@Drael646464
and when it comes to tablets, unless it's a 2 in 1, it's not doing that great either. No one thinks, tablet = Microsoft.
Feel free to not read it, the forum is for everyone after all.
Windows tablets are the strongest growing sector of tablets, while the market as a whole has been shrinking (including Samsung and apple). I work in tablets, as a market, and I watch the markets very closely.
I don't think I'd describe MS as 'on the back foot in tablets', more like pressing the charge.
I think the tablet market though has struggled too much with imitation. They need some leadership. 8.9 is a far better size for windows than 8 (without a stylus). And 9.7 shouldn't be avoided either (which windows OEMs seem to have, despite its popularity). Nor should something under nine inches come without LTE - and that size, a lot of people are interested for the mobility.
Smartphones yeah, they have a less than 1% marketshare, and a 1-2.5% installed userbase (actual users). It's definitely not as good as it was, and those people who have windows phones aren't upgrading.
Fortunately for MSFT, their medium term market strategy doesn't rely on smartphone marketshare. Its all centred on tablets, hybrids and notebooks - areas where they have either dominance or momentum. (Although really I should not be excluding gaming, vr and the console, because those are also big markets that will play in to the UWP bid)
Only two years in, and UWP, its pretty nascent as a first to market hybrid OS platform. There's a lot to unfold yet, in realistic terms, UWP is young, it hasn't had much time to grow. For the timespan, its doing very well, especially considering how resistant people are to change.
When apple hit its wall in desktop it didn't double down on macs, it stripped back expenses, and developed. It played it's strengths and innovated, using a persistant vision. That's what I see with modern MS (Was never really a fan of balmers choices)
Any consumer then might have thought that was it for apple on the desktop. Dead, done.
They were 90 days from being bankrupt:
https://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/06/02/steve-jobs-90-days/
But not so, now they have 11% marketshare.
Leaders tend to think very differently from followers. They take risk and deal in potentialities and future, enjoy the challenge - they believe in their core abilities.
Followers stick with what they know, until they see their leader consumer friends and peers doing better with something else (early tech adopters). They live their lives in doubt, trading in comfort and familiarity, living in the present and past.
Yes I am a fan of MS, but I am watching this really more from a business strategy POV. It's kinda beautiful to see MSFT attempt to leverage its core business strengths against the problem's related to being first to market with a hybrid OS, in a long play towards expansion into other markets.
The unknown variable is really what apple etc is cooking up - because apple are cooking up some new things, in secret related to AR, and machine learning. All they really need to do apple, to stay relevant, is be relevant (not just on smartphones which is a cash cow that is about to start declining in value). Google also has its own hybrid OS in the works, fuschia.
It's fun and interesting to see these tech companies compete.
So much too depends on MS being able to maintain its new consumer image with things like surface and xbox. To retain a sense of cool. That's a damned good reason for not releasing a phone until its competitive, and even innovative. MS will need to distance itself from mobile, such that when it re-enters the market, it will be seen as distinct from its prior failures.
It's not a guaranteed market winner in smartphones by any measure, MS's long play here, but UWP is the future of the windows platform in general - the platform will die or thrive on it, and I'd happily place money on the growth of UWP in the windows store over the next year or so with these two new OSes. They will have an impact.
The degree depends what the competition might release in that time. Nobody can know the future, all we can do is have educated guesses.
Moreover, smartphones are just not going to be as important as they are now. The predictable and established market trends of tech play in here- saturation is here/nigh. Premium devices will fall in sales. Price point competition will emerge, budget devices. The market will diversify, and in that players like apple will lose big time. Google still wins from this, because they don't care how thin the margins are for OEMs, only that their customers are being pumped full of ads.
Which may be why Microsoft and Apple both seem to have that hunger for something new, to see what's around the corner, but google seems to be somewhat just coasting along, quietly refining what they have already.
*Continuum is pretty much a very niche product. Until it provides a cheap, accessible genuine alternative to the desktop, or a media player, or anything consumers want, its not pushing units. Everyday people don't dream of writing blogs in hotels using their phone. They'd need both DeX and Continuum to be a lot better, a lot cheaper, and be marketed every day benefits. At this stage its for enterprise users only, and not even many of them. Device redundancy and convergence is certainly a thing, but I think many people here overstate is commercial importance - when its really really good, and decently affordable it might be seen as 'a bonus' for some every day consumers. Convergence of devices is something that will occur very slowly, device catergory by device catergory, and dependant on technologies like processing power, network speeds. Higher load techs will also make more demands of static machines in processing power - the AR/VR revolution for example will not drive phone sales, it will most likely drive consoles that also act as PCs- elegant no-setup, all in one VR solutions with maximum graphics power - when people try their friends such VR experience, if its affordable, they will also want one. Also when the HoloLens tech comes down in price, becomes lighter I see that replacing a lot of existing tech, phones included, for some people - no need for smartphone, tablet, computer, or TV screens if they all come packed in your glasses.
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