An Amusing Diagram That Shows Two Important Realities for Microsoft
Recently a diagram that depicts Microsoft’s “empire” competing or fighting its competitors, particularly open-source. The diagram (older versions), while probably mostly intended for fun, shows two important realities for Microsoft:
- Microsoft is huge. They will never just disappear overnight or over a year. If they die, it will be very slow as they gradually lose various parts of their bussiness to competitors.
- Microsoft is surrounded on all sides. They are facing serious competition almost everywhere they go. No longer are they the only player in anything.
Although these two points may seem simple, and to some extent they are, they are important. If Microsoft wants to continue to survive, it must remember that it does not have a free ride. Whether or not Microsoft will be able to beat back the competition remains to be seen, but so many (myself included) seem to think Microsoft will fall.
April 21st, 2008 at 9:19 am
M$ needs monopoly and fixed prices to continue. $3 in China and $300 elsewhere is not sustainable. GNU/Linux will eat them for lunch in all the emerging markets that have not had PCs yet. These markets are very price-sensitive. They will buy low-end sytems that run GNU/Linux very well and will not run Vista. They will not pay twice as much for software as for hardware. Within a year or two, M$ will become a normal corporation competing in the market place or it will die or retreat to a US niche. Either way, market share and revenue for OS / server/ Office will fall substantially withing two years. They can try to diversify into Yahoo! but that is a desperation move. I too, think M$ will shrink drastically. If they blow their/our cash on Yahoo! they could be a shadow of themselves in five years. If they keep their/our cash, it could take ten years.