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they can squeeze their business customers a lot harder | 397 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
n other words, they would become the next IBM. - NOT!
Authored by: tiger99 on Saturday, November 17 2012 @ 03:51 PM EST
Well no, IBM is active in a wide range of areas, not just mainframes, and have
enormous research programs in many fields. M$ only write software, in much the
same sense as the million monkeys on typewriters churning out a complete works
of Shakespeare, and occasionally dabble in hardware, which invariably turns out
to be of poor quality compared to the competition (mouse, cf Logitech),
unreliable and even dangerous (X-box) or just plain naff.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

they can squeeze their business customers a lot harder
Authored by: Wol on Saturday, November 17 2012 @ 05:39 PM EST
I doubt it!

They're already losing the consumer office market to LibreOffice. The
cost-conscious small business market is probably already a lost cause. Even with
hefty student and charity discounts, free is still cheaper.

Let's assume MS jacks the price up. Small businesses will be even less likely to
buy or upgrade. Medium businesses will buy less. MS will make better margins per
sale, but will they actually make any more money as sales fall?

The other big danger for MS when it starts doing that is, if MS Office is not
cost-effective it damages the users' ability to compete in the market. If MS
loses the small business market because of this, small businesses will become
medium businesses while medium businesses become small businesses!

The problem with MS becoming a "legacy business" is that legacy
software sells for £10 in PC World. Your IBM analogy is way off - the reason IBM
survived was not down to software - it was down to the fact that they were a
hardware business, and their hardware was cost-effective, even with hefty price
hikes. Every price hike on MS software makes it LESS cost-effective, in a world
where it isn't that cost-effective to start with.

(There've been quite a few stories about, especially when IBM first launched the
Z-series, of companies buying mainframes to replace PCs because - at $1/4m, they
were still a LOT cheaper!)

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

MS can't stand to "not dominate the software industry"
Authored by: marcosdumay on Sunday, November 18 2012 @ 10:37 AM EST
And that's MS's problem, just that and all of that. If they lose lockin, they
are gone.

Ok, they may continue to survive selling a cheap office productivity package.
But if they lose Windows, they won't be able to keep most of even that market.
They may continue to be a big player, but in that situation they wouldn't afford
to be the biggest one.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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