Gatner “Windows is collapsing”
So Gartner, one of the largest analysis companies said in a conference that windows is collapsing. Lots of reasons were given including a large code for windows that became un-maintainable and lead Microsoft to start from a more stable release of Windows 2003, and improve on for Vista. This in turn lead to Vista not really delivering meaningful enhancements from the point of view of the end consumer. Also, the fact that applications now are moving on the web and becoming OS agnostic where you can run many available software almost on all operating systems (openoffice for example, inkscape and others based on GNU’s compilers or java).
Other reasons included a hardware demanding OS, which can’t fit on small PDA’s and thus giving the chance for Linux and OS X. I add to this list, the complete prevalence of Linux in embedded OSs in appliances like Tivos, with zero competition from Microsoft.
A big major contribution from my point of view is the reason of making a new release. When a company decides to allocate resources for the development of a software, they need goals. The only goal that is obvious from the release of Vista was to duress people into DRM, using windows position as a must be OS on every PC or laptop. A very important lesson that you can’t force the whole world into only your own vision, but you have to embrace what people want, make it your vision and may be add more on the side. After all people are the consumer. Unfortunately, that was the second time Microsoft did that, after they already suffered losses on the server side and hosting.
However, I do disagree with Gartner on the result that Microsoft or windows will crash. I believe that Microsoft is trying to embrace the standards and work with others, it’s just they’re not doing enough and lots of people doubt their intentions. My view is Microsoft becoming more like SUN or IBM where they will have to work with people and provide solutions for the problems that people see using ways that the people want.
Technorati Tags: microsoft, windows, crash, linux, apple, mac os, os x, tivo, embedded, operating system, vista, windows xp
Tags: apple, crash, embedded, linux, mac os, microsoft, operating system, os x, tivo, vista, windows, windows xp
April 28th, 2008 at 2:08 am
I agree that Windows and Microsoft are not going to vanish anytime soon. But online apps such as google docs are inevitably going to take revenue away from MS- and along with the rise of Apple, Apple’s OS is going to start being seen more and more.
Do you agree with the blog you replied to that Microsoft’s only hope for long term profitabilty is the growth of online ad revenue through their Digital Advertising Solutions division?
They’ve made some big acquisitions in the past year (ScreenTonic, adECN, aQuantive, FolderShare, etc.) and I’m just curious to hear your thoughts. Digital advertising is blowing up right now- and MS is positioned to start getting a piece of the pie.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:45 am
There’s lots of pressures around Microsoft some from opensource & Linux, others from Google - like you said online apps.
You’re also right that digital advertising is on the rise, and MS is trying to get a piece of the pie. May be that’s one reason they’re trying to acquire or push Yahoo into a deal although both run different environments - yahoo uses a lot of FreeBSD and linux, MS of course use their own platforms.
From my point of view, there is now more than one formidable opponent to MS, which will eventually at least cause Microsoft to change their pricing plans to be more reasonable, or change the way they deal with open source and I think it is already happening. They will make their OS less hardware demanding (as they said they’ll do in Win 7) due to competition in ULCPCs from linux.
So I think MS is not going to go away, but competition is good, and will force them to make Windows better and change their pricing plans & attitude towards others.