What Microsoft Must Do To Save Its Mobile Business 250
GMGruman writes "Microsoft has tossed out its mobile management team (without admitting to doing so), but is that enough to make Microsoft matter in mobile? InfoWorld's Galen Gruman argues that a lot more is needed than a management change if Microsoft hopes to have a future in the emerging mobile world. In his blog, he lays out a tough five-point prescription for Microsoft to get back in the game. For starters, Microsoft has to get out of its well-established cultural mindset that it's OK to ship crap that it might fix later on."
Just give up. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think maybe the best answer here is to just surrender. "Mobile? It's not our thing. We wanted it to be our thing - we tried. But we're not good at it." While they're at it maybe they should get out of search and online ads too.
I'm symbolset and the lack of Windows Phone 7 was my idea.
Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
For starters, Microsoft has to get out of its well-established cultural mindset that it's OK to ship crap that it might fix later on."
That is pure bullshit. It works for literally everyone else, including Apple. Or is all the stuff in iPhone OS 4.0 that Steve said wasn't included because it would make the iPhone suck not sufficient evidence for you? How about all the functionality in Android 2.1 that seems mandatory? This story is (-1, Troll).
Re:Just give up. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope.
The answer is to find a Phone giant (Nokia) and take the best of both worlds and make an OS that utterly kicks arse.
Nokia hardware rocks. Nokia's software as of late (S60) is buggy to hell and back. If they both got together they could make it big. Nokia making their superior phone hardware, Microsoft ditching the joke that is their mobile OS and starting over with a REAL os that has potential (and design it so carriers cant cripple it) they could give the other two a real run for their money.
S60 has potential if it was fixed up with a os company behind it.. WM7-Whatever it is has no chance at all. It's a mess.
Re:Just give up. (Score:5, Insightful)
The word is "office" (Score:4, Insightful)
The reason microsoft succeeded was because they wrote a great application called Word. In it's time it was truly great compared to the competition (word perfect for example). Other than being comprehensive and less clunky than open office it's not such a remarkable product anymore. But if you are bussiness or Govt you have to have a copy of it. It's the standard and you always get some document that the emulators don't open correctly, so you have to use it no matter what processor you prefer.
Windows I think rode on the coat-tails of this. Windows mac was a superior product up through version 5 but it was not fully compatible with the Windows version. As a result, windows OS became the preferred operating system for providing compatibility of word documents. This choice was cemented by the fact that windows ran on cheaper computers. But I think it was Word that was pulling the buggy, not the OS.
Ironically, Word 6 made the Mac and PC versions more interoperable by removing the advanced features from the mac product. But by then the product offered an integrated environment on the PC with outlook and server systems. So it still was better to use the PC than the Mac version for business.
If you were starting over today, the huge standardization on word probably would not happen.
This is the boat MS is in now with mobile computing. Word is behind the curve on being a first rate mobile product. If they don't get something better out there people may start to standardize on something else once the reasons become compelling enough.
I think that microsoft is fully capable of producing a first class mobile computing set of tools. Why they haven't is mysterious to me.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I think your Apple example is counter to your point. They new it would make it suck, so they didn't ship it. The article is asking for any software that ships to be well-designed and to leave it off otherwise.
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit back on you. False comparison. Lacking features != a crappy product. It just means a product that does less. First iPhone OS version didn't have exchange integration or copy/paste, but what was there worked well and was designed to work well. In fact, until Apple was convinced that it could do copy/paste well, it didn't release that feature. That's just not biting off more than you can chew.
There's a gulf of difference between shipping something that's limited in functionality to something that is crappy. Have you ever used the PocketPC PDAs back in the day? I've used a Palm OS-based Handspring and a PocketPC Dell Axim, and let me tell you, the Handspring, with its limited feature set and a slow CPU, did the core PDA things (calendar, todo) a lot better than the Axim. The Axim felt slow (despite a several times faster CPU) and it was harder to work with the calendar (more taps to do things, weird options I didn't need). I hated using it and wrote off PocketPC after that (which is why I never bought a Treo with Windows). That's what "shipping crap" means.
Re:Just give up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope.
The answer is to find a Phone giant (Nokia) and take the best of both worlds and make an OS that utterly kicks arse.
Nokia hardware rocks.
No argument. That would be a sound approach, but for one thing. Microsoft has no experience in making an OS that utterly kicks ass (as we Yanks spell it), especially from scratch, and certainly not on a schedule that would be required to stay competitive in the mobile business, where "innovation" is real and ongoing. I know this sounds like stock /. MS bashing, but it's not meant to be. Microsoft's culture and business model is a poor fit for the wireless industry.
Re:Bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)
Bullshit back on you. False comparison. Lacking features != a crappy product. It just means a product that does less.
Not multitasking == crappy, and even Steve knows it. But you can make excuses for hypocritical backpedaling all day if you like. I already know you're an iFanboy.
First iPhone OS version didn't have exchange integration or copy/paste, but what was there worked well and was designed to work well. In fact, until Apple was convinced that it could do copy/paste well, it didn't release that feature. That's just not biting off more than you can chew.
Comparing Exchange integration and C&P is extremely disingenuous. Copy & Paste has been with us even longer than the GUI. Not implementing it is stupid, especially when the meaningful competition universally has it.
Have you ever used the PocketPC PDAs back in the day? I've used a Palm OS-based Handspring and a PocketPC Dell Axim, and let me tell you, the Handspring, with its limited feature set and a slow CPU, did the core PDA things (calendar, todo) a lot better than the Axim.
Having owned a Palm Pro w/2MB upgrade and a Visor Deluxe, as well as an iPaq H2215 (putting aside my GRiDPad 1910 and 2390) I think you're full of shit. Waiting for the Palm devices was an exercise in frustration. The user interfaces were primitive beyond belief. Even as a supernerd I found it more convenient to just write notes on paper, even while I was carrying my Visor. Both WinCE and PalmOS are lame, to about equal degrees, though in different ways.
Re:Just give up. (Score:5, Insightful)
There may be WinMo phones that "spec wise pound the iphone to dust", but impressive hardware is nothing if the software on top of it drives users into fits of rage. There may be a lot of things that a WinMo phone can do that my iPhone can't, but one of them happens to be "piss me off on a daily basis." And I'm just fine with that.
Re:Just give up. (Score:4, Insightful)
I dislike "proof by anecdote" at least as much as the next guy, but I do not know one solitary person with a Windows Mobile device. On the other hand, I know at least a dozen with either IPhone OS or Android. Personally, I don't care if MS manages to make it in the consolidated computing (my new term for mobile) market, as long as they ship a browser with CSS3/HTML5 support and then transparently - to the user - keep it up to date.
I see the future in hardware/OS-transparent computing, in other words, don't ever ask if I want to upgrade to the latest version of the browser - that is too much info. Apple had it right from the beginning - ship a box with a keyboard and don't require the customer to figure out the hardware. And with the current generation of hand held devices one need not think about browser, file systems, etc., to have a rich experience. That is the future where literally everyone operates a hand held computer every day for even the most common tasks, and in that world people need not worry about anything but how to turn it on.
Re:Just give up. (Score:4, Insightful)
Drop the Windows philosophy (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with Windows Mobile is that MS has tried to leverage the Windows philosophy to mobile when it wasn't appropriate. They purposely made the OS be more Windows like even though the codebase has no relation to the Windows NT codebase. Yet at the same time it was sufficiently different from Windows desktop to frustrate users. While touch is available to WM phones, they didn't design the OS to use a different UI instead relying on the desktop UI with a few tweaks. In that aspect they just switched a mouse for a stylus and called it done.
They got away with it for a while because there wasn't much competition for them because they were really the only game in town for corporate users. Then RIM came along. But they weren't worried. But MS didn't think about for consumers as much.
Apple didn't bother to compete with MS in the corporate smart phone arena; they were making a consumer smart phone which was an under-served area. Apple when designing a smart phone realized that a consumer has different needs than a corporate user. They designed the UI and OS to be different.
Also in terms of hardware, MS has followed the same philosophy. They just make the software and other companies use it on their hardware. Problem for MS is some of their hardware partners put out crap. While Windows Mobile isn't the most stable OS out there, some of their partners exacerbate problems with their shoddy hardware. Apple doesn't have this problem because they control the whole stack. I'm not saying that MS should do that but they should do a better job of working with their partners to make sure Windows 7 isn't sabotaged by the hardware.
Re:They need to find a marketplace for themselves. (Score:5, Insightful)
One huge disadvantage of a Windows phone today - the OS cannot be upgraded. Apple and Android come out with new versions every few months, with shiny new features, and people download and enjoy them. Since Microsoft doesn't sell Windows Mobile to consumers (it sells to phone manufacturers) when Microsoft releases new version of the OS, you are usually out of luck.
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
If you hate Apple then just have the balls to say it and move on, but your rant is not relevant to the discussion. Apple shipped a very good initial iPhone OS. It may not have had the features you wanted, but it was solid, stable and worked well.
You're just a hater, and that's alright, but at least be honest about it. You're equating a buggy, shitty product with a product that doesn't have the features you think it should have, and to you use your own phrasing, that is disingenuous.
From my exposure as a developer (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft lucked up, then fucked up. Palm had the market cornered, but their OS didn't scale as well when people were starting to look to their phones for more functionality (the Treo came out a bit too late to save their dominance). Windows CE was an inefficient behemoth with an interface that was not at all tailored to small mobile screens. But, it had the features people wanted at the time and when hardware caught up with it, Windows CE dominated for a while. The familiarity and comfort of their brand was enough to get people using misplaced UI metaphors like start buttons and microscopic icons. Then, for some screwball reason Microsoft decided to effectively stick their mobile development in the backyard shed. They didn't do anything to address the serious bugginess and quirkiness of their support libraries like ActiveSync and the Windows Mobile Device Center app just complicated the desktop/device synchronization problem. If mobile development was a basketball game, I'd call the FBI in to investigate them for point shaving. But, I have to assume that their leadership simply didn't want to deal with it, just as they didn't want to deal with the Internet back in the late 80s.
So, just as they had sat idly by as fortune smiled upon them, they sat idly as their flawed platform drove more competitors into the market and customers away from them. Unlike sappy romantic comedies, you can't piss in your cornflakes, then expect a heartfelt speech will make everything alright by the time the credits roll.
Re:The word is "office" (Score:4, Insightful)
When MS started selling Word it was a poor imitation of Wordperfect (which was an improved imitation of Wordstar). The other key element of what is now MS Office, Excel was a poor imitation of Lotus 1-2-3. Excel was able to gain market share since every new version of DOS would break some of 1-2-3s functionality. MS failed to make as much progress penetrating Wordperfect's dominance until Windows 3.1 came out.
Wordperfect was unable to easily develop a GUI based version that maintained backwards compatibility. MS did not have such a problem since they had developed Word for Windows in conjunction with developing Windows 3.1.
Sorry for such a long response but Word took over because of Windows (and the fact that MS was the only major player who had both an established word processor and an established spreadsheet when Windows came out) not Windows because of Word. When Windows came out MS already owned the PC OS market.
Re:They need to find a marketplace for themselves. (Score:3, Insightful)
Current day Microsoft has been slapped around enough by the EU over antitrust issues that they don't dare pull that sort of shit anymore. Free MS from their anti-trust shackles, however, and they would very quickly move in a dominate the phone market if they cared to.
I disagree - the iPhone was released long after most of the antitrust issues, and lots of smartphones ran Windows Mobile then.
Frankly, they weren't very popular outside of businesses. (And inside of businesses, Blackberry devices were generally just as popular if not more so). And with good reason - while I'm aware it's a totally different product, Microsoft somehow managed to take most of the annoyances of Windows and implement them in Windows Mobile. When it works it's fine, when it doesn't - which affects everyone sooner or later - it seems to go out of its way to make fixing the problem difficult. Yet Microsoft continued to sell this supremely mediocre product with little sign of planning to give it the thorough overhaul it needed, and it wasn't until Apple basically appeared out of nowhere and said to the world "Here's our new phone. Do you like it?" that Microsoft sat up and realised that they would have to compete if they wanted to remain in the market.
Re:They should embrace Android (Score:4, Insightful)
I never would have thought I'd be in this place. I love linux. I want computers to be open.
And Apple COMPUTERS are open. Full and free set of developer tools included on every MAC OS DVD. I have a whole host of open software on my laptop, ranging from R to Virtualbox. It depends on what you call a "computer" and what that means in terms of how you use it, how you interface with it, and what it does.
And now I really want Microsoft to stand up and push back against the closed Apple iPad model. I want them to come out really hard, and push something more open, and I want them to run ads explaining why Apple's way is a bad idea.
Apple is delivering an incredible and unique experience NOW. Microsoft, Linux, Android, etc, will not deliver a comparable experience this year (though there will be first-attempt slates based on these, just not comparable)... perhaps next year, eh? Meanwhile, I have four different book/research-paper apps, three comms/network apps, a RPN calculator, multiple drawing apps, multiple photo editing apps, a word processor, a spreadsheet, a presentation program (VGA output, too), photos, movies, music, multiple Twitter clients (and multiple other-social-media clients), games, flight tracking, GPS, multiple network sync/disk options, games out the wazoo, email, web browsing, task list managers, calendar, etc, etc. All on my iPad. Now.
It has a long battery life, incredible build quality and beauty, a wonderful feel, is totally natural to interface with, and I use it all day long. Apple's way is a "bad idea", how exactly?
Yes, yes, open is good. I just joined the OpenStreetMap site today, for example. But "open" is not necessarily as open as you think: cellphone restrictions on Android devices, for example, or the inability to upgrade an Android device to the latest OS, or apps being removed from the Android store, though people claimed that could never happen. And "closed" is not necessarily too closed for intended applications.
The whole point is that the iPad is not a computer in the traditional sense of the word. Just as your car is not a computer, even though it has an incredible number of CPUs in it and multiple networks connecting them. Who knows, perhaps iMacs will become iPad-like computers, with full MacOS, including developer tools, on it? But iPads are a different KIND of device and waiting years for open, general-purpose computers to look and feel a lot like an iPad doesn't really make sense. (And to repeat myself in a more metaphorical way, "'Open', you keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means."
Re:Ship now! It's the only way! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but shipping crap that may or may not get fixed later on is how the entire industry works.
Actually, no. And the iPad is a good example. Quite a few no-brainer things were left out because they could not get them right: camera (there's a hole there for it, it's just not there), stock app, weather app, Book/PDF markup, printing, over-the-air sync'ing, etc. What is delivered is elegant and works well.
Yes, there are bugs. I have had apps crash. (Though interestingly, perhaps because of the lack of multi-tasking at this point, I've not lost any data.) No software is perfect, and certainly there will always be the tension between the suits -- who want to ship -- and the coders -- who often want perfection. But Microsoft did set the bar very high in terms of shipping software that is as close to useless, unusable, and outdated as possible yet still getting customers to buy it. I've gone with x.0 releases on many (non-MS) products over the years and NOT been burned (okay, on the iPad, I waited for the x.0.1, i.e. the 3G). It's not as widespread as you make out.