I've been studying Microsoft's business decisions as a product design engineer and sometimes I am quite puzzled by things they do.
As far as I can tell, MS is trying to use their old business model of providing the software and let others build the hardware with the Band. This was effective with the PC market, but not as successful in the over saturated mobile market.
I feel that the fitness trackers are an untapped market probably as big as the mobile phone market. As sensors get more advanced, we can monitor more things, blood pressure, sugar levels, oxygen levels, injuries, air quality, white blood cell immune responses, and the list goes on, the greater the change to the way we live our lives. The fitness band market is still the Wild West where anyone can lay claim to a stake, so I guess they are trying their old tried and true strategy of selling software to hardware partners.
I am relieved that they decide to participate in this early, and glad that they are leveraging their one of their greatest talents to distinguish themselves, Cloud computing to crunch data. Which by the way, no one is talking about it in the bloggosphere, people are just too focused on the superficial stuff, how many sensors and whos logo is on that product. Just like Cortana, the results get better without people noticing.
The which begs the questions:
As far as I can tell, MS is trying to use their old business model of providing the software and let others build the hardware with the Band. This was effective with the PC market, but not as successful in the over saturated mobile market.
I feel that the fitness trackers are an untapped market probably as big as the mobile phone market. As sensors get more advanced, we can monitor more things, blood pressure, sugar levels, oxygen levels, injuries, air quality, white blood cell immune responses, and the list goes on, the greater the change to the way we live our lives. The fitness band market is still the Wild West where anyone can lay claim to a stake, so I guess they are trying their old tried and true strategy of selling software to hardware partners.
I am relieved that they decide to participate in this early, and glad that they are leveraging their one of their greatest talents to distinguish themselves, Cloud computing to crunch data. Which by the way, no one is talking about it in the bloggosphere, people are just too focused on the superficial stuff, how many sensors and whos logo is on that product. Just like Cortana, the results get better without people noticing.
The which begs the questions:
- Fitness bands are not that hard to design and build, so why not just take up the mantle of building them and take a bigger piece of the pie?
- Since they are not looking to sell hardware. Do you think they already have other companies signed up already for MS Health?
- Their timing for release was amazing, just after the insanity for apple's watch to be forgotten. However, delivery could have been better. Wouldn't it have been better if they had a serious partner release at the same time with their Band? I argue this could have dealt a serious blow to other contenders.
- I think they realise the gem that they have stumbled upon, but I wonder how they plan to move forward. I would like to see a more aggressive approach, bring all their resources and talents to bear. In the past (XB1 just happen to be fresh on my mind), MS always has great vision, but sometimes when it comes to implementing risky avant-garde ideas, they have done huge belly flops (the Mattrick 720).