Is Micro$oft losing the $?
Apr 12th, 2008 by handolio
A TechCrunch post yesterday helped focus my mind on something that’s been dawning of me of late: Microsoft is in deep shit.
XP refuses to be killed off and Vista is flat-lining, while people are increasingly inclined to dabble with Linux-based OS like Ubuntu. Meanwhile, Office is bloated, expensive and hideous to use. Open Office is free and, for me at least, better.
But there’s a much bigger threat to MS. It’s probably had a nervous eye on Google Docs (also free) for a while, but I bet it’s simply shitting itself at the arrival of more rich internet applications (RIAs) running within a browser.
Why? Because they’re going to be good, because they’re going to be free, and because they can run on any operating system.
Small comfort
Suddenly the surge in popularity of tiny, cheap sub-notebooks like the Asus Eee makes a lot more sense, and Microsoft’s pre-eminence in system software a lot less. In the case of the £220-ish Eee, it comes with 2GB or 4GB of flash storage. That’s less than half what you’d need to install Windows Vista, let alone Office, but who cares when the Wee has a Linux-based OS, Firefox and Open Office? What else do you need on a tiny notebook?
The point is that it isn’t just a rhetorical question. If enough of us want something, someone somewhere will write us an RIA.
It’s hard to see how Microsoft couldn’t suffer, but it won’t just be Microsoft. Not everyone agrees with me that a Mac isn’t worth its moderate premium over a traditional PC or notebook, but give it a couple of years and shifting sub-notebooks like the Air in bulk is going to get tricky, beauty though it is.
IMAGE - Flickr user Scrambled_Egg
While Microsoft might start to be losing it’s market share in the OS and Office markets, they’re definitely still ahead at developing technologies for people to develop RIAs. I’m predicting Silverlight will take off this year - it produces both very nice to look at websites, easy to use, and has a market leading object orientated language running behind it. Easyjet have created a new website (yet to be released) using Silverlight which looks pretty bloody amazing - more info here.
Forgive the unintentional plane pun, but Silverlight hasn’t taken off yet, has it? I can’t check that link tonight as their blog seems broken.
Any idea what Google/Adobe/Microsoft’s revenue model is for RIAware (for want of a better term)? Presumably the developers are paying a license or something?
Interestingly, I’ve just rediscovered this Shane Richmond post which is probably among the things I’ve read that has made me start thinking about this. I find Shane pretty illuminating, although he’s come to the opposite conclusion when it comes to Macs.
Developers buy VisualStudio to develop in. You can develop apps by using the free Express versions but any serious developer will fork out the money for a Standard or Professional version. It also runs best on Windows Servers, which having recently attended the launch event for 2008 looks pretty bloody impressive, however to the end user of the internet this isn’t so apparent to them. But because its the IT professionals who have to build the internet, they’re obviously going to choose the easiest, cheapest option. Just because software is free to buy, doesn’t make it cheaper overall to use.
There is still a huge risk for a business by giving all their data to another company in the form of using an online “office” solution. As far as I’m aware there is nothing in Google’s privacy policy stopping them from reading your confidential information. When Microsoft or Google start offering a downloadable version of an “online Apps” that they can install on a server in a company and enable all the information to be owned by the company owning it, then you’ll have serious competition to “offline Office”.
Google Apps is great for small businesses, but not so great (or smart) for a big business to use.
I wonder how much influence the iPhone has had in this? There are so many great mobile-Safari based apps that work seamlessly on that platform that it even improves the already great usability of the iPhone.
Also - the fact that the Asus Eee has no hard drive (i.e. you have to connect to a network storage device) is akin to what Apple have done with their new MacBook Air cd-rom (i.e. you have to connect to a remote cd rom).
Not sure Tim, to be honest. I think it’s obviously playing a part and influencing other manufacturers’ designs, but it hasn’t had massive sales yet has it? Perhaps with iPhone 2?
Eee does have onboard storage, just not much - a 2 or 4GB flash disk, although the pre-installed OS and apps are meant to take up almost 2GB. Asus’ Eee microsite says there’s a model with 8GB storage, but I don’t think you can buy it yet. I think you can install stuff via the network, or use the card slot.
Just realised that the Air doesn’t have FireWire, which seems odd, for a Mac.
Firewire’s benefit over USB is speed. USB is, well, universal and used by more devices and therefore more beneficial to have. I imagine it doesn’t have Firewire for these two reasons - it’s not built for speed, and it needs to make the most of its limited space.