my first choice for a replacement would be a Chromebook, in which case it would be first laptop I've bought that does not have Windows pre-installed.

The article is a very big stretch. Just because companies are buying iPhones and iPads, does not mean that their workers are moving away from PCs. My employer has issued iOS devices to a lot of workers--but they all still have a PC on their desk too. And those mobile devices all tie back into the corporate Exchange server and Active Directory.

This is such a nonsense article. But within it there is grain of truth albeit very small.<p>Taking my circle, several of my family have migrated to iPad or android tablets from PC/laptop setups and are not looking back because iPad fulfills all there computing needs. For me, my laptop recently passed away so I bought a nexus 7 to replace it, and you know what its brilliant for me. I do obviously still have a development PC, but for personal use its tablet all the way. So I think desktops and PC sales will suffer loss long term in the consumer market. So Microsoft do need a good product here, and they have a lot of catch up to do, but they have done it before!<p>The security blanket for Microsoft remains new innovation enterprise, business and maybe cloud. I think they have a long way to go to win back the consumer space.

This is incredibly sensationalist. iPads are great for the run of the mill soccer mom, but anyone who wants to get any real work done needs a personal computer(Mac or Windows, trying to be unbiased in this regard). Microsoft Office isn't going anywhere, and I don't think anyone expected the 1st generation of Surface to succeed. Windows 8 is a fine operating system primarily criticized by people who used it for a very short amount of time. The Surface Pro has not even been released yet, and Apple is slowly losing their knack for innovation. Let's not throw our stocks in the air and beg Apple to take our money yet. This article draws ridiculous conclusions on shaky data and successfully draws the attention of those looking for Microsoft's downfall.

And the award for link-bait author of the year goes to....<p>Seriously though, I can't believe I actually just read this entire "article". There's no proof of anything, just a whole bunch of over-exaggerated claims. Does the author really think that people in offices are going to ditch computers entirely and type 15 page documents on a device that has glass so weak if you sneeze on it you risk cracking the screen? No USB ports, so means for connecting multiple external monitors, no CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive, no means of connecting an external drive, lack of internal space, no keyboard...<p>I feel sorry for any business that thinks it's a great idea to stop using PC's and instead opt for expensive tablets with a minimal feature set, investing in potentially tens of thousands of dollars in software and infrastructure to support an office of iPads is not feasible. You know why PC's are the number choice for most businesses, especially in the corporate sector? Because PC's are dirt cheap, cheap to build and upgrade, cheaper software, better support. I've had my Core i5 machine for ages now and I've been able to run games on the highest settings since I built it 2 or 3 years ago. RAM is cheap, new hard drives are cheap, every component of a computer except the CPU is cheap. You can't upgrade the internals of an iPad.<p>As for Office, even Google Docs and Zoho (amongst others) have failed to beat it. Microsoft Office isn't going anywhere for the foreseeable future and the very fact Microsoft have launched cloud versions of Office as well, it's definitely still in wide use and evolving. There are many people who still don't trust the cloud, I don't trust the cloud.<p>It was a nice try, but this is ridiculous. Windows 8 has been out for one month and the author is making extraordinary claims that it has failed to stop the iPad? Windows 8 is not about just capturing the tablet market, it's a great decision from Microsoft to streamline their operating system offering instead of having 15 different versions of an operating system there's only a couple.<p>Remember when journalism used to mean researching and spending sometimes weeks or months on one story? Me either. It's all become a race to get page views to increase ad revenues as evident by this article.

"Loyal developers start to leave the Microsoft platform."<p>I work with about 10 developers, not a single one has even mentioned trying Windows 8 or VS 2012. We all have our own MSDN licenses so it's not a money issue. Everything we do runs on .NET, SQL Server, Windows Server, etc, and it runs well, it's just no one seems to care about the new stuff. I stopped getting excited about MS stuff maybe about 2 years ago but that's because I became an OSS snob, that's not what's happening to the otherwise happy MS stack devs I know, I'm not really sure what it is.

And from the video in the post:<p><i>"The iPhone business is now bigger and more profitable than all of Microsoft"</i><p>I still remember the interview in which Balmer outrighted laughed at the iPhone.

The whole article is speculation and 'what if's. I understand a lot of people are worried about reactions to Windows 8, but I think the move to create a cross hardware development platform will distinguish them in the long run.

Original story: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmers-nightmare-is-coming-true-2012-11?op=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmers-nightmare-is-c...</a>

yawn, office is going nowhere anytime soon. There isn't even a plausible path by which office goes away right now.

Why specifically iPad and not just mobile computers in general? iPad isn't the only tablet around you know.

i couldn't read this diagonally let alone going through and around me only device that's isn't apple is xbox in the living room. bollocks.

Where's Android in all this?

"2. Employees gradually switch away from using Windows PCs for work."<p>That's not happening.