<story><title>Steve Ballmer&apos;s Microsoft</title><url>http://dcurt.is/steve-ballmers-microsoft</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mrb</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&quot;Microsoft&apos;s execution in mobile has been excellent&quot;.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This could not be farther from reality. Microsoft has consistently lost money in the mobile market, to a point they are ashamed of it, and don&apos;t even give sale figures for the Windows Phone OS anymore. Profits from this business unit is reported in the &quot;Entertainment and Devices&quot; unit, which has turned a loss this quarter, again, of $229M.&lt;p&gt;The only argument the author makes for claiming Microsoft&apos;s execution has been excellent is that &lt;i&gt;&quot;Windows Phone 7 is really good&quot;&lt;/i&gt;. Well, guess what? It may or may not be true that Windows Phone 7 is good, but it takes a whole lot more than a good OS to make a profit. You need to establish a community of developers who will write apps for your platform, you need to create an easy-to-use market place for end-users, you need to talk to phone manufacturers to make plenty of phones running your OS, you need to make deals with carriers to sell your phones, etc.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft has failed at most of this, hence their financial losses. Microsoft&apos;s execution in the mobile market is, so far, a failure, and Ballmer is partly responsible.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>InclinedPlane</author><text>Exactly. Microsoft has been sitting on the smartphone market. For. A. Decade. And they took that commanding lead and had their lunch eaten overnight by iPhone and Android. It took them &lt;i&gt;NEARLY FOUR YEARS&lt;/i&gt; to respond to the iPhone with Windows Phone 7.&lt;p&gt;Yes, WinMo 7 is a good product as far as platforms go, but it may not be good enough to catch up. They still have a lot of catch up to do with the marketplace and the ecosystem and with courting developers and manufacturers to their cause. They need to be making dramatic plays at this point, but they&apos;re not. When MS needed to bootstrap the XBOX gaming ecosystem they went out and straight up bought gaming companies, bringing Halo (one of the most popular game franchises in history) to their platform. When Sony needed to rescue the PS3 from a poor game library they bought media molecule and made Little Big Planet an exclusive title, among other purchases they made. Both companies also did a lot more to encourage developers to make games for their platforms. WinMo needs to make the same sort of efforts, but they haven&apos;t.&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, look at the state of hardware. The best Windows Phone you can buy is 2 to 3 generations behind the state of the art relative to the iPhone or Android. You can&apos;t expect to push single core WVGA phones into a market where 300+ dpi screens, dual core CPUs, and a gig of ram is rapidly becoming the norm.&lt;p&gt;Even if we were to accept the notion that Windows Phone was the best mobile OS on the market the overall experience of using a Windows Phone (which is heavily influenced by the apps and games available, the speed and quality of the hardware, the quality of the screen, etc.) is not even remotely the best. Similarly, while Google and Apple have been adding new capabilities, better performance, and new features to their phones by leaps and bounds with each release, the Windows Phone has comparatively stagnated.&lt;p&gt;And there&apos;s every indication that each one of those gaps will continue to grow wider over time. Microsoft managed to catch up just barely by putting forth a concerted effort, but if it takes such a diving-catch sort of effort to continue to catch up at every step in the future then they will invariably miss on a few occasions and fall behind for good.</text></comment>
<story><title>Steve Ballmer&apos;s Microsoft</title><url>http://dcurt.is/steve-ballmers-microsoft</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mrb</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&quot;Microsoft&apos;s execution in mobile has been excellent&quot;.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This could not be farther from reality. Microsoft has consistently lost money in the mobile market, to a point they are ashamed of it, and don&apos;t even give sale figures for the Windows Phone OS anymore. Profits from this business unit is reported in the &quot;Entertainment and Devices&quot; unit, which has turned a loss this quarter, again, of $229M.&lt;p&gt;The only argument the author makes for claiming Microsoft&apos;s execution has been excellent is that &lt;i&gt;&quot;Windows Phone 7 is really good&quot;&lt;/i&gt;. Well, guess what? It may or may not be true that Windows Phone 7 is good, but it takes a whole lot more than a good OS to make a profit. You need to establish a community of developers who will write apps for your platform, you need to create an easy-to-use market place for end-users, you need to talk to phone manufacturers to make plenty of phones running your OS, you need to make deals with carriers to sell your phones, etc.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft has failed at most of this, hence their financial losses. Microsoft&apos;s execution in the mobile market is, so far, a failure, and Ballmer is partly responsible.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aik</author><text>Look at recent US (and global) adoption rates of Windows Phone [1]. It&apos;s increasing, and with Nokia and their Lumia phones it is bound to continue.  WP7 is a good OS, and more and more developers are backing it, and consumer satisfaction is excellent, and more and more people are starting to realize all this.&lt;p&gt;&quot;Market research company Kantar WorldPanel has revealed in the last 12 weeks to mid-April Windows Phone has shown strong growth in the 7 major markets they monitor on the strength of Nokia’s offerings.&lt;p&gt;In 5 of the 7 markets (Germany, Britain, Italy, France and United States) Windows Phone market share is now in the 3-4% range, up from less than 2% in January 2012. In Germany Windows Phone market share more than doubled year on year to 6%.&lt;p&gt;In contrast RIM saw its US market share collapse to just 3% from 9% a year earlier, suggesting Windows Phone may have matched or even passed RIM’s market share in USA.&lt;p&gt;Kantar has predicted in January Windows Phone market share may hit 10% in Europe in the second half of 2012, and it seems to me with more Windows Phones being announced all the time that this may very well be achievable.&quot;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WmPowerUser/~3/Uofacrd8iKQ/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WmPowerUser/~3/Uofacrd8iKQ/&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>