Microsoft does NOT have a clue....

[ronclone]

First, i consider myself a fan of Microsoft products, i'm 30 and been using windows since 12-13 years old, had an original xbox, still have a 360, had various window mobiles, a zune HD, 3 windows phones and i will be getting a surface, have been using hotmail since forever, constantly use skydrive and office. Y

You guys must believe me when i say i'm getting to a point of frustration with this company that i'm starting to dislike it. For a company with so many awesome products, i'm baffled by how stupid they are, they seem to make the same mistakes over and over, and it seems they don't know what they do wrong...

The exclusivity with at&t, the 10 month announcement of wp7 (w/o backwards comp with wm), the 10 month announcement of nokia+wp, the 5 mont announcement of surface, the never releasing any actual prices or availabitity, the almost complete lack of interoperability between all of their services until now, the years it took them to get skydrive to parity with dropbox, the years it took for them to make hotmail/live up to date (activesync), the clueless they are about naming products (why oh why does everything must be named after windows), the stupid pursuit of search (bing), the xbox 360 rrod, the killing of the zune (why released it only in the US if you're serious about it?), releasing the Kin phone even when they knew they were going to release wp7 a few months later, and i'm sure i have left lots more...

Maybe i'm been harsh, i know very well every company makes mistakes, they usually learn from them though. The thing is, i do believe microsoft has it all, but they need a BETTER focus... How many times have i heard about a company getting popular for a service, only to find out microsoft has the same service but nobody knows about it.

The more i think about it, the more i realize the WHOLE fault of microsoft relative demise is............... BALMER! hes the CEO, its his job to keep the company focused to make the best product they can, making easy to integrate all of their services if possible in their products. He determines the announcement dates, marketing push, and high level management...

Microsoft are REAL innovators, but they NEED better Top Management...

 

[brmiller1976]

I don't know that I'd pin Microsoft's current challenges on Ballmer. For one thing, the products under Ballmer are MUCH better than the ones that shipped before he was CEO.

The problem is that the industry is getting better at shipping, and Microsoft's strengths aren't relative to where they were years ago.

In computing and mobile, they were always the price/performance leader. (They still are in PCs, but in phones, Windows Phone is more expensive than Android and at about the same level as Apple -- not good enough to win, IMO).

They were typically the first to ship as well, but that's not the case as they focus more on getting things right prior to shipping and miss out on the first wave of adoption. (Imagine if the Windows Phone 8 flagship handsets had shipped in June, during the "we're killing WP7" announcement... they'd have sold millions of 'em).

Microsoft needs better timing and more unification across its business units. And they need some cheap and awesome mobile hardware out NOW. Counting on Nokia to win in the US market has been a huge mistake.

 

[fwaits]

The exclusivity (whatever the details are yet which we don't really know) is not on MS, it's Nokia. MS can't make financial business decisions like that for Nokia, come on. We're still playing the guessing game on the entirety of this situation, but the bottom line is Nokia is an OEM of MS and can make deals with their phone models how they see fit. WP exists on more than Nokia devices so while MS can perhaps make suggestions to them (if they are even privy to that knowledge in full), but they surely can't dictate to an OEM who they can and can't sell devices to.

 

[Simon Tupper]

First, i consider myself a fan of Microsoft products, i'm 30 and been using windows since 12-13 years old, had an original xbox, still have a 360, had various window mobiles, a zune HD, 3 windows phones and i will be getting a surface, have been using hotmail since forever, constantly use skydrive and office. Y

You guys must believe me when i say i'm getting to a point of frustration with this company that i'm starting to dislike it. For a company with so many awesome products, i'm baffled by how stupid they are, they seem to make the same mistakes over and over, and it seems they don't know what they do wrong...

The exclusivity with at&t, the 10 month announcement of wp7 (w/o backwards comp with wm), the 10 month announcement of nokia+wp, the 5 mont announcement of surface, the never releasing any actual prices or availabitity, the almost complete lack of interoperability between all of their services until now, the years it took them to get skydrive to parity with dropbox, the years it took for them to make hotmail/live up to date (activesync), the clueless they are about naming products (why oh why does everything must be named after windows), the stupid pursuit of search (bing), the xbox 360 rrod, the killing of the zune (why released it only in the US if you're serious about it?), releasing the Kin phone even when they knew they were going to release wp7 a few months later, and i'm sure i have left lots more...

Maybe i'm been harsh, i know very well every company makes mistakes, they usually learn from them though. The thing is, i do believe microsoft has it all, but they need a BETTER focus... How many times have i heard about a company getting popular for a service, only to find out microsoft has the same service but nobody knows about it.

The more i think about it, the more i realize the WHOLE fault of microsoft relative demise is............... BALMER! hes the CEO, its his job to keep the company focused to make the best product they can, making easy to integrate all of their services if possible in their products. He determines the announcement dates, marketing push, and high level management...

Microsoft are REAL innovators, but they NEED better Top Management...

Why do you think he's been named the worst CEO? Ballmer should have been fired a long time ago... I never liked him, my friends all believe that as long as Ballmer is there, microsoft wont go far with their projects...

They need a marketing beast like Steve Jobs, someone with great ideas to make things work... The only thing Ballmer seems to do is focus on making products without even advertising it... As my grand father used to say: "you gotta be ready to spend twice as much you can earn in order to end up rich" it does not mean that Microsoft should throw money out of the window, but you can't expect your products to sell good if people don't even hear about it...

 

[Villain]

LOL the exclusivity has NOTHING to do with Microsoft... thats a 100% deal between AT&T and Nokia.

and yes zune was a huge failure (I own 2) but the 360 has/is a HUGE success... xbox live itself became a billion dollar industry soooo labeling the 360 as a failure is down right LOLable

 

[jmshub]

People used to say the exact same things about Bill.

Sent from my SGH-i917 using Board Express

 

[Simon Tupper]

When they said that Windows phone 8 was something they were working on before WP7 launch, I couldn't believe my ears... if you know that you are bringing an amazing product (if amazing it is) to the table, why are you releasing something like WP7? WP7 was so poor features wise... that you simply could not show off with it...

I've seen more advertising by Nokia in one year than by Microsoft since the first Windows Phone...

 

[Simon Tupper]

People used to say the exact same things about Bill.

Sent from my SGH-i917 using Board Express

Bill Gates was a genius, Ballmer is not up to the challenge...

 

[Simon Tupper]

LOL the exclusivity has NOTHING to do with Microsoft... thats a 100% deal between AT&T and Nokia.

and yes zune was a huge failure (I own 2) but the 360 has/is a HUGE success... xbox live itself became a billion dollar industry soooo labeling the 360 as a failure is down right LOLable

When I bought the first 360 I could not believe how cheap it was, it was overheating, if you moved the console while a CD was in, it would scratch it badly, so many people got the RROD (red ring of death)... it was a failure to me... then the PS3 came out and no one could complain since it was flawless... and the xbox is stating to catch up with the specs of the first PS3....

But we're getting off topic

 

[ronclone]

LOL the exclusivity has NOTHING to do with Microsoft... thats a 100% deal between AT&T and Nokia.

and yes zune was a huge failure (I own 2) but the 360 has/is a HUGE success... xbox live itself became a billion dollar industry soooo labeling the 360 as a failure is down right LOLable

I know about the 360 success. I was talking about the rrod, but maybe your're right, it wasn't much of a mistake, they needed to rush the console to beat Sony (and they did).

Simon is right... they need to spend serious amount of money to advertise WP8 and W8. They need to completely saturate the streets with ads. They're late to the party, its the only way... I was at a store the other day, and they had a lumia an iphone a lot of android and some BBs. Guys when i tell you NOBODY gave the lumia a second look, its an understatement, they acted like it wasn't even there. i believe that's just because nobody knows what it is, people is so turn off by the nokia+symbian combo, and they think the lumia sports symbian.

To make matter worst, here comes nokia, STILL selling symbian phones, STILL confusing the average consumer, i know it's not msft fault, but still...

 

[brmiller1976]

To be fair, Microsoft couldn't wait to release WP7. If they'd stuck with WM 6.X through 2012, there'd be ZERO share for Microsoft phones, and few "metro" apps.

 

[AngryNil]

"It's all the fault of Ballmer"
- random who can't even spell the name

 

[HeyCori]

 

[SnailUK]

To be fair, Microsoft couldn't wait to release WP7. If they'd stuck with WM 6.X through 2012, there'd be ZERO share for Microsoft phones, and few "metro" apps.

Exactly. The same reason they couldn't wait till after the ps3 had released before releasing the 360. And even in that case, microsoft got the software right, and it took years for the ps3 to compete with the 360 on anything other than first party titles.

I think Microsoft know exactly what they are doing. Rather than sit back and release a minor windows update, windows 8 is a huge change, not only to the os, but the Eco-system too.

Microsoft could have rushed windows, or windows phone due to apple or googles time schedules, but they are confident enough not to. Only time will tell if they got it right, but at least they aren't just sitting back and doing it the easy way.

 

[socialcarpet]

Pretty much everything Microsoft did before Windows 7 and Windows Phone was substandard crap IMO. The Zune and the xBox being notable exceptions.

Yes, their launches and business decisions these days are goofy and poorly executed at times, but that is also nothing new to Microsoft. They have always been awkward. Microsoft reflects the nerdy socially inept character of it's founder and Joe Ballifore's emo hairdo is not enough to reverse that. :lol:

That said, I'm just glad Microsoft is making products I actually want to use these days. I never thought I would say that. I think it's pretty remarkable that they have gone from the company with the most user-unfriendly software and OS and ugly interfaces out there to one of the best within a decade. They deserve a lot of credit for that and I'm more than willing to forgive some awkward product launches and what-not as long as they keep making great products that are customer-centric like they have been.