Thanks for the link. I always look forward to reading Tomi's
blogs.
Meanwhile, globally, Windows Phone would have
something
in the order of 1.3% market share for Christmas
and sell 2.9 million units. It
would still remain smaller
than Symbian now 22 months after Elop decided to
sacrifice
Symbian and MeeGo instead of Windows Phone. When Palm - once
the
world's second biggest smartphone platform - had fallen
to about 1% market
share (and very unprofitable), it had its
mercy killing, being sold to HP and
ended. How long will
Ballmer keep the massive-losses-generating Windows Phone
platform even alive? It will soon go the way of the Kin and
the Zune and
Microsoft will shift its focus only on the PC
and tablet side of the Windows 8
operating system.
Here is where I disagree with Tomi.
Microsoft will not
give up on the WinPhone, and that will be the death of
them.
It's like that old story - "How do you catch a
monkey?"
In Africa, the natives use a
technique to catch
monkeys. They hollow out one end of a
coconut and they put some bait in there
like peanuts or a
piece of fruit. The monkey puts his hand in the
coconut and
when he makes a fist to grab the peanuts, he's
trapped. He can't pull his hand
out without letting go of
the bait, and he won't let go of the bait. The
natives will
pull a string attached to the other end of the coconut and
capture the monkey.
This is actually a true story. Here is a
video of a man
using a variation of this technique. It's
in French, but the video tells the
story clearly. No
narrative is required.
In my version of the story,
Ballmer is the monkey, and
the Windows phone is the bait. He has it in his hand
and
will not let go. He is trapped. Here is my reasoning...
Simply,
Ballmer is depending on the network effects to
eventually take a significant
position in the device market
- phones and tablets. Why do you suppose they put
that awful
Metro interface on Windows 8? It conficts with the desktop
UI, it's
ugly, and nobody likes it. One would think as soon
as they saw the first mock
up of the Metro interface on a
desktop computer, it would have been vetoed, if
not sooner,
but Ballmer is thinking long term. Ballmer thinks like the
executives at Microsoft have been thinking for the past 20
years... They have
a monopoly on the desktop, and they can
do what they like. Microsoft believes
their locked-in
customers will go right on buying Windows no matter how bad
it
is, like they bought Vista. Microsoft believes they will
buy the new Windows 8
with the Metro UI that makes no sense
on a desktop.
Why force the Metro
UI, that was made for phones and
tablets, on to a desktop computer? First,
Metro is the best
they can do. They are not about to abandon it, no matter how
bad it is. It is simply too late to go back to the drawing
board. So how can
they get people to buy that ugly, failed
UI? By sticking it in their face every
time they go to use
their desktop computer, people will will be forced to learn
to navigate a UI that is not intuitive, and people will
become desensitized to
it's garish colours and downright
ugliness. The hope is that once people become
accustomed to
Metro via the desktop or laptop, they will buy the phones
and
tablets.
This strategy will work, to some extent. Just enough to
maintain a small piece of the market, but not enough to be
profitable. This is
the trap - the peanuts in the jar that
Ballmer has in his fist and won't let go
of. Microsoft will
continue bleeding money on the device market, just as they
are with Bing and all the other parts of the infrustructure
they developed to
support their move into devices, and
slowly bleed to death. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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