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Darren Waters

Five tasks for Microsoft post-Bill

  • Darren Waters
  • 30 Jun 08, 09:15 GMT

Bill GatesNow that at One Microsoft Way, Redmond, Seattle, what does the future hold for the firm?

Here are the five things that I feel Microsoft urgently needs to do if it hopes to remain as relevant over the next 20 years as it has in the last two decades.

1. Accept there is not One Microsoft Way

Microsoft's attitude to the open source community has veered from the cool to the hostile in the last two decades. For starters, it has claimed the community has violated many of its patents, without actually naming names or dealing in specifics.

The company's goal, according to some in the open source community, has been to crush Linux. And why not, you might argue. Surely every company wants to remove competitors from the landscape?

But Microsoft has abused its monopoly position too often and suffered the legal consequences too many times.

Microsoft's definition of open and interoperable has too often been less than clear, and in its pursuit of building platforms (Windows, Office, Xbox, IPTV, mobile etc) too often it has failed to offer the openness that consumers are crying out for.

But in the last few months the firm has again its commitment to open standards in certain areas. The pledge must be open this time.

2. Get Live Mesh right

Famously late to the net, Microsoft is bending over backwards to embrace the future of the web. With Microsoft is promising a seamless integration between connected devices, and inviting developers to work on the project.

Microsoft has said Live Mesh will be an "open platform". just how open it will be. If Microsoft has any hope of competing with Google then it needs to make Live Mesh as open as possible.

3. Ditch Windows Mobile

According to Windows Mobile has already been overtaken by Apple's iPhone in terms of market share.

To be clear: In a single year Apple has, with just a single phone, achieved a greater market share than all of the OEMs offering phones with Windows Mobile installed. That has to be a slap in the face for Microsoft.

I just don't see the need for Microsoft to be in this market. Running Windows Mobile does not even give users of other Microsoft products, such as Office, any clear advantage over users of other operating systems.

The mobile market right now is a carve up between Linux, RIM (Blackberry) and Symbian. Apple has made modest inroads in the smartphone sector, and Google is lurking on the horizon with Android.

Down the road I can only see Linux, Android and Symbian dominating the global mobile market so if I were Steve Ballmer, I would walk away from Windows Mobile - today.

4. Make Xbox a true platform

The Xbox project has cost Microsoft billions of dollars in investment and start-up costs. More than half a decade in and Xbox is with profit at Microsoft.

Xbox was always a long-term bet: one plank in a strategy to get Microsoft into the living room and to extend its reach beyond the desktop.

It's been a qualified success - millions of Xboxes have been shifted but it is neither the market leader nor the solution to our digital living needs that Microsoft hoped for.

One solution might be to take Xbox and more crucially Xbox Live beyond the console.

Xbox is not just a brand, it is also a potential platform. Why not license the Xbox technology and have it embedded into other CE devices, such as set-top boxes or Blu-ray players, or allow other manufacturers to make their own Xbox consoles?

It's been a that Microsoft will take this route for some time. I hope they do.

Games consoles are unlikely, in my view, to exist as stand-alone entities, or to be primarily games-playing machines, in the coming years. We all know they are becoming multimedia hubs, so why not let other devices absorb the Xbox, rather than having Microsoft trying on its own to turn the Xbox into a device for all seasons?

5. Ditch Vista and get Windows 7 out the door

Forget the sales numbers or install base: Vista has been a failure because for many people it is synonymous with mediocrity.

To many people it was late, expensive, overly complex and bloated; Vista neither delivered on its promise of "Wow" nor marked a genuine improvement on the existing operating system, XP.

No wonder then that Microsoft is already talking up Windows 7, the Vista successor. And if 7 is to succeed where Vista failed, it needs to be on time, cheap and slimline.

In an effort to work on a great range of PCs, Vista ended up being a painful compromise, and in some cases PC firms were guilty of encouraging users to install it on machines that just did not have the power to run it successfully.

Microsoft needs to draw a clear line in the sand for Windows 7 - those that will run the OS fully and without compromise and those that won't.

There needs to be one price and one version only of Windows 7. By all means offer a Server version for Enterprise. But no more Home, Business, Ultimate nonsense.

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    Darren - ditch Windows Mobile?? Are you nuts?? WM will ship over 14 million copies this year and of the top 5 handset makers, only Nokia are not using in their offerings and most are using it in their high end (ie Premium Price) devices...

    Microsoft talks about the 'next billion users' and sees many of these as non-PC platform based - ie Windows mobile derivations. Look at the huge range of devices available already - from conventional form factor phones to tablet machines already in the market and then look at the roadmap from makers such as HTC and Samsung to see what they are planning next.

    WM is a complex product for sure and having one brand name for basic handsets through PDAs to tablet-PC style devices isn't so smart from a branding sense. But, having a single dev platform for a market of 15 million per annum new sales (plus installed base of over 40 million) is very important - look at the application base already available - it is huge and spans all dev types/marketing approaches from free to enterprise grade.

    WM isn't going to and shouldn't go away in my opinion. From what I have read, Microsoft already makes money from this division and most handset/PDA makers are making good money from their devices (or they wouldn't be using it I assume). Having WM in the market also and rather importantly, gives users choice especially those enterprise users (we are not all fashion phone buyers!) who would otherwise have no real choice in the market - RIM would be the only serious option.

    Microsoft is promoting competition to what would otherwise be a completely closed supply chain of one manufacturer owning both hardware and software - we all know that isn't good for the buyer!

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  • Comment number 2.

    @wayneph I've always seen Windows Mobile as an attempt to replicate the desktop ecosystem on the mobile phone sector.
    I just don't think it works.
    I also think the move to open platforms - Symbian, Linux and Android - will put the squeeze commercially on MS in this area.

    I also don't see what anyone gains from using Windows Mobile. What are its technological advantages? I can't think of any. But I'm willing to be convinced.

    As a gamer I've long waited for Microsoft to better connect Xbox and Windows Mobile but that doesn't appear to have happened yet.

    I also think the cloud's importance will mean open systems will triumph because people want data portability.

    Can Windows Mobile offer that?


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  • Comment number 3.

    Windows Mobile (via the .net compact framework) gives developers something that none of the alternatives do - an easy platform to develop software on, free from the restrictions that Apple make.

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  • Comment number 4.

    Wow - brave post, Darren. I take my hat off to you ... and replace it with my tin helmet. MS fanboys at 12 o'clock!

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  • Comment number 5.

    About Windows, Microsoft is taking off where it stopped: from Vista. This is not a good thing to do.

    There has been a dozen of versions of Windows, from Windows 1.0 and each time they try to add more features, improve glitches, makes fixes and correct bugs, correct the fixes that did not work properly.

    What needs to be done is a full overhaul, a total revamp of windows, maybe even from scratch, like Mac did for Max OS X. This could solve a lot of security problems, speed and crash problems, if the core was to be rewritten.

    Think that Windows is close to 20 year old when hardware has a lot improved. It's time for a revamp!

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  • Comment number 6.

    Could I add a sixth? Make my Vista Media Center work as it should!

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  • Comment number 7.

    I'm sure i'll get attacked for saying this but i really like Vista. Now that it's been out for a while software compatibility has been hugely improved, as has stability. It looks much nicer than XP, is more secure (although the annoying prompts take a little bit of getting used to) and the search feature is excellent! The search feature alone stops me going back to XP. Don't get me wrong, XP is a very good operating system but it had most of the same complaints raised against it when it first came out - used too much ram, bad compatibility, was described as just a prettying up and dumbing down of Windows 2000. Not to mention it didn't get anywhere near stable until service pack 2 came out... If it wasn't for the fact that it was following on from the abhorrent Windows Me it might not have been seen in such a good light.

    Re the Xbox - i might be wrong but didn't MS license the "technology" from IBM and AMD in the first place? And in any case do we really want MS extending their monopoly of the home pc market further to encompass even more digital devices? Especially when they are as unreliable as the Xbox...

    Couldn't agree more about windows mobile though - it's dire!

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  • Comment number 8.

    and you also forgot to mention the Zune. Where was that going?

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  • Comment number 9.

    @Rob_78 Nice to hear a Vista user who is happy. A colleague of mine recently re-installed Vista and it seems to be much more stable and overall he is very happy. For a while he was thinking OSX but now he is sticking with Windows.

    I think Vista's problem is perception. The vast majority of people will get Vista with a new PC and probably won't think too much about the controversies.

    But there's a loud contingent who think Vista has failed to deliever. On balance, I think the are probably right. But when you are delivering an OS designed for up to 900m PCs then it's a big task.

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  • Comment number 10.

    Well said Darren, they need to ditch WinMob asap, it is an awful, awful OS for a phone. Who cares that it's available for almost every phone? It's still an awful piece of software, clunky, unintuitive and slow.

    As someone mentioned before, whatever happened to the Zune???? :-)

    If Windows 7 is anything like the demo they gave of it the other week, it'll be a failure before it's even launched. Who on earth will be using a monitor to type? Your arms will fall off before the end of a workday!!!

    They need to copy Apple (something they are good at), and start afresh, with a tried and tested BSD system and build from there. Windows will never work properly in its' current state.

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  • Comment number 11.

    R.e. Zune

    I've got one and I love it. If MS had bothered with a global launch it might have been more sucessful, as it was I bought it on holiday while in the states, and think it could have been a real competitor to the Ipod.

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  • Comment number 12.

    Darren I don't think that was need for the comment on MS Windows Mobile as I think it is a great platform with great potential. For instantaneous look what HTC did with the HTC Touch Diamond they build a customer user interface with touch flow 3D which too many would appeal to consumer and not business. Microsoft approach to the platform is very business focused where as we a consumer鈥檚 want a simple product but people of the younger generation like myself would rather have a stylish and technological piece of material rather than something simple. Microsoft platform has bought developer to create mass market and bespoke software in which some mobile OS can't be done a simply. I know it has problems but doesn鈥檛 everything now days, Apples Mobile OS has problems, Nokia Symbian has it problems to. We will see what Microsoft tweaks and what is done in Windows Mobile 7 due out Q4.

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  • Comment number 13.

    I'm not sure we should consign WinMo to the dustbin yet - let's see what version 7 brings first. I think we also need to understand that the iPhone has the same issue - a proprietary desktop OS cut down to a mobile size - yet it's been fairly successful. Open source development may reap rewards but fundamentally the manufacturers are going to want stable and standardised platforms to work with.

    As for Vista, I agree it's more a perceived than actual issue now although Microsoft scored a series of embarrassing own goals on release which led to a lot of the criticism that we currently hear. That said, I think the tech press has been a little bit naughty in its coverage by latching onto some horribly misleading articles. Of course, those of us that are old enough will remember the same furore over XP's release and how much criticism it came under, most of which lasted until the advent of SP2.

    Finally, you're spot on about Windows 7 - MS need to be absolutely brutal about what it will run on and support and strip it down accordingly and they really need to get rid of the multiple versions. By all means if peopel want extras then they can add user purchasable modules but just have the one core product.

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  • Comment number 14.

    @juuxjuux, All of microsoft's media centers have been heaps of turd. Go for media portal, it has a couple of bugs but they are being ironed out and it has about a billion more features than Media Center

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