Satya Nadella - made a recent statement during an interview basally stating that their mobile/phone division market share is unsustainable. This is a terrible thing for a CEO to say in public. To go further, he hinted (as he has done before) that MS's future is in "services", presumably not devices.
He was referring to the latest stats that shows Window's mobile market share at 1.7% down almost 50% from last year.
After stating that it's unsustainable he went on to say:
"I think we do ourselves a disservice if we measure our success by just looking at: What’s the market share of HoloLens? What’s the market share of Xbox? What’s the market share of PCs? What’s the market share of our phones?"
"If you think of this more like a graph, these [devices] are all nodes. Sometimes the user will use all of these devices … sometimes they’ll use only one or two of our devices and some other platforms — so be it. But we want to make sure that we are completing the experience across all of these devices."
--- It seems that he is taking a stance akin to ... we are bigger and better and more solemn than just trying to sell as many phones as we can. As an average consumer, I don't care if a company is making great strides in tech that will be mainstream 10 years from now. I care about my CURRENT devices and the choices I have to make in purchases in the next year or two. It seems that MS is always in 'beta' and always promising something around the corner. They put out a phone with nice hardware but the software is buggy and needs constant updates (Lumia 950's). If you remain on mobile 8.1 you're missing many features of mobile 10.0 (I have been using windows 10 on pc and mobile as an insider preview). You can't compare 8.1 to 10.. but you are forced to decide between features and stability. Nothing seems to be polished. Microsoft - Under construction.
The reason this sucks is that more so today than ever, consumers are being cornered into buying into an ecosystem. Phones, desktops, TV box, Movies, Music, laptops, tablets. If a company has one HUGE weakness in that chain then it takes them out of the running. As of now, for the average consumer MS's only polished products are a decent desktop operating system, a suite of office tools, and a modern cloud storage solution.
Personally, I have an aging desktop computer and need to upgrade soon. I'm not going to buy a DELL with fan noise and bloatware galore.. they also offer little to no SSD options. The est of the OEM offerings are just temporary junk boxes. I have a Lumia 950 but can't stand to use it as a daily driver and always revert to putting my sim in my trusty iphone 6. My set top box is a roku, not going to get an xbox to stream MS purchased video content.
It seems that Satya is correct in that MS cannot compete in mobile or in general, the device market. They are to become a Google type company in that they offer cloud storage and software. No streaming services to be noted and if they did, they already have too much competition. These uber cheap lumia phones being released in other countries are not going to make MS any closer to getting developers to join the cause.
It's really frustrating and I see MS going the way of Blackberry and caving in to becoming more of an enterprise solution than mainstream OEM.
One thing is for sure.. if they really did have hope, their CEO would not say such things in an interview. Because of that statement, I have lost trust in teh direction MS is going... they are all over the place and doing nothing right. My Lumia 950 (and 635 and 640) are going on craigslist. I was thinking of getting a SP4 with keyboard, but I think I'm going to look elsewhere for a mobile computing platform. I'll pay a few hundred extra for peace of mind and consistency. As far as my desktop purchase which I will be doing this year, it's not going to be a windows all in one. That is for sure.
He was referring to the latest stats that shows Window's mobile market share at 1.7% down almost 50% from last year.
After stating that it's unsustainable he went on to say:
"I think we do ourselves a disservice if we measure our success by just looking at: What’s the market share of HoloLens? What’s the market share of Xbox? What’s the market share of PCs? What’s the market share of our phones?"
"If you think of this more like a graph, these [devices] are all nodes. Sometimes the user will use all of these devices … sometimes they’ll use only one or two of our devices and some other platforms — so be it. But we want to make sure that we are completing the experience across all of these devices."
--- It seems that he is taking a stance akin to ... we are bigger and better and more solemn than just trying to sell as many phones as we can. As an average consumer, I don't care if a company is making great strides in tech that will be mainstream 10 years from now. I care about my CURRENT devices and the choices I have to make in purchases in the next year or two. It seems that MS is always in 'beta' and always promising something around the corner. They put out a phone with nice hardware but the software is buggy and needs constant updates (Lumia 950's). If you remain on mobile 8.1 you're missing many features of mobile 10.0 (I have been using windows 10 on pc and mobile as an insider preview). You can't compare 8.1 to 10.. but you are forced to decide between features and stability. Nothing seems to be polished. Microsoft - Under construction.
The reason this sucks is that more so today than ever, consumers are being cornered into buying into an ecosystem. Phones, desktops, TV box, Movies, Music, laptops, tablets. If a company has one HUGE weakness in that chain then it takes them out of the running. As of now, for the average consumer MS's only polished products are a decent desktop operating system, a suite of office tools, and a modern cloud storage solution.
Personally, I have an aging desktop computer and need to upgrade soon. I'm not going to buy a DELL with fan noise and bloatware galore.. they also offer little to no SSD options. The est of the OEM offerings are just temporary junk boxes. I have a Lumia 950 but can't stand to use it as a daily driver and always revert to putting my sim in my trusty iphone 6. My set top box is a roku, not going to get an xbox to stream MS purchased video content.
It seems that Satya is correct in that MS cannot compete in mobile or in general, the device market. They are to become a Google type company in that they offer cloud storage and software. No streaming services to be noted and if they did, they already have too much competition. These uber cheap lumia phones being released in other countries are not going to make MS any closer to getting developers to join the cause.
It's really frustrating and I see MS going the way of Blackberry and caving in to becoming more of an enterprise solution than mainstream OEM.
One thing is for sure.. if they really did have hope, their CEO would not say such things in an interview. Because of that statement, I have lost trust in teh direction MS is going... they are all over the place and doing nothing right. My Lumia 950 (and 635 and 640) are going on craigslist. I was thinking of getting a SP4 with keyboard, but I think I'm going to look elsewhere for a mobile computing platform. I'll pay a few hundred extra for peace of mind and consistency. As far as my desktop purchase which I will be doing this year, it's not going to be a windows all in one. That is for sure.
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