I think Microsoft is starting to enter a moribund cycle, where it offers more high cost, high margin things to a smaller group of customers.
The alternative to this, that they just can’t wrap their minds around, is the creation of hardware, not just software.
They could easily buy up a bunch of the hardware movers and shakers, and consolidate them in a subsidiary company that would create technology for use far down the road. Somewhat like Bell Labs used to do for AT&T, though AT&T never exploited what they invented as well as they could have.
For example, what if this hardware company made humanoid robots, with all the underlying software unique to Microsoft? Don’t think entirely self contained, but using an internal “primitive brain”, a very powerful local computer as a WiFi “mid-brain”, and a supercomputer as a “higher brain”.
Every robot they made would contribute to the learning of all robots. Proprietary knowledge owned by Microsoft.
They tried hardware already. They churned out the Zune (failure), the xBox (commercial success but financial failure due to defective hardware replacement rate and costs - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems), the Kin phones (failures) and the Surface ‘block’ and tablets (failures.)