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Alternatively its interesting to imagine if instead of buying Nokia, Ballmer had instead doubled down more fully on cloud and bought servers to subsidize the tr

Alternatively its interesting to imagine if instead of buying Nokia, Ballmer had instead doubled down more fully on cloud and bought servers to subsidize the transition to the cloud in order to compete with Amazon AWS. Azure wouldn't be playing catch up now. It'd be challenging to try to sell handset manufacturers a WinMo license to compete with Apple (who makes money from HW and only more recently apps/subscription services) when Google was giving Android away for free to the same handset manufacturers. Even historically low margin Amazon gave up on the Fire phone. Additionally smartphones are a very visible consumer facing product and thus very visible from an anti-trust populism perspective. [1] Imagine Steve Ballmer testifying in congress like Zuckerberg, Cook, Dorsey, etc. - he would totally have bungled it. That said for consumers (rather than MSFT shareholders) a triopoly is for sure better than a duopoly. [1] Bill Gates thinks Windows Mobile would have beaten Android without Microsoft’s antitrust woes https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/6/20952370/bill-gates-windows-mobile-android-competition-comments-microsoft-antitrust https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/6/20952370/bill-gates-windo...

mr_toad 4y ago
> bought servers to subsidize the transition to the cloud in order to compete with Amazon AWS Microsoft’s (enterprise) customers weren’t ready for the cloud back then. They could have made a bid for the rest of the market, but I’m not sure the rest of the market wanted Microsoft.
Apocryphon 4y ago
It would've been nice if Nokia had made another MeeGo smartphone after the N9 with the same sort of quality and usability.
scarface74 4y ago
Standard disclaimer: I work for AWS all opinions on my own. I wouldn’t even say Azure is playing catch up to AWS. Azure is a strong second as far as marketshare. It also has a company behind it that knows enterprise and knows how to cater to it. Technologically, I can’t think of a single enterprise/startup need it couldn’t meet. MS’s developer tools have always been great. Yes, I realize that this is a “Nixon goes to China” post. Winning in mobile is a Pyrrhic victory for Google. It came out in the Oracle trial that Google only made a $27 billion profit on Android from 2010-2016. Google gives more than half that much per year to Apple to be the default search engine. Losing mobile was the best thing that could have happened to MS. It let them concentrate on being everywhere.

mr_toad 4y ago

> bought servers to subsidize the transition to the cloud in order to compete with Amazon AWS Microsoft’s (enterprise) customers weren’t ready for the cloud back then. They could have made a bid for the rest of the market, but I’m not sure the rest of the market wanted Microsoft.

Apocryphon 4y ago

It would've been nice if Nokia had made another MeeGo smartphone after the N9 with the same sort of quality and usability.

scarface74 4y ago

Standard disclaimer: I work for AWS all opinions on my own. I wouldn’t even say Azure is playing catch up to AWS. Azure is a strong second as far as marketshare. It also has a company behind it that knows enterprise and knows how to cater to it. Technologically, I can’t think of a single enterprise/startup need it couldn’t meet. MS’s developer tools have always been great. Yes, I realize that this is a “Nixon goes to China” post. Winning in mobile is a Pyrrhic victory for Google. It came out in the Oracle trial that Google only made a $27 billion profit on Android from 2010-2016. Google gives more than half that much per year to Apple to be the default search engine. Losing mobile was the best thing that could have happened to MS. It let them concentrate on being everywhere.