“Is that enough? I can go on”

Posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2012 at 3:19 pm. PT

Written by Jim Dalrymple

MG Siegler describing Microsoft’s nightmare.

Tvaddic

That’s a pretty good “nightmare” to have.
- JohnDoey
  
  No, it’s not. They moved 40 million licenses but only have 15 million users (Comscore) after a month. iOS gained more users than that over the past month.
  
  Understsnd that the Mac part of Microsoft’s business is totally gone. The Intel Mac took it. All of Microsoft’s sales compete with iPads at the $300–$800 price points. Microsoft still has Mac-style apps that run on XP/Vista/7/8, but there is not a lot of demand for those apps because when you buy a $2500 Adobe Creative Suite, you buy a computer that is $999 or up, and those are over 90% Mac. So Microsoft needs iPad-style apps to suit the $400 PC buyer who is their average customer today. But Microsoft’s all-new iPad-style apps only run on Windows 8 (15 million users,) Windows Phone 8 (less than 1 million users,) and Windows RT (3 million users.) That is fewer users than iPad 2 all by itself. So what is going to inspire mobile developers to get Windows PC’s and developer tools and make apps for Windows 8? Microsoft themselves does not even have a Metro version of Office. Microsoft themselves treat Windows 8 as something that is happening in a few years from now. But Windows PC sales are down 20% compared to last year, and iPad is up 100% again. Within a couple of years, iPad will be outselling Windows PC’s. The Windows 8 apps needs to be built by now. Microsoft should have done a Metro layer for Windows 7 and shipped it for free. There just aren’t enough new PC users to attract software developers to learn a whole new kind of Windows app development that doesn’t run on XP/Vista/7, which is 99.9% of the installed base.
  
  Windows 7 PC’s still outsell Windows 8 PC’s. Is Windows 7 going to finally best the Mac? No. It is meaningless. The $400 price point where Windows sells needs apps made for users who paid $400 for their computer. Those are $5 iMovie and $10 Keynote, sold with 1-click, no hassle, just works. Microsoft is just too far behind in the new low-end PC market that has been redefined by iPad.
  - Tvaddic
    
    Selling more Windows 7 PCs than you newest operation system isn’t totally bad. It be worse if Macs or Chrome OS laptops sold more units than Windows 8. CEOs and other employees have iPads, but much more employees have laptops.
http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido

Perhaps “nightmare” is a bit of a strong word to describe a decline in relevance that’s slow enough for anyone to spin as inconsequential.
- JohnDoey
  
  Microsoft lost money last quarter, their stock is flat for the entire 21st century, sales of Windows PC’s are down 20% from last year even though Windows 8 just shipped, the best-selling PC at every price point from $329 up is Apple branded and does not run Windows and does not need any Microsoft apps, the $300–$800 PC market where almost all Windows systems get sold is experiencing growth only in iPads, yet only less than 1% of Windows systems over the next year will have touch, and even fewer will have 10 hour battery life. The mobile software developers that Microsoft needs to make the kind of “pop apps” that the $300–$800 PC market wants are all on Macs for many, many years now. Even the ones making Android, which is Java, which Microsoft tried to destroy and a court had to remedy that. Nobody wants to invest in Microsoft with their money (flat stock) and software developers don’t want to invest their money and time either. The majority of computers sold today now have ARM architecture, but Microsoft has almost no ARM software, everything they did since 1996 just got thrown out, and Windows NT for ARM version 1.0 is “Windows Phone 8” and “Windows RT,” and it is huge and buggy and almost no apps. Intel Macs are the only Intel systems experiencing growth. Most of Microsoft’s software assets are Intel-bound as the users of those assets move to ARM en masse to get devices with double the battery, and half the weight and size. Microsoft just wrapped up years of work by shipping Windows 8, which did not inspire any Windows PC sales growth, and at their pace, they have nothing new for the next 2–3 years. Microsoft still hasn’t outsold the original iPad when it comes to tablet PC’s, and today the top 5 tablet PC’s of all time are all iPads. And other than high-end Mac workstations for coders and designers and music studios and so on, all any ody wants to buy is mobile tablet PC’s. They for with the Wi-Fi and 3G/4G we are all soaking in all the time. They have no answer to iPad eating the low-end PC market same as they had no answer to Intel Mac eating the high-end.
  
  Nightmare.
  - http://twitter.com/Moeskido Moeskido
    
    Yes, I understand that they’re doing dismally.
    
    The company’s stock price is doing far better than such a dismal nonperformer would otherwise merit. The popular press and the market are still propping up this dinosaur to that degree. Ballmer doesn’t have to acknowledge the nightmare.
http://twitter.com/CallMeSteveToo Andrew Ogg

Well, there are a couple things here:

At release to upgrade to Windows 7 was $120 for Home Premium. For Windows 8 they knocked that down to $40. So while the number of downloads of Windows 8 > Windows 7, their revenue is likely lower and that’s before inflation is taken into consideration.

Secondly, while the business world was rather slow to adopt Windows 7, preferring to stick with XP because they didn’t really see a reason to upgrade, eventually many businesses did so. I’m not sure I see that in Windows 8′s future. The combined Desktop/Metro experience really doesn’t lend itself to business. I might be completely wrong there, but could you see a call center stepping over themselves to upgrade to WIndows 8 after just upgrading to Windows 7? I can’t.

So “nightmare” is probably the wrong word, but I don’t think things are looking all that bright in Redmond these days.
- JohnDoey
  
  They did not have 40 million downloads, they distributed 40 million licenses to PC vendors. Many will go to users of Windows 7 PC’s who won’t upgrade their software because the entire concept is foreign to them.
  
  The actual users matter now. Software is sold per the network on a per-user basis now, not sold in lots of 10,000 to CIO’s. Nobody is going to make Windows 8 apps until there are a ton of users. Windows 8 won’t even pass XP for more than 2 years.
  
  Business is buying iPads in lots of thousands at a time. They are going from XP to iPad. I have consulted at companies where users refused Windows 7 training (1 week!) and demanded to be left on XP, so the company gave them iPads and another year of XP, and then the users stopped using their XP. Those XP systems are just going to be retired next year. Remember that people who go from XP to iPad 4 are moving over 10 years into the future, and they go from a fuzzy LCD full of grey to no visible pixels on a wide gamut color managed display that responds to their touches. It is done after 5 minutes. Microsoft is losing those customers.
  - http://twitter.com/CallMeSteveToo Andrew Ogg
    
    John, you’re all over the map there. I was simply dealing with the numbers MS has provided. Frankly, while it does matter, from a purely software sale standpoint the iPad and Macs should be ignored since the available marketplace for Windows 8 is still over a billion PCs that are out there somewhere.
    
    For the short term, there’s plenty of room for a PC market and the iOS market. I was just pointing out that Redmond can point to 40 million downloads all the want, but those downloads are worth a heck of a lot less than they were 3 years ago when Windows 7 was released since they’ve slashed prices (as low as $14.99 in some cases).
    
    My comments on the Enterprise aspect (a word MS loves to use) is purely my opinion having worked in corporate IT for many years. I just can’t see companies on mass moving to Windows 8, not because of lack of Apps, but because it took them 10 years to get off XP and I just don’t see them moving to Windows 8 in such a short period of time on Windows 7.