Posted on 08/15/2012 8:36:37 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Edited on 08/15/2012 6:46:20 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
As we get closer to the launch of Microsoft
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Microsft - we strive to be second in both timing and quality.
We guarantee it.
There is no way they can make any money selling it at $199. At least Google and Amazon can go with the Razor vs Blades theory...sell the tablet around cost simply to get people tied into to Amazon or Google selling the content for the device.
But Microsoft doesn’t have that.
RE: we strive to be second in both timing and quality.
I don’t know...
Microsoft has most often been second in almost everything, and then go on to crush the competition.
Count them...
* Lotus came out with the spreadsheet — LOTUS 1-2-3, Microsoft crushes them with Excel, the most dominant spreadsheet product on the planet.
* Ashton-Tate came out with Dbase II and then Dbase III and IV for the PC. Microsoft then came out with Access and later, SQL Server and crushed almost all competition on the Windows market for databases.
* Remember Word Perfect? Microsoft crushed them with WORD. Anybody still using WordPerfect today?
* Then came Microsoft Office, which killed everyone of the above products.
* Remember the PC networking company Novell with their Netware product? Microsoft came out later with their own networking product. Where is Netware today?
* The XBOX came later than the Nintendo products and is now one of the most dominant game consoles in the industry.
* As a software developer, I can count the number of Integrated Development Environments (IDE) for C, C++, etc.
Borland, Symantec and Gupta ( later Centura) had excellent products. Even PowerBuilder was hot for several years.
Microsoft Crushed them with Visual Basic and later Visual Studio.
Of course, Microsoft had her duds too — Windows 95, Windows ME, Windows Vista.... but then, they also had huge success that overshadowed their mistakes — Windows XP, Windows 7.
Then there are the uber duds that Microsoft practically gave up on .... ZUNE for one could not compete with Apples’ iTunes.
Internet Explorer came in second too (Netscape was the dominant browser then). But IE, once the dominant browser is being overtaken by Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
It remains to be seen whether Windows 8 will succeed or fail. But I wouldn’t count them out yet.
Bingo!
I disagree on two minor points, Windows 95 and Windows 7 were massive successes.
In fact, Windows 95 really ushered in the internet era because it made it easy to connect to an ISP for the first time.
Windows 7 has 50% of the global OS market now - http://news.yahoo.com/windows-7-market-share-surpasses-50-001054712.html
CE_ME_NT => cement
Microsoft now has about 150,000 apps, so they aren’t found wanting. Yes, Android and Ipad have a lot more apps, but most of the other 350,000 apps that each have are fairly obscure that nobody really uses or looks at.
Microsoft is willing to take a big hit to get into the game and get that vital third position. They will lose a lot of money on the tablet, but make it up by selling Office and a few other programs that are proprietory Microsoft. They will also make up a lot of lost ground by selling accessories.
I think they are also betting that the optimal price point for tablets is under $200 and that tablets will eventually settle into that price range, as they are not supposed to really be as capable as laptops are.
Just to be clear we’re talking about Windows RT, the ARM version right?
I’m a MS guy through and through but I’ll wait for the x86 version to come out.
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