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In 1980 I worked as an entry-level programmer at a Sperry-Univac (Unisys) manufacturing plant.
Business programmer or raw-meater?
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Well, are you going to answer?
Being the best doesn’t always equate to being the most popular.The irony of vinyl, cassette tape, and VHS is that today nearly everyone simply streams or downloads music and video from the cloud. I understand your point, however I think that the Surface has done something novel: it established the 2-in-1 category and is a growing (in a shrinking PC market) billion dollar business for Microsoft.
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In private enterprise, that’s exactly what it means. Market share is the lifeblood of a product, until that product is surpassed by another product that pioneers an entirely new paradigm.
You no doubt remember the VCR format war. Who won? When that format winner finally succumbed to oblivion, was it the other format that took its place? No, it was a radically different technology that did.
Until interfaces for mobile products change in a similar radical fashion, iOS and Android are it. Android in particular, since it is based on open source code.
Surface, until it does something entirely novel, has no future.
As of now I don’t see Microsoft making phones for the consumer market, but OEMs partners, such as Acer, probably will.Success is never a sure thing. By this time next year we should know if Microsoft's newest strategy for Windows Mobile has merit.
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No doubt Microsoft will keep a very tiny share of the market for awhile, like Sculley’s Apple desktops and IBM’s OS/2 Warp. But Microsoft missed the boat, and unlike the browser wars of the mid-90s, there’s no amount of money that can make that boat turn back around.
Both, mostly manufacturing, accounting and HR.
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That’s not raw-meater fare, bud. That’s business programming.
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The irony of vinyl, cassette tape, and VHS is that today nearly everyone simply streams or downloads music and video from the cloud.
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That’s my exact point. Today, most people can’t even name the winner or its opponent in the VCR format war.
For a fictional example, let’s make the mobile market competition between EasyOS, CheapOS, and TilesOS.
EasyOS and CheapOS are the first 2 OSes out the door, and claim over 90% market share between the 2 (let’s say around 40% for EasyOS and 53% for CheapOS - much like the early market share for VCR formats).
TileOS market share is less than 10%.
Now, how can TileOS break out of the market share basement? Only if the technology radically changes and they are on top of the wave of change, OR a major price point movement.
The prices are bottoming out because costs for mobile technology are slashed pretty low. So that’s a no go.
If mobile technology went to, say, surgical implants or some other direct neural interface and TileOS pioneered it, TileOS becomes the new leader. Otherwise, TileOS eventually meets dustbin of history, to be socked away in a museum alongside an EasyOS device and a CheapOS device, while everybody laughs at them being displayed in their neural streams via NerveOS.
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I understand your point, however I think that the Surface has done something novel: it established the 2-in-1 category and is a growing (in a shrinking PC market) billion dollar business for Microsoft.
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Apple beat them to the punch by at least 2 years with the original iPad. Not that I care about Apple products, since I own none of them.
Before that there were oddball little tablet convertibles, like Fujitsu had back in the 1990s. And who can forget the PDA craze? Microsoft had some market share in the latter, but PalmOS was it back then, because of - you guessed it - the interface.
You are correct that Microsoft will enjoy growth in the tablet sector, but that entire sector is experiencing growth - a rising tide that lifts all the boats, not just Microsoft’s.
In other words, neither of the things you mention are truly novel.
I predict the fate of IBM for Microsoft in the next 10 years. Sad, really.