So I just saw android auto and Apple car play.
They are really cool. Microsoft hasn't developed anything like this yet (in fact I saw they had demoed something in 2014 but they never rolled it out. Windows are also nowhere in smart watches and TVs. Furthermore,mobile is almost dead. The only things that Microsoft does right regard the operating systems are pc, Xbox and mixed reality, which will be mainstream in 3 years at least.
So what's left are products that people have in mind for work (with the exception of Xbox which is only for gamers). Android (google) and Apple make products for personal use and Microsoft mostly for business and enterprise.
As I understand it Microsoft is converting to the new IBM.
MSFT has a diverse selection of about half a dozen major income streams, divided pretty evenly across consumer and enterprise spaces. What they do in the consumer space ATM is more software oriented - games, xbox, cloud services.
MSFT is a company that has witnesses a lot of change in the computing space and endured it. So their play is one based on a long term vision - an OS that runs on multiple form factors, including phones to MR. The thing is about such a play, is its a huge undertaking, millions of hours of coding, slow market conversion, supporting development - its a plan which will really probably take about a decade to fully come together.
The thing is, the devices such as slab phones aren't a "final form". A small screen slab device, will eventually be surpeceeded by a folding tablet form factor and a "true glasses" form factor AR device, none of which have the UI size and simplicity constraints of the smart phone or smart watch. Much like when touch screens came about, and many devices and OSes went to the tech graveyard, a similar thing will happen to whole ecosystems with too simplistic or touch driven to scale to new devices.
You can see this with tablets. Apple and Samsung products are losing market share, with windows hybrids gaining rapidly while the rest of the market shrinks. When you get to a screen real estate big enough, ios and android don't offer very much. Which is why no one runs them on desktop.
The same of course is the same with UI, and input methods. If an OS isn't also flexible enough to run via hand gestures, or gaze, in AR/VR space, with display methods that suit that giant 3d spaces available, it finds itself very much behind there.
That's actually why bigger screen UI formats, VR and AR are important OS platforms, despite more insignificant profits - the small screen will eventually be for devices driven by voice primarily or my AR primarily IMO, as a sort of UI secondary input. No one CHOOSES as smaller screen. Its just a technological constraint ATM of portable devices. That will not last.
That's the sort of thinking that drives MSFT, as a company that has gone from dos, to the surface pro, and HoloLens.
Something like smartwatches or smartspeakers have pretty miserable growth in any short term capacity - they are mostly for tech/brand enthusiasts. Long term the growth of IoT seems likely, but short term, no one is gaining any real significant lead IMO.
Indeed even the smartphone market is showing many signs of slowing in mature markets. Both Samsung and apple are aware of this, putting major money into advertsing in places like india. Google also perceives a shift coming- they are refocusing on cloud based AI. Apple has a secret rumoured AR development too. And even facebook has a secret VR project (virtual facebook? like a town where people can meet?)
MSFT -They have some sort of mobile device in the works. Dual screen, detachable hinge. Windows on arm will help drive the UWP platform which is KEY to developing a hybrid OS system. They have a glasses form factor display in the works at the proto point, and consumer mixed reality starts this year as well, significantly cheaper than competition with less setup.
In the long run you can see their strategy with things like fluent design - its a deisgn scheme specifically designed to run on anything from a tiny screen to vr/at in 3d. Coalescing your app platform in that way, enables every area of strength to be leveraged into other markets.
It's a slight bit of a gamble, and there's a way to go, but in many ways this six income stream situation with a diverse range of investments in future tech is more stable than google or apple with its 90 percent income from a single source. Should the iPhone, or google search even find itself with serious competition, the entire company could be under threat. But its extremely improbable that people will stop buying windows OS, cloud services, games, consoles, hybrid hardware ALL at the same time.
Should any of those other major players find themselves with lacklustre profits, and are too far behind in the new hybrid OS space, they could become the new IBM. (That said, IBM produces console CPUs for consumers, and have some exciting neural based chipsets and ML work - they are far from "out of the game" - indeed they have a solid partnership with apple, most likely because of that ML work).
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