Posted on 07/17/2013 8:09:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In the late 1990s, a single technology company became so unfathomably rich and powerful--and so hellbent on dominating not just its own industry but a massive and rapidly growing new one--that the U.S. government dragged the company into court and threatened to break it up over anti-trust violations. The case was settled, and the company, Microsoft, agreed to play nicer.
But it turned out that the world had nothing to worry about. As often happens in the technology industry, what has really destroyed Microsoft's choke hold on the global personal computing market over the past 15 years hasn't been a legal threat but a market shift.
Just when it looked like Microsoft's vision of the PC as the center of the tech world would lead to the creation of the world's first trillion-dollar company, the Internet came along.
And it washed over the PC industry like a tidal wave swallowing a pond.
In terms of market value, Microsoft's loss of power has long been visible: The stock is still trading at about half the level it hit at the peak of the tech boom 13 years ago. The effects on the actual PC industry fundamentals have taken longer to develop, but they are also now crystal clear.
Microsoft's "Windows monopoly" hasn't been so much destroyed as rendered irrelevant. Thanks to the explosion of Internet-based cloud computing and smartphones, tablets, and other mobile gadgets, the once all-powerful platform of the desktop operating system has now been reduced to little more than a device driver. As long as your gadget can connect to the Internet and run some apps, it doesn't matter what operating system you use.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Where do hybrid devices fit in this? Like a surface pro? tablet or laptop?
We are finally getting monitors with the size and resolution to really fully utilize the windows concept and what do they do, introduce full screen apps and call it modern.
Go figure.
Android is java running on Linux . Yes a full computer OS in every sense of the word.
Really, I just can’t figure it out except to think it is the need of newbie’s to make their mark and re-invent the wheel every3-5 years with new buzz words that mean the same thing as old terms but they get to write white papers.
I firmly believe this cloud initiative, while rooted in a good concept of cost savings on hardware and processor time, will come full circle when people get tired of having no control over their data. I think the whole cloud thing is popular because as a whole our society is truly less tech savvy than they think they are and the internet craze is just a way to dumb down the presentation layer.
You are correct. That is exactly what happened.
Larry Ellison who as beneficiary of CIA data contracts paid the Clinton machine to go after Gates. If Gates had played ball by ponying up his contribution the Clinton machine would have offered Ellison a consolation prize.
But Gates was defiant thinking he didn’t need to listen, that they had nothing on him or Microsoft that could stick against Microsoft’s war chest and its lawyers. He was wrong.
Now Gates is a contributing left wing supporter. Mission accomplished.
And in fact our fellow Freepers should know that most of the leaders in technology and internet such as Google, Apple, Amazon are all compliant left wing supporters not because of their beliefs but because it’s just good business to them.
There’s more to this, much more but most people don’t know the black off-book world that funds a lot of tech giants and sustains them and allows them to dominate markets.
REally?
Android doesn’t run on laptops or desktops. It runs on phones and tablets. It is silly putting Android and Windows in the same category.
It’s like saying a bike is the same as a car because they both have wheels.
And no it doesn’t matter if it is based on Linux.
Still waiting on your answer to my question, professor.
Yup. MS lost some market share to iPads and Macs, and freaked out and made the situation worse by trying to copy the nonintuitive (for PC users at least) interfaces of Mac products. When users complained, they doubled down and similarly changed the entire Windows interface to something the customers didn’t want.
Seems to me that Microsoft’s current problems are partially due to their own bad decisions and unresponsiveness to their own customers. The unresponsiveness was bad enough when MS just made the occasional bonehead move, but now that they’ve gone “full retard”, it is not tolerable in the least.
If ha cannot answer that question, why should we listen to his opinion of an OS, since he cannot even define what he's talking about?
Seriously true! Heck, I'd rather use Win98 than the new UI-stuff.
...what has really destroyed Microsoft’s choke hold on the global personal computing market over the past 15 years hasn’t been a legal threat but the fact that it SUCKS!!!
It's not silly if, using your analogy, people abandon using cars because they are switching to bicycles. It's a matter of what people are using, not the spec sheets.
Not so fast. Microsoft continues to post billions of dollars in revenues and profit year after year. The MS Office division alone will be a cash cow for many more years to come. I personally subscribe to the Office 365 product and that is a fantastic deal. I get to put Office on up to five of my PCs, devices - or Macs.
Microsoft may not be getting all the attention they used to get but they are a very powerful corporation that continues to print money. If you are a shareholder, I would stay put and reap the dividends.
“When is the last time you heard people talk about Microsoft?”
I’ve heard LOTS of people talking about Microsoft lately, if you count cursing at Windows 8 as talking.
“Where do hybrid devices fit in this? Like a surface pro? tablet or laptop?”
They don’t. For someone who really needs the capabilities of a PC, either a conventional laptop or desktop are just fine. All of these bizzaro from factors are simply desperate gimmicks by the PC industry to try to save an industry that’s drastically shrinking primarily because simpler, cheaper, and more robust devices have come out that do most of what most users need to do with a PC, namely read email and surf the web. And none of those devices run Windows. And every last one of these gimmicky devices that DOES run Windows is going to fail.
People of the world have endured decades of victimization by Windows operating systems that have been bloated, buggy, balky, fragile and virus prone. Now people finally have alternatives, and none of these alternatives involve Microsoft products. Which is why Microsoft and their partners’ attempts to revive their fortunes by putting Windows on mobile (and bizarre) devices are doomed. People don’t WANT Windows on their mobile devices. They bought their mobile devices precisely because they were fleeing Windows.
I just did.
I GET that in the deranged desire of some people to show how people are abandoning the Windows OS, they decided to now count a mobile OS (that mostly runs on cell phones) as the same as Windows (that runs on equipment that Android isn’t), but that does not make Android a desktop OS and the same as Windows.
Just like with marriage, just because two men say that they want to be “married” does not mean the definition changes. And in the case of OSs, just because you have a OS that mostly runs on phones, being used by lots of people, does not mean that how we defined OSs for 30 years changes to include the stuff running on your cell phone. Why not count the OSs on PlayStations and Xboxes or the Wii? Those run programs too, can connect to the internet as well.
Of course they're not the same. But it is true that people aren't buying as many desktops because their smartphones/tablets serve their needs. In that sense, comparing Windows to Android or iOS does make sense, because they're competing for the same dollars.
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