I still think they can replace PCs with MS tablets in the Enterprise, but it will be a few years to transition.
We are already starting a trial at my company to replace some departments PCs with Surface tablets. We shall see.
KEY POINTS:
1) While Microsoft dominates the PC market, it is a distant third in the smartphone and tablet markets. Latest figures suggest that Windows Phone, its smartphone OS, shipped on about 3% of devices in fourth quarter of 2012, compared to 20% for Apple’s iPhone and over 70% for Android - of which 50% connected to Google’s servers and 20% were “white box” Android phones in China which do not use Google services.
2) A key problem for Microsoft is that it is the people who don’t yet own PCs - in emerging markets such as Africa and China - who are most likely to have a smartphone and tablet as their first “computer”. They’re starting with a smartphone, not a PC, so when they’re looking for something larger, they look at something that’s a replacement smartphone experience - which is a tablet or ultramobile device. And Android or [Apple’s] iOS are the two that they’re looking at.
3) Microsoft could then face the vicious circle where developers considering which platform to develop apps for look at those with the largest user base - and that that will not be Windows. By 2017, the number of devices being shipped with iOS, both iPhones and iPads, will be close to that with Windows and Windows Phone combined.
Step 1: Write a word processing app that works.
December 2008 - Apple has just Killed Microsoft. (irrelevant in a year).
December 2005 - Microsoft to be Irrelevant Soon.
2004 - $2 Billion Payout to Sun makes Microsoft Irrelevant.
Hmmm - I think I like their odds.
Can’t happen soon enough, always been a fan of the open software movement and Linux. Too many bug fixes in MS and huge hogs of resources.
I like MS Visual Studio.
I’ve been using the MS IDE for more than twenty years, and I’ve gotten used to it. For me, anything else (including NetBeans) is a PITA.
There is some truth to this, but it is a little exaggerated. Dealing with IT on a daily basis, I have seen the shift to tablets/smartphones, but people use them primarily for email and web browsing.
Almost every company has an internal program that requires some antiquated Windows application. More and more, I’ve had to set up VMs or other solutions to run these things, but they still use them on a daily basis. Heck, I still see *DOS* programs from time to time.
So, while Windows is fading from the personal/home market, it will hang around for a while in business environments. It might be used through remote connections from an iPad, though.
They’re doing it to themselves.
Microsoft is becoming completely irrelevant from an OS standpoint, because they’re trying to compete with everyone on everything. If they focus solely on desktop and server operating systems, they might have a chance. Instead, they release another “beta” OS in Win8, a crap “touch screen” server OS in 2012, and a tablet that offers nothing new compared to the iPad or Google products.
My skills will go the way of the dodo, because I’ve staked my career on Windows product knowledge. I might do some consulting to get companies off of the old MS stuff, but I’ll probably go into technical writing, my academic background.
Anyone remember the Microsoft monopoly?
Google will go the same way, eventually.
But there’s one monopoly that never goes away. The government.
I will add this, though...the move away from Windows desktops will save an incredible amount of money. So much of IT expenses go to just cleaning up desktop machines from spyware/junkware/etc.
IMHO, the whole high tech industry is in danger.
Product life span is now so short that product development costs are not recovered in sales.
If you can’t make a profit in building a widget, why have a company.
MS’s problem is they still don’t listen to customers and all the executives spend more time involved in social experiments than running their company.
The only way that iPads and Tablets and mobile devices will replace personal computers is if they can find a way to shrink the human finger and reconfigure the human eye.
In the old days, it was not necessary to say "cursive" when referencing "writing". Just another dumb PC addition....
Their elephant is Excel, the most widely used app in the enterprise world. More than just spreadsheets, it’s also imbeded marcos to call internal databases inside the firewall and external databases via the net.
It will take a long time for enterprises to wean themselves off Excel. Change is risk. There has to be a good reason for the the risk.
Now extending to tablets is a different question. Microsoft should concentrate on Office on Tablet functionality. Its their ace, play it wisely.
Microsoft bet big on the power of corporate inertia - and it has paid off so far with billions in Office upgrades and renewals.
Windows probably has no real future as a closed O/S, but it's all about how hard developers are going to laugh when they finally get a look at the internals. :)
I have no desire to work on a spreadsheet on a phone or a tablet.
I have nothing to worry about because I work on the server side of IT, always have. Nobody is going to replace the UNIX and Windows servers where I work anytime soon. As for the client side - browswers, tablest i-phones - I do not care.
We no longer issue laptops to our sales people. They now get iPads. They weren’t using the laptops like we hoped - pulling up online catalogs, downloading customer art files, emailing orders, etc. - because they claimed it was too cumbersome. Instead they wrote down everything and waited until they got back to the office to enter it in the system. This created errors, delayed orders and led to more confusion.
Now they use the QuickBooks mobile app to instantly enter estimates/orders. They can quickly find products, get instant accurate pricing, and even order the products themselves from the field. Much fewer mistakes, much faster order processing.
We still need full PC’s - Macs and Windows-based - for artwork creation and accounting, but the days of we’ve-hired -an-employee-order-a-new-computer are gone. So is the day spent loading software and configuring the system. We can configure the iPads in less than an hour. Additionally, the laptops were always breaking down and/or getting malware and viruses. We have had zero mechanical problems with the iPads and no virus/malware issues.
Microsoft will become like IBM - a mere ghost of it’s former self.