Well, nothing's gonna last forever, but do I expect to see Microsoft as a leader in the next couple of years, I definitely do.
To start off I listened to Steve Ballmer at Microsoft CEO Summit 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/ceosummit/liveevent.aspx. He sounded really optimistic about the future and mentioned five key areas of competitive advantage:
1. best talent
2. balanced investment
3. innovating in the right areas
4. product flow
5. future bet: cloud
Listening to Microsoft CEO is kind of biased but still to me as a happy PC user he sounded quite convincing. I must admit though that I'm quite a conservative person when it comes to technology. But setting conservativeness aside, I have to be objective. Microsoft is by far the leader in Desktop OS, browsers and it's all time winning solution, the Microsoft Office. Competitors are getting innovative but Microsoft can always follow and it will pay off in their case. Users will not change to competitors that easily. Moreover, by being the follower, Microsoft can capitalise on improving the weaknesses of the competitors.
I tried to analyse Google Docs just for example. Google Docs becomes increasingly popular but is it really better than Microsof Office Live? It seems that the main advantage of Google Docs is the real-time collaboration, whereas all the rest of the features are better with Microsoft. http://www.pcworld.com/article/168309/microsoft_office_vsgoogle_docs_a_web_apps_showdown.html
Microsoft products have bugs of course but well it does not preclude them from having the largest market share. I don't want to talk about Vista and it's failure. The idea was not executed correctly and I think Microsoft is huge enough to afford that.
It's a huge corporation and has got the right talent and enough finances to be able to research, innovate, follow and continue to be the leader. I don't think Microsoft is going to give up anytime soon...
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100% agree
ReplyDeleteMarket Share will do decline though and MS will do face threats from Google moves and specially in the mobile device market like smartphones (Windows Mobile has just 7% maket share here), but, i am sure they got the talent to keeping it rolling...
Monopoly days will soon be over though... that's at least my humble opinion! =) We do have a good alternative choice now! =) even for enterprises!
Hey Irina. I really liked what you had to say about Google Docs. It´s amazing what they´ve managed to do with online collaboration--my old company is rolling out a major sharepoint upgrade, and STILL they can´t edit one document across two users with Microsoft.
ReplyDeleteBut aside from that, Google Docs simply can´t hold a candle to what MS Office can do. The thing is simply inelegant. And as you know, I´m a committed Google Docs user. But that was based on price, and even that may change when you consider that right now Office 2010 is a free Beta Download.