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Microsoft to Lay Off 7,800 Employees 'Primarily' in its Phone Business
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So i assume you think apple should get out of the Mac/OSX business since they have a 10% market share ...up from 6% .
So basically Elop and Microsoft destroyed an independent Nokia which strengthened Samsung and was basically neutral for Apple. And I'm sure Elop left both Nokia and Microsoft a very rich man while tens of thousands were laid off. Nice job Ballmer.
Destroyed Nokia (and on its way to destroying MS) is true.
Strengthened Samsung and neutral to Apple is completely false.
Remember those good old days when Apple received 75% of mobile profits and Samsung 26% (-1% to everyone else)? Well the latest numbers are Apple now receives 89% of mobile profits, all of Android receives 11%, and everyone else gets 0%. Samsung is just not doing well these days --- the Galaxy S6 numbers were released yesterday, and they were as disappointing as the Galaxy S5 numbers before them.
Don't worry Windows 10 is coming....unifinished but its coming i should better stick with windows 7 for another 5 years.
That's a real shame, I actually quite like the windows phone interface, it makes apples icons all aver the screen interface look positively dated.
Windows 10 won't save Windows Phone. The Windows phone business is dead. As much as they try to go against this eventually you have to realize that there's nothing you can do about it but to accept it and move on. The average person doesn't even know what a Windows phone is.
Jesus. That page is utterly ridiculous. How hard is it to learn from Apple? Apparently impossible.
That's why I refused to work for cooperations for the rest of my career. Been in a few big cooperations and they're all have the same mindless bosses and their numbers, no human element in there anymore.
Microsoft is on shaky ground when you start looking long term. Up to this point, Microsoft products have been mostly half ass and a me-too approach. Look at their Antivirus solution. It's in last place for detection and security which begs to question of why have an offering at all? Why waste resources on half ass implementations? Microsoft needs to trim down to a small product and service offering then dedicate resources into making them top notch.
When you look at the current generation, everyone is now growing up on Apple and Google products and services. These folks will be the next CIOs and CTOs which means there is a good chance they won't choose Microsoft at all for their tech needs.
When you look at the current generation, everyone is now growing up on Apple and Google products and services. These folks will be the next CIOs and CTOs which means there is a good chance they won't choose Microsoft at all for their tech needs.
The difference is that while Apple may have 10% of the PC business, they have around, 50% of the PC profits.
MS had 0% of the mobile profits.
MS suffers from the fatal flaw of inability to focus. You see it in their software ("do we concentrate on the modern UI or the classic UI? We'll do both! Do we concentrate on PCs or tablets? Both! Do we support the new .NET APIs or the old Win32 APIs? Both! C++ or C#? Both? etc etc")
Compare with Apple who, once they make a decision they are all in. Apple last year says "Swift is our new programming language", and this year every WWDC slide has Swift as the examples, no Objective C. When they realize they've made a mistake (eg offering GC for Objective C) they immediately admit it and deprecate the mistake.)
The biggest version of this MS inability to focus is that they can't decide if they want the reliable profitability of enterprise, or the mass market of consumers. And so, in usual MS fashion, they refuse to choose. But you CANNOT refuse to choose. Enterprise wants endless backward compatibility and very slow change. Consumers want rapid change when that makes sense (as it has over the past few years in how we want PCs to interact with mobile). You can't simultaneously change everything and change nothing. MS tried that with Win8, to universal hatred, and I don't see that they've actually SOLVED the issue with Win10. All they've done is add on YET ANOTHER layer of "we'll do it the old way AND we'll do it the new way, and you choose".
Instead of this One Windows nonsense, they should have gone in the exact opposite direction. Split Windows into a consumer version and an enterprise version; with much the same internal guts (like iOS and OSX) but different UIs, a rapidly changing UI for consumers, a stable one for enterprise. And of course with different names, to prevent confusion ("how come this 'Windows" app doesn't run on my work Windows? --- no-one complains that an iOS app doesn't run on their Mac).
OK then, if it's strict technical accuracy you want, then it's a duopoly. My main point was about the lack of competition not being good for consumers, which is still valid.
You caught me! Actually, my user name is misspelled. I forgot the e-mail address/password I used for it, and I was far to lazy to pursue it, so I made a synonym username.
(no rudeness inferred!)
An independent Nokia didn't have much time left, they started struggling years before they got accquired by MS.So basically Elop and Microsoft destroyed an independent Nokia which strengthened Samsung and was basically neutral for Apple. And I'm sure Elop left both Nokia and Microsoft a very rich man while tens of thousands were laid off. Nice job Ballmer.
Here's where we see the tension of wanting to be more like Apple while having a fundamentally different business model tear a division apart.
iPhone has the distinct advantage of having its hardware and software developed by the same company. Both Google and Microsoft have tried to buy hardware companies to allow them to better integrate, but they've tried to maintain their OEM partners at the same time. Both companies seem to have realized that they can't serve two masters: direct customers and OEMs. They're competing with their own customers, which is just bad for everybody.
From that letter, it's not clear what's changing. Focusing on three areas: business, low cost devices, and flagship models doesn't seem to narrow the scope much. I get that they want to have devices out there that spur their partners to innovate, but it seems to me this is just more of the asymmetric competition model. MS has an inside track to the technology and will always have a leg up in the market.
I expect there will either be a further shrinking of their hardware business in the future, or they'll pretty much give up on OEMing Windows Phone.
iPhone has the distinct advantage of having its hardware and software developed by the same company. Both Google and Microsoft have tried to buy hardware companies to allow them to better integrate, but they've tried to maintain their OEM partners at the same time. Both companies seem to have realized that they can't serve two masters: direct customers and OEMs. They're competing with their own customers, which is just bad for everybody.
From that letter, it's not clear what's changing. Focusing on three areas: business, low cost devices, and flagship models doesn't seem to narrow the scope much. I get that they want to have devices out there that spur their partners to innovate, but it seems to me this is just more of the asymmetric competition model. MS has an inside track to the technology and will always have a leg up in the market.
I expect there will either be a further shrinking of their hardware business in the future, or they'll pretty much give up on OEMing Windows Phone.
Windows Phones are now much lower than Apple share ever was. Only the tablet space could possibly save them in mobile; the 2 year will tell.
A mass market device sold for 5 years and people keep out vs a device sold in UK for a few months, which is seen for mere seconds at a time... and which otherwise could be hidden. Hmmm... If you actually had seen more watches that would be extremely weird. So, your whole argument is totally non sequitur.
Thanks, but read my second response. Modern UI is GUI, not the touch-interface. Sorry, if that isn't clear.
Well, I'll guess I have to go all in on my BQ Ubuntu then, as there'll be no more development on the Windows Phone I guess.
Got my first iPhone more or less on launch day 2007, but when I saw WP7 in 2012 there was no going back. iOS was feeling stale already in 2010-11 and every time I start my iPad I'm baffled that people still consider the patchwork that is iOS8 as something good?
WP was a new take on the UI not like the iOS rip-off Android but something genuinely new. Can't believe that MS is actually moving away from the tile UI in W10, I always though that they would get rid of that stone age desktop analogy that has crippled GUIs for years instead!
Got my first iPhone more or less on launch day 2007, but when I saw WP7 in 2012 there was no going back. iOS was feeling stale already in 2010-11 and every time I start my iPad I'm baffled that people still consider the patchwork that is iOS8 as something good?
WP was a new take on the UI not like the iOS rip-off Android but something genuinely new. Can't believe that MS is actually moving away from the tile UI in W10, I always though that they would get rid of that stone age desktop analogy that has crippled GUIs for years instead!
The Nokia patent portfolio is worth billions. I wonder if Nadella is thinking about auctioning this IP? Apple, Google, Samsung, etc., would certainly be interested. It would recoup some of Ballmer's mal investments.
Welcome to the future where we return to feudalism, serving at the pleasure of the 1%. Or you could just start start your own multinational corporation I suppose.
Bravo on having some actual good ideas and a well thought out response.
Who knows if the initial number was 12,000 and MS did use some of those tactics to whittle it down to 8,000 or if they just did as you inferred and flat out laid them off. If they did not at least try, then I 100% agree with you. It's tough when a company is publicly held. It's not always up to the CEO or the company, they have to answer to the shareholders, which are average joe's like you and I with 401k's. If they don't make the tough decisions to improve the bottom line, our retirement portfolios don't increase as we would like them.
At the end of the day, I think all companies should strive to find a balance. Not like what Bob Nardelli did to Home Depot. That used to be a helluva place for a minion, as you called it
to work. Now they can only attract inexperienced college-aged kids.