Consumers use PC's less and they don't use them because they run Windows.
1 in 5 people own them now instead of 1 in 4, globally. PC's are still very common. Windows is by far the most popular desktop platform.
PC's don't attract developers because consumers don't use apps on their PC's.
From my rough survey I'd guess about a third of people use UWP apps on their desktop, and most of windows tablet users. 500,000 windows 10 users, its not exactly nothing in terms of developers, even if most desktop users don't use them - desktop users pay for software, mobile users generally don't.
Mobile is the only market that attracts consumers, which then attracts developers, which then attracts consumers.
Not at all. Consumers use desktops, they use laptops, they use tablets and they use consoles (and portable gaming devices). If you come across a consumer that has one device in their home, and its a phone - they are probably poor. Most OECD homes have multiple devices, in multiple catergories- a virtual sea of devices.
Mobile is all that matters now.
I think we are a few quarters away from negative growth. It's also kind of innovation stagnant, and there's very little advantage of a new device over an older one.
The nm process advance slowing, the breaking of moores law and the size constraints of mobile devices also poses a very real problem for chipset advancements. Desktops can go to insane numbers of cores, and lean more heavily on GPU. They have more room to step around this increasing technological limitation.
The advent of VR is also a very good reason why mobile will become less important. VR on a phone is nasea inducing and a vastly inferior experience - you want than GPU power desktops and consoles have for VR. If anything the mobile experience of VR is off-putting. Yet VR, whilst small, and nascent has the kind of growth investors know will blow up.
I think we have witnessed the peak of the slab candybar smartphone, and it's likely a slow down hill from here, as various newer techs supercede it (AR glasses as a display tech, VR on stationary machines, folding screen formats etc). All of which make redundant the small screen, touch only app format catalogue that exists, in a similar way that mouse apps didn't help much with touch screen.
It won't be so much a matter of pocket devices disappearing, just reducing in growth and being replaced to some degree by newer technologies. I think in about 10 years, no one will consider mobile the be all and end app, things like wearables and AR/VR and AI will be the new thing.
You can say they still have enterprise but at some point that will go away too. If less people are using Windows and not relying on Windows programs to create docs, and less developers are creating apps that help business, business is going to go where the consumers and developers are.
Where do you work? No, enterprise is not going to use android or chromeOS. Never going to happen. All the software they use exists on windows (or MacOS)
Enterprise does not dictate the market, consumers and programs do.
Only true for some products, like slab phones. Not actually true of many catergories, for example there is vastly more money and more use in enterprise IoT than in consumer. Enterprise are giving out take home laptops, not take home chromebooks (for a variety of reasons, from software capability, to peripheral support, to network abilities).
People in general expect and need less from phones, enterprise included. Even something basic, like google docs - not a real competitor to office 365. Schools may use google docs, but business will not.
MS, by giving up on Mobile when they did, has put Windows itself at risk of disappearing sooner rather than later.
I don't think so. I do think MSFT puts itself at risk of being taken on in the desktop market with a more serious product like fuschia, or a hybrid OS from apple, if they let google and apple have bigger cashflow due to smartphone sales. They have real dominance in desktops, and in gaming - they shouldn't risk losing that. But on the other hand, I think that cashflow is going to slowly shrink from here on in phones.
It's not an ideal position, and MSFT needs to have a mobile strategy - and not just an enterprise one, as in the smartphone biz, consumers rule. Clearly they do have a strategy based on all the leaks, but they ain't telling anyone what it is.
It will take a miracle at this point to change the momentum and direction things are going. To do that, you have to change the thinking of consumers and I think we are way past the point of that being possible.
Tell that to blackberry, nokia, IBM and Sony with their walkman
Consumers change their minds all the time, history is a liternary of that.
It won't take a miracle, it'll just take some consumer saavy marketing and some good design innovation.
The first part, the marketing, is the issue I have most scepticism regarding MSFT.
They have great products, good innovation but always seem to undersell them to consumers.
I hope I'm wrong but I believe that Windows itself, will no longer be relevant within 5 years, The consumer portion of the market will be even sooner.
Where do you think all the enterprise users, and the gamers will go? Even home users? What are the actually viable alternatives (the desktops that do the things they want their desktops to do) you think they will go to?
I can't think of anything that could replace windows effectively, that currently exists. Perhaps some small number of consumers might settle for the simplicity of chromeOS, but even then, I am doubtful that will go anywhere - chromeOS has less marketshare than windows 10m, of desktops, and its less powerful than windows s. It has all the hopefull prospects of growth in desktops and laptops as blackberry OS does of gaining smartphone market dominance IMO.
Specifically - what in your mind is going to replace the more than a billion windows desktops? Do you see xbox ceasing to exist?
What are people going to game and VR on? What are they going to use for their legacy enterprise software, run their oracle databases on, run their virtual terminals via?
Is 2020 the year of Linux or macOS in your mind? Or are all those complex tasks going to miraculously be achievable on an android smartphone funded by software purchases running less than 4 bucks?
For that to even look remotely like happening, ios and android users would have to start spending real money of software, and to specifically be looking at power user functions, and fully featured games. Neither of those are particularly compatible with the candy bar FF. You do casual things on smartphones. The screen is too small and fiddly, and the input too low in precision and control for people to pay even ANY money for those sorts of applications, let alone the amount desktop users are often prepared to pay, for adobe, EA games, console games, office, oracle, azure etc....
Smartphones are for basic stuff. They in themselves present no threat to desktops. What does present a threat is how much money that gives google and apple to create real competition for MSFT in its strongholds.
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