MS's business future, particuarly in mobile space *spawn

[BoardBonobo]

I agree that the market is changing and IMO MS is changing with it a lot better than Sony is.

I truly believe that at the end of the day we are going to be using multi-function equipment with digitally purchased content and MS is closer to that vision than Sony at the moment.

How so? They have no mobile traction, Surface was a complete flop and their attempt at a phone OS is dead in the water. They needed to buy Nokia just to mop up the dregs left by everyone else.

If the mobile market were Jabba then MS is Salacious Crumb!

Sony has a, now, much stronger mobile division with some very good products out there. They have the Vita in the AAA mobile gaming space and soon they'll have the VitaTV in the AppleTV, GoogleTV space. At a far more attractive price with a boatload more content. They are already integrating TV's with Tablets, Mobiles, and gaming devices. MS have a vision and some words on paper and a very weak, apart from the now tarnished Xbox brand, foothold in consumer space. It's no contest at the moment.

The only reason MS did a 180 is because they need the diehard gamers during the launch period and diehard gamers hated the old policies. If MS comes out of 2013 having sold as many boxes as Sony in the US/Canada/UK, then they've achieved their goals. Network effects will take over from there.

The reason they did multiple u-turns is because they lost their bottle, and integrity, and totally screwed up the message for the xbone.

They don't have the advantage of rushing out a product a year early and then have their opposition mess up completely. The show is definitely on the other foot this time around.

This is a business and business is about profits. MS doesn't care about selling an X1 to a poor farmer in Bulgaria that won't subscribe to Live. Let Sony have that money sink of a customer.

That's basically what happened last generation - Sony got stuck with most of the consumers that weren't willing to spend money. Even though they sold just as many consoles as MS world-wide, MS was $3 billion in the black and Sony was $3 billion in the red.

No one knows what's going to happen. Right now diehard gamers are shaking their heads thinking that MS is charging $100 more for a 30% less powerful system, when it's quite possible that a year from now joe family guy will be asking why Sony didn't include all of the things MS is offering for a mere $100 more.

If the $100 matters to you, then you aren't likely MS's target customer.

It's that kind of arrogance that has done so much damage to MS recently. 'Deal with', 'Buy a 360' etc. Every $ counts and every customer is a potential agent for positive marketing. Discounting anyone is shortsighted and foolish.

At the moment they appear to be trying to act positive, but they are constantly undermined by over zealous representatives talking bollocks and it's apparent they are still flailing around trying to get their act together.

 

[blakjedi]

I would bet dollars to donuts that by 2017 windows brand tablets will be outselling ipads and windows phones will outsell iPhones. Neither of them are/will be flops.

The phone market is damn near an Android monopoly and MS makes more off of each sale than Google does. Apple has fallen to roughly only 18% of the phone market, windows phone 8 has just surpassed 5% after less than a year with two heavily entrenched contenders.

I will end up with both consoles due to ips I enjoy on both, but in no way do I consider the PS brand a hardcore gaming except when considering jrpgs.

 

[Brad Grenz]

blakjedi, you're a riot!

 

[BoardBonobo]

I would bet dollars to donuts that by 2017 windows brand tablets will be outselling ipads and windows phones will outsell iPhones. Neither of them are/will be flops.

The phone market is damn near an Android monopoly and MS makes more off of each sale than Google does. Apple has fallen to roughly only 18% of the phone market, windows phone 8 has just surpassed 5% after less than a year with two heavily entrenched contenders.

I will end up with both consoles due to ips I enjoy on both, but in no way do I consider the PS brand a hardcore gaming except when considering jrpgs.

If, by 2017, what you predict hasn't come to pass in even a mediocre kind of way then MS will truly have become a bit player in the global market. Relegated to a support services company in the niche PC market.

 

[DrJay24]

I would bet dollars to donuts that by 2017 windows brand tablets will be outselling ipads and windows phones will outsell iPhones. Neither of them are/will be flops.

The phone market is damn near an Android monopoly and MS makes more off of each sale than Google does. Apple has fallen to roughly only 18% of the phone market, windows phone 8 has just surpassed 5% after less than a year with two heavily entrenched contenders.

I will end up with both consoles due to ips I enjoy on both, but in no way do I consider the PS brand a hardcore gaming except when considering jrpgs.

Too bad Win6.5 was at 7%. MS is not really gaining market share.

 

[AlphaWolf]

If, by 2017, what you predict hasn't come to pass in even a mediocre kind of way then MS will truly have become a bit player in the global market. Relegated to a support services company in the niche PC market.

Comedy gold.

 

[Rangers]

If, by 2017, what you predict hasn't come to pass in even a mediocre kind of way then MS will truly have become a bit player in the global market. Relegated to a support services company in the niche PC market.

And still infinitely more profitable than Sony?

Ok that was mean

 

[eastmen]

Too bad Win6.5 was at 7%. MS is not really gaining market share.

Windows mobile would have been gone at this point. Windows phone sales are going up each quarter it seems. They should break 10% in the next few quarters

 

[BoardBonobo]

And still infinitely more profitable than Sony?

Ok that was mean

Once the cash cow dries up, so does the cash. If Sony have ceased to exist at that point then MS will be infinitely more profitable, but anything multiplied by zero is...?

If they're lucky Google or Apple might buy them.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Doesn't Microsoft do something like $5 billion in profit in a quarter still?

 

[RobertR1]

Doesn't Microsoft do something like $5 billion in profit in a quarter still?

Yes. I have no idea how long you'd have to go back and add up sonys profits for it to cumulatively add upto MS' last profitable quarter which came in right around 5b.

But hey, don't let that stop anyone.

 

[Rangers]

Once the cash cow dries up, so does the cash. If Sony have ceased to exist at that point then MS will be infinitely more profitable, but anything multiplied by zero is...?

If they're lucky Google or Apple might buy them.

Sony has usually lost money for several years. Hence the "infinite". Even a company that makes 1 dollar is "infinitely" more profitable than zero

 

[liolio]

If, by 2017, what you predict hasn't come to pass in even a mediocre kind of way then MS will truly have become a bit player in the global market. Relegated to a support services company in the niche PC market.

Imo MSFT is full of failing that for sure, but Sony is not exactly ding well. Actually it is doing worse. significantly worse as a whole.

Anyway, I think that MSFT might have to make a rough arbitration if the combo of those new Atom and windows8/8.1 does nothing for them. Imo if nothing get significantly better through out the next year, they should pull an IBM and focus if not exclusively a lot more on the professional market.
Not exactly a niche, if they get the windows R&D expanse under control, stop useless buy out as Nokia, and more importantly focus windows and their other services toward what the enterprise really want, they should make a shit load money and actually could increase their margins.

Now the XB1 is irrelevant to that /MSFT can maintain a personal division that deal with niche products as long as they are not losing sight of their main business (theirs move toward hardware makes me think they are losing track of their best interest...).

Sony, if MSFT were to become irrelevant, you should revisit your POV about what it could happen to lesser company like Sony that lost so much money in the recent years.
Anyway, I certainly agree that the amount of mistakes done by MSFT is pretty staggering.

 

[eastmen]

liolio

I gotta disagree. Window's phone is growing its not growing super fast but its growing and with ms buying nokia next year or so when the process is complete they should be able to grow faster.

Surface didn't sell well , but that's because of a number of reasons , chief among them the lack of apps at launch followed closely behind by tegra 3 for cpu. This year they have over a 100k apps and growing tegra 4 which is right there on the curve instead of behind it . With the pro two problems of the original one will be largely fixed. Battery life and heat output . I still think 2014's model with broadwell will be when that device finally comes into its own. They should be able to get 10+ hours out of that model and broadwell will have a new graphics gpu and most likely the 128meg cache from higher end laptop and desktop models should make its way to the ulv market.

A lot of people forget that android had a very tough go of it when it first launched. It took a couple of years for the platform to gain any traction and it had less to deal with as windows mobile , blackberry and nokia started their downward spiral by that point.

They also had a tough go of it selling tablets with the first 2 years or so of models failing to make a splash

MS just needs to stay on the ball. They need to continue to improve windows while trying to increase performance. Windows 8 will run on all systems that have vista on them and will run better than vista. Working to improve that would be great.

On the other side windows phone need to work on more and more hardware. THeir current flagship phones are running on dual core 2 year old cpu's while Apple has moved to 64bit arm chips and Samsung is pushing out very fast quad cores and octocores .

 

[-tkf-]

Yes. I have no idea how long you'd have to go back and add up sonys profits for it to cumulatively add upto MS' last profitable quarter which came in right around 5b.

But hey, don't let that stop anyone.

Yes Microsoft is doing just fine but the issue here is if they could do better, when apple pulls profits of 13-7 billions pr quater and the WinTel brothers are slowly seeing their market go away they have to do better than fine.

 

[Rangers]

Yes Microsoft is doing just fine but the issue here is if they could do better, when apple pulls profits of 13-7 billions pr quater and the WinTel brothers are slowly seeing their market go away they have to do better than fine.

Posting Apple as an example is kind of unfair because they're kind of an outlier. Compare them in profits to other tech giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook, pretty much anybody but Apple, they look much better, in fact beating all those companies.

Sure MS isn't the most dynamic company of late, but they're still remarkably profitable. And they dont seem to be cratering either, it seems their Windows monopoly profits can continue on for a indefinite time.

They certainly could do much better. I wonder how much Balmer was holding them back, we'll find out soon I guess.

I wonder how lucrative all their recent patent agreements with Android manufacturers are. Lots of android manufacturers are paying MS for every Android device they sell.

Seemed like they handled that really smartly as compared to Apple. Better to negotiate than wage war.

 

[BoardBonobo]

Comedy gold.

Somebody had to play devils advocate! Besides at the moment everything that ms touches turns to better profits for everyone else

 

[wco81]

Only "threat" to MS is that PC sales have been declining every quarter for about 4 or 5 quarters, which is unprecedented.

It could be the sluggish global economy or we're between upgrade cycles. Or it could be greater use of phones and tablets cause people to put off or not buy newer PCs.

MS is dominant in enterprise but struggling in the consumer arena outside of Xbox. It had to buy Nokia because if Nokia stopped making Windows Phones, then there would be no WP business, period.

There's been some talk that MS should spin out a lot of businesses and sell them but that depends on activist shareholders and how the CEO succession thing plays out.

MS isn't going to disappear any time soon. But it could go the way of IBM, which still generates gobs of money but nobody looks as a consumer powerhouse which has the potential to disrupt various markets.

 

[expletive]

MIght be slightly OT but didn't think it deserved it's own thread (plus XBO and PS4 are mentioned by name). Interesting analysis on Apple's new 64bit A7 chip:

I don't believe Apple added 64-bit support to iOS 7 and all their apps just to prepare for an eventual transition to 4GB+ memory capacities in future iPhones. I think this was to do with something more impending. Do we know any product category that Apple would be interested in, that would require the use of both iOS and an A-series chip that is 64-bit capable in order to address 4GB+ memory?

Apple TV (the one that is yet to come, not the one that exists).

Just a few days prior to WWDC this summer, the Xbox One was annnounced with 8GB memory. The 360 had 512 MB of memory. Earlier in January this year, the PS4 was announced with 8GB of memory. The PS3 had 256MB of system memory.

If Apple were to release a competing living room solution now, as Steve Jobs claimed they had figured out, it would definitely have to have around 8GB of memory (if they were interested in addressing big screen console gaming seriously).

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

A lot of people forget that android had a very tough go of it when it first launched. It took a couple of years for the platform to gain any traction and it had less to deal with as windows mobile , blackberry and nokia started their downward spiral by that point.

They also had a tough go of it selling tablets with the first 2 years or so of models failing to make a splash

This. I live in the land of hippies and hipsters, California, USA. This is pretty much Apple's main market and a few years back it was all iPhone and iPad and only a few of us tech-inclined folks were buying Android products. Even the IT staff had started replacing their blackberries with iPhones.

Fast forward to today, and the culture has shifted. Its almost as if the iPhone is the AOL of smart phones. Nice, easily accessible, but once most people get the hang of the features they realize they can do more for a lot less on an Android phone.

What this means for MS is that their Windows branded devices are no longer 'passe' because iProducts don't carry the same cache they used to. Which is both good and bad for MS, because it means that once the glitter is gone, the products are being purchased due to their actual utility. Good, if MS can leverage desktop windows familiarity to the mobile space. Bad, if MS's walled garden approach mirrors Apple's more than Android.