Microsoft represents legacy desktop software in a mobile world.
It's going to be a wild ride for them to make the transition.
Yes, because businesses and home users needing desktops and laptop computers are going to disappear. What sort of time frame are we talking about here? Should keyboard and mouse manufacturers be running around shouting "the end of the world is nigh!" too? What about printer manufacturers?
Frankly I'd be more worried about companies like Seagate and Western Digital, and even they will have plenty of income for at least 5 to 10 years.
Yes, a lot is going to change in the next ten years, but I think Microsoft would do itself an enormous favour by taking a deep breath and realising that it needs to independently develop product lines rather than assuming that it's going to succeed in forcing various markets through the round hole it has envisaged where everyone is on Microsoft-authorised hardware, saving to the Microsoft cloud with Microsoft software, FB is going to be at its beck and call, and Apple/Google will just shrivel up and die.
The major desktop/laptop/server operating systems are pretty mature platforms, they have been for years. The same old bullshit in trying to sell premium-price software upgrades because the new software works better with the current hardware is a dead horse that really doesn't deserve to be flogged any more. People don't buy a fridge and upgrade every three years. The same applies to entry/mainstream-level computing.
Microsoft risks becoming as irrelevant as the company that makes Nero. Instead of making a gold version of Nero with minimal stability updates and lifetime licensing and then concentrating on something new, that company is trying to peddle increasingly bloated versions of Nero + media player + anything vaguely optical media related which don't add anything of value, and instead of taking 2 minutes to install they take 20.
Facebook
Twitter