This doesn’t explain it. At least not in terms the market can understand.
What explains it is that you are evaluated at the business unit manager level in terms of return on investment.
That makes bundling Office with the Surface Pro 2 a political impossibility. Instead, you get Office 365 for a month, and ads that claim Office is bundled with the Surface Pro 2.
In short, what has killed, and will continue to kill MSFT is horrendous product marketing.
Surface can destroy the iPad if Office is bundled and the Type Cover is included. It’s not, so it won’t. Also, the price difference between a 256 and 513MB version is almost double. Memory can’t be that expensive, and the backplane is the same.
X-Box One. No backward compatibility with the 360, and it costs $100 more than the PS4. PS4 has no backward compatibility either, but it is selling three times more units (conservatively) than MSFT.
If that trend continues, developers will choose PS4 to support before MSFT. You don’t see developers clamoring to support the Windows Phone.
Amazing - you pioneer the business model that killed Apple (provide a good, low cost OS and give away the developer tools while your competitor charges a premium for hardware, OS, software, and developer tools.
MSFT is failing because they forgot why they made more money in the first ten years. Good software at a reasonable price. (Value discipline).
Google is wrecking both companies, and will continue to do so, using the same business model MSFT used to kill Apple (before MSFT bought Apple).
One week after receiving my 8.1 Dell which I purchased online at Dell’s site for $150.00 off on Black Friday to replace a ten year old XP system I can weigh in on Windows 8.1.
Overall I like the new OS. The start page is slick tiles and all. I can access every thing I need to, some in a different way. The desktop File explorer icon gets you to folders, Windows key and X shortcut gets you to into all system management functions such as control panel and task manager.
My only complaint is the Mail App. I was able to set it up to access both my live.com and att.net imap mail in one place which I like.
It however is not usable for things like “Send link by email” in Internet explorer or the “Scan to email” function on my Brother printer or email a picture from Photo Gallery program.
I had to install my copy of Office 2003 and the Outlook Mail program does work to enable the functions the Mail App would not.
Microsoft offered me cash to port my apps to their devices, I looked at the numbers and told them it wasn’t worth it... Based on the emptiness of their app store, I know I am not alone.
I don’t care who wins the console wars, but your facts are just wrong:
I don’t know where you got your numbers from. Over the Black Friday weekend the Xbox One was responsible for 31% of all console sale, the 360 responsible for 30% of all sale. The PS4 was responsible for 12% of sales.
If you are referring to comments by Michael Patcher he’s giving you his guesstimate, he has no real sales figures. Those numbers I quoted you are directly from sales figures from Target and WalMart. In fact I’ll go you one further... I think Patcher is full of horse dung; go back and read about product shipments... Sony once again (like the PS3) undershipped for the Holiday season, there are simply not enough units to meet demand. On the other hand Microsoft has shipped 3x the amount of units they initially shipped for the Xbox 360. In fact quite a few analysts are projecting Xbox One may win initial sales simply because of the consoles availability.
Not arguing that MSFT's product marketing has been horrible, IMO what's really killing them is how they insist on bundling and pricing their products.
Makes it damn' near impossible for most enterprises to understand what it is they're really paying for and why they're paying it.
Have you tried licensing Microsoft Lync for your enterprise lately?