Midpack
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Though there still appear to be some PC centric users here, it won't come as a surprise to most as the once mighty Microsoft's continues to slide from innovator to the equivalent of a public utility (some claim as soon as 2017).
Microsoft, capitulation and the end of Windows Everywhere — Benedict Evans
Microsoft, capitulation and the end of Windows Everywhere — Benedict Evans
As (hopefully) we all now understand, mobile is replacing the PC as the dominant computing platform. Smartphones sell in much larger numbers, have a much larger user base and are already close to taking a larger share of internet use than the PC in leading markets (such as the USA and UK). PCs aren't going away any time soon, any more than faxes or mainframes did, but they are the past, not the future.
So, Microsoft has missed mobile. Consumer PCs, slowly, will be a shrinking platform. Meanwhile weakness in mobile also bleeds back to the desktop and undermines Office. The shift away from the PC will be slower in the enterprise than in consumer internet, and so will the rise of alternative software models. But as I discussed here, the rise of SaaS services and new productivity models on one hand and more and more capable mobile devices on the other means that Office, and hence desktop Windows in the enterprise, is also probably a declining model. You may need a PC to run Office, but you can no longer assume you'll be running Office at all.
This brings us to capitulation. The new CEO is acknowledging the end of 'Windows Everywhere' as the driving strategic engine for Microsoft, and also acknowledging the decline of Microsoft Office as the monolithic, universal experience for productivity. Windows Phone is no longer the centre of the strategy (if it survives at all as anything more than a Nexus-like niche). Microsoft is also suggesting that Xbox is not strategically core either, reflecting the reality that it will be the smartphone, not the TV or a box plugged into it, that will be the hub of the digital experience for most people. The smartphone is the sun and everything else orbits it.
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