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Microsoft, capitulation and the end of Windows Everywhere
- enochroot 11y agoBenedict's comment on this thread: > I love how conservative and backwards-looking Hacker News can be. PCs rule! Phones are toys! Source: https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans/status/626173995566497792 https://twitter.com/BenedictEvans/status/626173995566497792
- mahouse 11y agoHe always acts in a very mature way when people disagree with him. ;P
- benedictevans 11y agoI aim to meet comments at their own level ;) Have a look at the first posts. Was that not an accurate description?
- benedictevans 11y agoI aim to meet comments at their own level ;) Have a look at the first posts. Was that not an accurate description?
- benedictevans 11y agoI aim to meet comments at their own level ;) Have a look at the first posts. Was that not an accurate description?
- benedictevans 11y agoI aim to meet comments at their own level ;) Have a look at the first posts. Was that not an accurate description?
- benedictevans 11y agoI aim to meet comments at their own level ;) Have a look at the first posts. Was that not an accurate description?
- moistgorilla 11y agoI'm sorry but who the f is this guy?
- finnn 11y agoThe one who wrote the blog post that this comment thread is about
- norea-armozel 11y agoHonestly, I don't think he gets that smart phones as they are now are not going to replace the PC form factor. Until a smart phone can be plugged into a docking station with a keyboard, the smart phone will be a limited data consuming (not creating) device. For example, you won't be watching TV or first run movies on a phone's screen (seriously, who the hell would?). But you can tap out a message for twitter or facebook on a phone. Phones fit those situations and I honestly love mine for navigation. Beyond that, if I want to play a game or watch a tv show or write up a lengthy comment on HN then I'm going to use a PC or a laptop since those form factors are much easier to use for those purposes.
- Mithaldu 11y agoComparing phones and PCs is ridiculous. Comparing the sales rate of a new technology with the one of an old wildly different technology is jumping the shark. Or just sheer naivety. Edit: Just noticed: The first graph also compares unit numbers instead of how many dollars changed hands, making it even more silly.
- pierotofy 11y agoMy thought exactly.
- kisstheblade 11y agoAlso good to remember that PCs (desktops) and laptops are really good enough already. Nobody wants to replace them if they don't really need to. My work laptop is 5 years old and still functions perfectly, and is about as powerful as new laptops. And I actually use the thing 8hrs a day so if there was something "better" I'd switch immediately. So who really cares if kids need a new shiny phone every christmas to be hip? It's just a "gadget" for now.
- Mithaldu 11y agoThat's what i meant with the old vs new thing. :) Nowadays smart phones are getting LOTS of sales because the technology is evolving a lot and humanity as a whole is still "on-boarding". There's actually a reason to buy new ones every year as the new models are significantly different.
- orf 11y agoA couple of choice quotes: > PCs aren't going away any time soon, any more than faxes or mainframes did, but they are the past, not the future Faxes and mainframes faded into corners of businesses, and this is never going to happen with PCs. Sure, maybe desktops, but everybody I know has a laptop and uses them a lot for certain tasks (some of which have been superceded by their mobile, addmittedly). There are just some things you can't do on a mobile - plug a HDMI cable into it, play half decent games, torrent, write your disseration. PC's will evolve but saying they will fade away like faxes is a bit silly IMO. Phones are also newer, change faster and are replaced a lot (once a year/2 years) whereas a laptop lasts a lot longer and people are more resistant to upgrading (if it ain't broke don't fix it, which is something that doesn't seem to apply to buying new mobiles. Perhaps it's because moving PC's is a pain if you're not technical). > Windows had actually ceased to be the dominant development platform in the late 1990s with the rise of the web You should tell that to the endless numbers of of .NET developers (who didn't exist in the 1990's) and enterprises that run on Windows. Having apps run in your browser is cool, but a quick glance at my start menu shows a lot of non-web software, all developed for (and on) Windows.
- seanmcdirmid 11y agoI went on vacation last week and didn't bring a laptop at all...a tablet was good enough. At one time, that was unthinkable to me. My family members aren't upgrading their laptops because they never use them, while the PC was gotten rid of a long time ago for space. Of course, I'm a programmer, so having a laptop makes sense. I'm sure it will make sense to many people, just not everyone like before, and perhaps fewer and fewer people overtime. No one would say it is a growing market. And if you are a company like Microsoft that wants to grow, that's a problem (disclaimer: MS employee but talking for myself).
- threeseed 11y ago> No one would say it is a growing market. Sure. But I disagree strongly that it is a significantly declining one. Desktops no doubt are disappearing quickly in favour of laptops. But I fail to see how PC computing is going anywhere. Businesses still have 99% of their employees at a desk. People may not be writing Word documents as much anymore but they are interacting with complex web apps which are ill suited to phones/tablets. IMHO we are moving to a mobile world. Not a purely phone/tablet world.
- fourmii 11y agoCan't believe he's using Uber as an app that's not on PCs but smartphones, because I want to pull out my laptop to hail a car.. And those other examples like Pinterest, Instacart and Instagram are pretty silly too, don't people just use their browsers?
- tdicola 11y agoThat's the point. Those apps will never make sense on a desktop and just drives home the point that touting universal apps & easy porting of mobile apps to desktop is pointless.
- austenallred 11y ago> Those other examples like Pinterest, Instacart and Instagram are pretty silly too, don't people just use their browsers? No, they use apps
- cwyers 11y agoPhones and tablets may some day supplant the PC as the primary devices for consumption. But PCs are certainly not going to be replaced as the primary devices for creation. Moreover, almost every app you use on a phone or tablet and every web page you view is powered by a server on the other end, and those servers are going to be PCs for the foreseeable future. Phones don't replace PCs, phones create demand for servers that PCs can and will fulfill.
- tsunamifury 11y agoPhones have already supplanted pcs in many forms of creation, photography, messaging, data gathering, gps, and many many more. The phone is now a primary photo editor for the majority of users. It's where I'm authoring this comment right now.
- loco5niner 11y agoEditing pictures for facebook and creating comments in a forum are are not particularly "forms of creation". Photoshopping a magazine cover and building a website are. As for photography, messaging, and gps. Well, of course. Those are a natural use for that form factor. I'm not going to take my laptop out to take a picture... (I'm kind of surprised you didn't mention that the phone is better for making phone calls too).
- toborrobot 11y agoNobody would take their laptop out to take a picture, but plenty of people use Skype on a laptop. Maybe it's a quirk of history that modern phones are named after the telephone; most phone usage involves reading text, not speaking or listening.
- loco5niner 11y agoAnd both of those uses are examples of consumption, not creation.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
- acqq 11y agoBetter think in the Steve Jobs' parallel: the PCs are the trucks, the mobile devices are the cars. Are there much more cars than trucks? Certainly yes. Are the cars making the trucks completely not needed? Certainly no.
- chadgeidel 11y agoTo continue to abuse that analogy, Trucks are probably selling better now than 20 years ago because they are "cheap" luxury cars. In this analogy, perhaps the "gamer PC" is the "truck" of the computer age?
- infectoid 11y agoFunny that gamers usually refer to their PC's as a rig. Kind of ties in neatly with the analogy.
- ethana 11y agoJust so you know, trucks (F150, Silverado, RAM) have been consistently selling in the top 5 spots. The only 'car' sell at the top 5 is the Toyota Camry ;)
- chadgeidel 11y agoYeah, I know. I was hedging with "probably" because I don't have the hard data.
- rbanffy 11y agoThe analogy breaks, however, because PCs are considerably harder to operate and maintain than tablets and phones, whereas large SUVs are not significantly harder to drive than a large-ish car.
- threeseed 11y agoMicrosoft's strategy is quite clear. One Windows app, deployed everywhere with a focus on productivity and smart services. In no way has there been any capitulation. In fact Microsoft leads the space. Does Apple have universal apps ? No. Does Google ? No. And does Apple or Google have an equivalent to Azure's strategic analytics plays ? No. The platform game is not short term. And I would be turning my attention to Google who look in far worse shape long term. They are still very much an advertising company dependent on search revenues. And they haven't demonstrated much ability to expand into other markets.
- mattzito 11y agoWell, you're conflating various things here: > One Windows app, deployed everywhere with a focus on productivity and smart services. In no way has there been any capitulation. In fact Microsoft leads the space. Does Apple have universal apps ? The value of universal apps are debatable, but let's say Microsoft does rule that space. When $some_crazy_high_percentage of delivered phones are android and iOS, the market has spoken - people dont' care about running the same app on their phone and their desktop. Even if Microsoft successfully makes a shift to offering their app development platform on iOS and Android, they're now doing that from a position of weakness. There's certainly money to be made there, but its the difference between a serf and a lord. Microsoft is the lord of its own domain when they control the phone platform, and is a serf in Apple's. But then you switch to something else: > And does Apple or Google have an equivalent to Azure's strategic analytics plays ? No. But that's an entirely different rodeo than the whole thrust of the article, which is the declining dominance of the PC and Microsoft's lack of success in the mobile space. Apple doesn't even care about the enterprise computing space from that perspective, and Amazon absolutely does want to offer those analytics - it's an entirely different set of competitors. So, sure, yes, Microsoft is doing cool stuff with Azure, which is great, maybe that's the future of the business. But that's a very different business than owning 90-something percent of the software powering every personal computing device in the world.
- cwyers 11y ago> So, sure, yes, Microsoft is doing cool stuff with Azure, which is great, maybe that's the future of the business. But that's a very different business than owning 90-something percent of the software powering every personal computing device in the world. Is it? Phones and cloud services aren't in competition, they're complimentary services -- phones create demand for cloud services.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- loco5niner 11y agoPhones and tablets are great consumption devices, but not so much for say, building a web site.
- mythz 11y agoThe "Big 4" Technology Companies: Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon all have their primary business models around targeting consumers of which the trend is that more of them are turning towards using Internet-capable mobile devices as their preferred computing device. This isn't a hypothetical trend far off into the future, Apple is already the largest company in the world because of its success and focus on non-PC devices. This is why Devices vs PC Market share is very relevant for gauging Company trajectories, the gateway to consumers is moving "Post-PC" to Internet Devices where those with business models that benefit from a strong mobile presence are set to prosper in future. With Microsoft's flailing Windows Phone and Surface their grip on consumer mind-share is steadily declining, they've still got Office to target end-users but even this is focused on Business users whilst Xbox and Minecraft targets gamers. Skype's a popular App that they may be able to do something with, but ultimately it's just an App on a much larger Mobile ecosystem. Their Azure cloud platform does benefit from Companies hosting their Mobile Web Service on Azure and Windows/SQL Server Licenses so they'll have a healthy income for many years to come, but unless they have a prosperous mobile strategy they're going to miss the next lucrative computing platform which will affect their mindshare with Consumers and overall growth vs the Big 4.
- guiomie 11y agoIf windows continuum is well designed, I believe this could be a trend reversal. Lot's of people need a laptop/pc beause you simply cant produce good work with a tablet. But lots of people want just one device.
- MarkMc 11y agoThis is a great summary of tech history and where Microsoft went wrong. If this one article could be sent back in time 15 years Bill Gates could have doubled his net worth by now. There's no doubt that Microsoft has lost the mobile platform and the value of Windows has declined. But still, I'm much more optimistic than Evans about the future value of Office - it's quite possible that in 30 years most enterprise businesses will still buy an Office subscription as standard. Just as Apple creams almost all smartphone profits despite a 15% market share, so Microsoft can get outsize profit for productivity apps by concentrating on enterprise businesses.
- Shorel 11y agoDon't forget people buy more cellphones because they get stolen more often. Smartphone makers have little to no incentive to change this.