Stephen Elop Would Pull a Nokia On Microsoft 292
Nerval's Lobster writes "A new Bloomberg report suggests that Stephen Elop, who's apparently on the short list of candidates to replace Steve Ballmer as Microsoft's CEO, would eliminate company projects such as Xbox and Bing while focusing resources on Office. Before he left Microsoft to join Nokia, Elop headed Microsoft's Business Division, so it's no surprise he'd want to focus on Office and the company's other, highly profitable enterprise software. But as head of Nokia, Elop made similarly bold strategic realignments that, while they probably looked good on paper, didn't quite work out. Specifically, Elop decided to abandon Nokia's popular homegrown operating systems, including Symbian, in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone. That caused Nokia's share of the overall mobile-device market to dive into the single digits. At the time, Elop insisted he made the decision because Symbian and its ilk were incapable of competing in the broader market against Android and iOS; revelations by the Finnish media over the past few months, however, suggest that he'd been offered a generous cash incentive for selling off the company, which gives his 'strategic realignment' (which everyone knew would initially collapse Nokia's market-share, as its product pipeline emptied out) a whiff of self-interest. So while it's likely that a Microsoft run by Elop would make some decisive moves, his previous attempt at game-changing quickly transformed Nokia from a communications powerhouse into a second-tier competitor and (eventually) a Microsoft subsidiary. And by eliminating Bing and Xbox, Microsoft would be giving up completely on the search and gaming markets in favor of becoming more of an enterprise-centric company—something that could please analysts mostly interested in the company's bottom line, but basically an admission of defeat in the consumer realm."
All in favor of Elop getting the job? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes! Let's watch him do to Microsoft what he did to Nokia!
But, that said, maybe a breakup and spin-off of non-core divisions is exactly what Microsoft needs. This whole 'chasing Apple/Sony/{$newTechMarket}' thing is slowly killing them.
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Come on, you know better than that. It's pretty clear Microsoft will pick some dark-horse candidate with little to no experience to help them collapse the company in the most dramatic fashion possible.
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Sort of like HP outsider Carly Fiorina winning over internal candidate Ann Livermore? The question is, which one is Elop here?
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Meego to hell (Score:5, Funny)
Elop said he will abandon Microsoft's failed attempt to create a modern operating system and simply bet the whole company on getting in bed with Nokia and use their Symbian operating system. Either that or Meego.
The long term strategy is that after the company craters, Nokia can purchase it for a song, and he can then be tapped to be CEO of Nokia.
He noted that this strategy has worked in the past. "Nokia's cratered stock price doubled after they sold me off of Microsoft, And I can confidently predict that after I crater microsoft, it's price will double when they sell me back to Nokia."
He also pointed out that essentially the same strategy was used by Gil Amelio when Apple abandoned it's OS developement and bought Steve's Jobs and his Next OS, shedding Gil in the process.
"it's proven. Buy another company's OS and bet on it. That's what I know how to do better than anyone."
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The long term strategy is that after the company craters, Nokia can purchase it for a song, and he can then be tapped to be CEO of Nokia.
That's what I was thinking. Maybe the plan all along was to get Microsoft to buy Nokia, then kill the rest of Microsoft so Nokia rises from the grave with billions of dollars of cash reserves behind it.
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Yes! Let's watch him do to Microsoft what he did to Nokia!
Go in as a mole do ensure that it got taken over by Microsoft? Recursive takeover!
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I for one welcome our Microsoft-destroying overlords.
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But, that said, maybe a breakup and spin-off of non-core divisions is exactly what Microsoft needs. This whole 'chasing Apple/Sony/{$newTechMarket}' thing is slowly killing them.
When you say "slowly killing them" do you mean they are making more money than they've ever made before, and that the annual profits continue to grow from year to year? Then, uhm, yeah...
Re:All in favor of Elop getting the job? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's nice, but nobody's suggesting xbox should cease to exist or follow a completely different direction, they're just suggesting that Microsoft could sell it off as a separate business.
Who'd buy a company that's lost money over its entire existence and is only making operating profit on old products that it's about to replace?
Re:All in favor of Elop getting the job? (Score:5, Interesting)
Especially when your 3 biggest competitors would suddenly be two companies long established in the console market (Sony and Nintendo), who both have significant revenue they can operate with, and your other competitor is the guy you just bought the division from - Microsoft, and Windows, who ultimately control most of the underlying technology you rely on.
Unless sony or Nintendo wanted to buy it no one with much sense would want to buy the Xbox division. I can't really see Sony or Nintendo wanting it other than to shut it down.
Re:All in favor of Elop getting the job? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's clear this is all nonsense. Xbox is only really valuable to Microsoft. And it is valuable to Microsoft. You can tell this was written by someone without a clue by this quote:
That caused Nokia's share of the overall mobile-device market to dive into the single digits.
Abandoning symbian did not destroy Nokia. Just ask Blackberry what it's like to compete with iOS and Android. Blackberry even went so far as to make their phones essentially an Android phone but with extra features and they still bombed. The Symbian implosion would have been as brutal and swift as the black berry implosion. The only thing keeping Windows Phone a viable third candidate is a giant pile of cash and determination on Microsoft's part. It'll probably pay off but Nokia had nowhere near the funds to survive a fight like that.
Everything I've heard from my friends in the phone space is that hardware manufacturers are all feeling under siege. Samsung has managed to grab some market share but they don't expect them to hold on very long with the waves of Chinese clones and companies like MediaTek who are getting very very fast at implementing the latest ARM, Broadcom and Imagination IP significantly faster than Samsung etc.
Nokia picked the right approach. They completely cornered the Windows Phone market. Look at Motorola. They are owned by Google and they can't break into the Android market with great hardware and software. Why? Because of people who tell me they have a "Galaxy" phone. I heard the BBC say the number two phone platforms were Apple and Galaxy--with Windows Phone in third place. They didn't even call it Android. Lumia might be doing only so-so in the US but they're doing very well overseas. Largely because the US is a subsidized phone market. But even that is changing.
Nokia controls almost the entire Windows Phone market. When Microsoft's giant dump trucks of cash start translating into market share the Lumia line was well positioned to take the vast majority of the sales.
People who think Nokia died because they went Windows Phone are ignoring the plight of Motorola, LG, Sony and HTC all of whom embraced android and are doing poorly in the US.
Re: All in favor of Elop getting the job? (Score:4, Interesting)
The only people I ever hear complaining about the Wii-U are anonymous cowards who claim they won't buy one because the press says its a flop, and constantly parrot that its a flop, but wouldn't have bought one to begin with. The built-in community features on the Wii-U, where users are allowed to share in-game experiences and fan art and coordinate multi-player events and do video chat, etc, however tell an entirely different story of nearly 100% buyer satisfaction. So, just FYI don't believe everything you hear on the street. When the Wii came out initially, all the same parties were parroting that it was a huge flop too. The fact the Wii-U hasn't met the same sales figures hardly constitutes a "flop." Sounds more like wishful thinking from Sony and Microsoft shareholders to me, honestly.
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That the Wii U is a flop is a matter of fact, not opinion. Just look at the sales figures, it's selling worse than the Gamecube.
Re:All in favor of Elop getting the job? (Score:5, Informative)
Who'd buy a company that's lost money over its entire existence and is only making operating profit on old products that it's about to replace?
Someone who believes that they could manage that line of business profitably.
Profitable business lines sell at a premium. Money losing ones sell at a discount. Lots of entrepreneurial individuals and businesses buy money losing businesses at a discount and turn them around.
Do you believe Microsoft did and is doing the best of all possible strategies and executions with the XBox, and that no one could do better? A buyer would bet that the answer to that is "no".
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You're assuming license agreements and the like wouldn't go along with the purchase.
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It's mostly Windows. If I bought that, it would be to sell a compatible Windows competitor.
Re:All in favor of Elop getting the job? (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone who believes that they could manage that line of business profitably.
If they moved more towards interoperability with Windows as a platform, then they'd be much more profitable, IMO. Steam's heading in that direction with Steambox -- you can buy a game on Steam and it'll play on both your PC and your Steambox, and you can stream/play games from your PC on the TV screen through Steambox's streaming functionality.
If XBox had binary compatibility with Windows, and the ability to play Windows games on your console (through streaming as Steam's doing, or directly), it'd make the platform much more saleable. They really dropped the ball, not integrating it more heavily into the Windows environment when they had the chance.
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The competition in different business silo's was fierce, and central to their design. That is why integration with things such as the xbox was so hobbled.
Re:All in favor of Elop getting the job? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that WinRT is a closed platform that MS gets a cut of all software sold on. Many software houses know how that ends, with them wanting a cut of all subscriptions and everything else, thanks to Apple. Steam will allow you to install anything you want, just like you currently can on a (non-Metro interface) Windows PC. That Metro interface if why Valve is creating SteamBox; they know how this plays out as well, and doesn't want to hand Microsoft 30% of their income.
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The PC is dying. Just like it was last year, the year before, in 2004, 2001, 1995...
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|Who'd buy a company that's lost money over its entire existence and is only making operating profit on old products that it's about to replace?
Somebody who doesn't hire Microsoft middle managers to run things and finds the existing assets sufficiently valuable at the purchase price.
BTW: Elop is a terrible choice: Ballmer's ego and blindness, without Ballmer's brains.
Ray Ozzie---the one visionary Ballmer forced out----is a good alternative. Anybody who was successful in rising through Microsoft's corporate
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there's no realistic buyer for xbox.
ironical thing in this prediction of course is that he would kill off nokia(as ms subsidiary) as well!
and then he would focus on the cloud and sell ms as a cloud office company - to oracle!
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Re:All in favor of Elop getting the job? (Score:5, Insightful)
First, your sed input string syntax is bogus.
Thank God I wasn't referencing sed then, huh? ;)
(notice that I wasn't replacing anything, but pointing out differing competitors).
But more importantly, this has been Microsoft's business strategy since not long after it encorporated: "Extend, Embrace, Extinguish." It isn't killing them in the long term, and analysts only ever look at the short term. I shouldn't have to explain the problem of short term thinking.
The problem isn't that Microsoft is moving to a new market, but that they keep jumping out into a plethora of different markets with little rhyme or reason - oftentimes it appears that they're just doing it in case something takes off. Call it shotgun-strategy.
Look at it this way: Buying into the games console market, shovelling zillions of bucks into it, and almost 12 years later not seeing anything close to an ROI? I can understand the charge of "short-term thinking" if the time frame were less than two years, but a decade + is a friggin' eternity in the tech world.
Meanwhile, we have Microsoft casting expensive nets into the worlds of mobile (both tablets and phones), games, television, music, enterprise servers, cloud services, web search, and a whole pile of other directions that make no damned sense. Their overall strategy is moving in as many directions as they can perceive - often to the detriment of their core businesses (see also Metro/Modern, the gawdawful ribbon interface, etc.)
Long story short, there is a big difference in moving into new markets to strengthen (or even transform) your core businesses, and simply throwing everything you can at the wall to find out what sticks - even when it makes no fiscal or branding sense.
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"Secure" Boot says hello.
Re:All in favor of Elop getting the job? (Score:5, Informative)
Let me tell you why that's bullshit. [blogs.com]
Until late 2010, Nokia's market share was around 70% -- uncontested leader, twice the size of Apple, four times bigger than Samsung, and consistently, immensely profitable. They had the largest ecosystem and the top-selling app store. Carriers and retailers loved Nokia. Customer fidelity was near absolute. Market analysts expected Nokia to remain the leader for years. Maybe Symbian was getting a bit long in the tooth, but MeeGo was on the way.
After the "burning platforms" and the move to Winblows Phoney, however... their market share collapsed overnight. Users, carriers, and retailers fully rejected it. While the press was drooling over the first MeeGo phone, they gave it a very limited launch and announced that no more would be made. Ratings companies now rank Nokia stock as junk.
You call this "a fairly good job"? Well, sure, taking in account that this was Elop's true goal all along: to sabotage Nokia, make its stock near worthless so that Microsoft could buy the whole damn thing. He achieved what he meant to, and killed Nokia while doing so.
Re:All in favor of Elop getting the job? (Score:4, Informative)
Citations please.
Fitch downgrades Nokia rating [intomobile.com]
Nokia Rating Cut Further Into Junk by S&P [bloomberg.com]
Nokia Cut Further Into Junk by Moody’s [bloomberg.com]
Things might have improved now that MS took over, but then again, they could be much better if they hadn't touched that shit in the first place.
iPhone ... was what people now wanted, and continue to want.
Yes, the iPhone brought smartphones to the mainstream - a new style of smartphones, even. Can't deny that. Yet you overestimate its "hook" on users: if everyone's so crazy about it, how come Android has surpassed it? I think there was room in the market for MeeGo, which, unlike WP, carriers actually intended to support.
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All I read from those tables is that Nokia still sells a fuckton of featurephones, and WP sales are still tiny. Playing "what if" is complicated, but I still think they had a much better shot at success with MeeGo.
Wait. What? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the plan is he'll gain stewardship of Microsoft and hand it over to... Microsoft?
Seems a bit redundant
Oh right we're going to pretend Elop wasn't an infiltrator sent to hasten the ripening of a patent laden company down on it's luck
He might. (Score:4, Insightful)
He sinked his own company once, he could do it again. But why? I mean, even slashdot had realized Elop was working for microsoft all along, whom would he work for now? Is google planning to buy microsoft? apple? the NSA?
Himself (Score:2, Insightful)
He was and always will work for himself - most CEOs are pathological sociopaths, and have interest in no-ones benefit but their own.
Re:He might. (Score:5, Funny)
" whom would he work for now? Is google planning to buy microsoft? apple? the NSA?"
Yaaawwwn! I barf in your general direction for you lack of business acumen.
SCO, dammit! it has been SCO from the beginning!
Re:He might. (Score:4, Funny)
Speaking of which, I wonder if Darl McBride's resume is sitting on a desk at Microsoft?
It would be funny, sad, and scary-as-frig all wrapped up into one.
Please pick Elop.... (Score:5, Interesting)
That moron completely destroyed Nokia, he will do the same to Microsoft.
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I can do the same for a lot less money. Please pick me Microsoft, I am more economically beneficial!
Re:Please pick Elop.... (Score:5, Funny)
I really doubt you are competent enough to create that much loss that quickly. Elop is a professional, you can't compare with him.
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I can do the same for a lot less money. Please pick me Microsoft, I am more economically beneficial! :3
I've considered it, but even tens of millions of dollars wouldn't be enough to live with myself after forcing Windows on millions of poor, defenceless phone users.
Re:Please pick Elop.... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you can take less than three years to:
1) take over a huge multinational company with critical patents to the largest growth sector of the tech industry
2) cut its market cap in half
3) sell the board on an acquisition by the company that sent you
then there's a CEO job waiting for you too.
But ... cutting XBox? That would be worth a Sony CEO position...
Re:Please pick Elop.... (Score:4, Interesting)
That moron completely destroyed Nokia, he will do the same to Microsoft.
He didn't destroy Nokia. It was doomed before he showed up. They had slept through the smartphone revolution for quite some time before and spent most of the time infighting or directionlessly redoing the Meego/Maemo UI over and over again.
He failed to turn the company around after the market had already been neatly divided between iThings and Androids.
From a business point of view Microsoft had used the XBox to get a foothold "in the living room" and has sunk quite a lot of money into that and the competition is fierce. It might very well be that they should do just that.
Whatever. I don't care either way.
Yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
Blackberry stuck with their own stuff, which was even relatively entrenched in the enterprise... a lot of good it did them.
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Blackberry stuck with their own stuff, which was even relatively entrenched in the enterprise... a lot of good it did them.
The thing that killed off Blackberry was not the fact that they stuck with what they were good at. The problem was that they sat with their thumb up their ass for far too long and didn't improve the things they were good at. It might also have helped if they had tried really hard to become extremely good at new stuff. Microsoft, Apple and then Google, with it's Android OS starting doing everything Blackberry did, including push-mail which was one of the Blackberry killer features, but the competition was do
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That is the problem. Old skool players that have to much of the market cant make the switch. There is to much money in the old product and never enough money in the "where the market will be in 5 years product" to be worth their while. Then in 5 years if they enter the market, they are wannabes without a good product for that market.
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Blackberry stuck with their own stuff, which was even relatively entrenched in the enterprise... a lot of good it did them.
This is the most retarded comparison you could think of.
Nokia had excellent products and a very large and loyal 'user base'.
Blackberry had nothing similar.
Whoa (Score:4, Funny)
Symbian, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Symbian, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
As an OS, Symbian sucked. As an interface to a phone, it worked well. People who wanted a phone to run games and run all the bells and whistles didn't buy Nokia phones. People who bought Nokia phones wanted a phone that made phone calls, and in a pinch could do some other neat tricks, too.
For comparison, consider my wife's old Android phone, which crashed when the Phone app was opened... or my iPhone, which has trouble figuring out whether it wants to use Wi-Fi or 4G for data transfer at any given time. My old Nokia phone was just a phone, and for a large market segment (such as the elderly retirees whose kids insist they have a cell phone "for emergencies"), that's all they need.
Nokia had a niche market all ready as the manufacturer of reliable low-end phones. Elop led them down the familiar Microsoft path of following the latest trends, so they lost that one market they dominated.
Re:Symbian, really? (Score:5, Interesting)
As an OS, Symbian sucked. As an interface to a phone, it worked well. People who wanted a phone to run games and run all the bells and whistles didn't buy Nokia phones. People who bought Nokia phones wanted a phone that made phone calls, and in a pinch could do some other neat tricks, too.
For comparison, consider my wife's old Android phone, which crashed when the Phone app was opened... or my iPhone, which has trouble figuring out whether it wants to use Wi-Fi or 4G for data transfer at any given time. My old Nokia phone was just a phone, and for a large market segment (such as the elderly retirees whose kids insist they have a cell phone "for emergencies"), that's all they need.
Nokia had a niche market all ready as the manufacturer of reliable low-end phones. Elop led them down the familiar Microsoft path of following the latest trends, so they lost that one market they dominated.
That, (coupled with the sales figures to support it) is a better explanation of reality. The GP/PP/etc need to stop thinking as techie geeks, and start thinking in the way the highly diverse consumer market thinks. There's a reason the Symbian phones sold. Decent hardware that did the job for people who don't want (or are scared of) smartphones, but want something better than a dumb "calls/text only") phone.
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Dumbphone service at 80 percent off (Score:3)
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I have no interest in a phone I have to recharge every day or two which reports everything I do back to Google. So even if they had a 'bargain basement' plan for Android phones, I wouldn't be buying one.
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Yes... (Score:5, Interesting)
Evaluating Elop with respect to good/bad done to Nokia:
-Good: ditching Symbian
-Bad: Picking MS, the last place platform
-Bad: Focusing on higher end, North American market and neglecting Nokia's thriving global market.
Basically, the only measure by which Elop was 'good' would be microsoft's measurement of loyalty, willingness to sink his company for the sake of giving microsoft more of a chance.
Just imagine if Nokia had been the provider of things like Lumia 520 but with Android on it....
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Re:Symbian, really? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Anyone who thinks Symbian was a decent alternative OS and that abandoning it for virtually ANYTHING else was a mistake needs to have their head examined. In fact I'd credit sticking to Symbian for too long with as much of Nokias problems as anything else.
Symbian was a phone OS. Not an 'alternative' OS (whatever you mean by that). And it was the best phone OS.
You know, for people who want to have a phone, and not a miniaturized computer that runs shitty OS which spend more time tracking you than letting you use it.
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incentives redux (Score:4, Insightful)
Article: ... they probably looked good on paper, didn't quite work out. Specifically, Elop decided to abandon Nokia's popular homegrown operating systems, including Symbian, in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone.
Depends on what you mean by "didn't work out."
That decision didn't work out for Nokia but apparently worked out real well for Elop himself.
Time for focus (Score:4, Insightful)
Trimming the fat would probably be better for Microsoft at this point. They are trying to dance in too many rodeos, and it's starting to show. Focus on Enterprise, Windows, and Office products. That's a really strong foundation for them. If they want to stay in the mobile phone industry, buy rights to the Blackberry name and focus on the Enterprise and professional markets with solid phones built around security rather than entertainment.
Something like that would free up all kinds of funds for R&D projects into potential technologies, while playing to their strengths. Microsoft is not -- and never will be -- the entertainment company it seems to desire. Yes, there's potential money in it, but it simply doesn't align with their core business.
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They are trying to dance in too many rodeos, and it's starting to show.
I've been to quite a few rodeos in my day, and I can't remember any dancing in any of them. In fact, I'd say dancing in any rodeo is too many.
Elop and million of consumers conspired together.. (Score:2)
Let's not mince words (Score:5, Interesting)
Nokia's OS work was absolutely terrible, in fact it was so bad that it made what Microsoft had look good. The one thing Elop couldn't do was stick with the old Nokia way of doing things, it simply wasn't relevant in this time and age. The mistake Elop made was not in getting rid of Nokia's homegrown OS developments, it was in choosing Microsoft's developments to replace them.
Elop should have chosen to go with Android for the killer platform of the their OS with Nokia's hardware. Unfortunately for Nokia he went for the lethal platform of the Microsoft OS with Nokia's hardware. The result was the choosing of industry contacts that Elop had at Microsoft instead of going with Android and systematic destruction of billions of dollars in equity.
Elop can be counted on to make hard choices and get rid of losing platforms. Unfortunately he can also be counted on to make foolish choices to fill the void. Inevitably he will therefore be the next Microsoft CEO...
Re:Let's not mince words (Score:5, Insightful)
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Can you show me a better phone than N900 then?
How to explain response to N9 then? (Score:3)
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Keep XBox, dump Bing? (Score:5, Insightful)
The XBox unit is profitable. The entire first generation of the XBox was financial lose, but in the last few years, the business finally started to make money.
Bing, not so much. Bing seems to be a dumping ground for Microsoft managers. Every year or so, there's a new management team at Bing. Their business strategy is "copy Google". To some extent, they have to - for a while, their ad system was completely different from Google's, and advertisers wouldn't bother to use it. Something like 80% of Bing users use Internet Explorer. Those are the people who don't know how to change the default search engine.
Google as the only major search engine, though, is scary. The remaining competition in web search is tiny in the US - IAC, InfoSeek, Yandex, and Baidu. (DuckDuckGo and Bleeko are resellers of Bing and Yandex, respectively.) With no competition, Google could charge much more for ads and become even more intrusive.
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I'm going to commit a slashdot crime here, but here it goes: on my Android phone, I have installed Bing. Hold on a minute! I still use Google for searching and everything else. Google Now rocks! It's changed the way I use my phone and organize my data.
But Google Maps on Android is shit for searching. I search for a store that I know is around close somewhere, and Google maps shows me just one that's 30 miles away. Bing shows me all of them, including the one that's a mile away.
Wrong carrier (Score:2)
on my Android phone, I have installed Bing
A couple months ago, I tried to install the Bing app on my Nexus 7 tablet, and Google Play Store said my carrier wasn't supported. It's a Wi-Fi tablet, and my carrier is Xfinity. At the time, I ended up installing DuckDuckGo instead, which tended to force stop after five minutes of use. I checked again today, and Bing was available. Go figure.
Re:Keep XBox, dump Bing? (Score:5, Interesting)
You sure about that? Microsoft Is Making An Astonishing $2 Billion Per Year From Android Patent Royalties [businessinsider.com]
Eggs meet basket. (Score:2)
Elop ... would eliminate company projects such as Xbox and Bing while focusing resources on Office.
Yes, because putting all your eggs into one basket is always a good idea. I'm not a Microsoft fan, but this seems like a stupid business decision. Good thing there aren't any free alternatives to Office so Microsoft can keep milking their Office cash cow forever...
Elop decided to abandon Nokia's popular homegrown operating systems, including Symbian, in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone.
.
Hmm... Microsoft exec gets hired by Nokia, kills in-house OS products in favor of Microsoft OS, company's market share tanks, gets considered for CEO at Microsoft. Nope, nothing fishy here. [/sarcasm]
let's make "Elop" a verb (Score:3, Interesting)
as in, "Marissa Meyer is going to 'Elop' Yahoo if it kills her"
or "J.J. Abrahms had better not 'Elop' the franchise..."
yep...
TFA headline actually made me LOL: "Stephen Elop Would Pull a Nokia On Microsoft"
Right?
I think M$ is going to undergo even more headline grabbing changes and someone spinning off a major division or brand (like Xbox) is exactly the kind of way this would happen.
Did you see the article on Playstation 4? I have never bought a PS (from the beginning IMHO it was a lesser nintendo but i'm old school like that...) and I'm not any kind of gamer fanboi but the PS4 looks badass all the way around. It's going to be $100 cheaper on launch and the 3rd Party game situation will be killer
Xbox is M$'s next casualty...seriously...
But yeah, to get back off-topic...let's make "Elop" a verb meaning to abandon a company's popular proven products in favor of an over-designed unusable system, which causes the company to lose sales & eventually be purchased by a competing interest.
Re:let's make "Elop" a verb (Score:5, Interesting)
let's make "Elop" a verb meaning to abandon a company's popular proven products in favor of an over-designed unusable system, which causes the company to lose sales
Look up the term 'Elop Effect' [blogs.com], defined as what happens when you combine the Osborne Effect (making your current product appear obsolete by prematurely pre-announcing its successor) and the Ratner Effect (damaging sales by disparaging your own products).
Visual Studio for all platforms (Score:3)
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Admitting defeat vs what ? (Score:2)
By eliminating Bing and Xbox, Microsoft would [admit defeat] in the consumer realm.
And you'd prefer them to not admit it and continue to pour money in bottomless pits ?
Thinking about it, that sounds like a brilliant plan to get rid of Microsoft, but I'm not sure anyone of importance comes to SlashBI for the insight.
office is profitable but for how long? (Score:5, Insightful)
Putting all your eggs in the Office camp seems very dangerous. Our office recently
migrated to openoffice and never looked back. I use google docs at home. Both
are currently weak and can only get better. Google has recently added office tools
to android. I see standalone high dollar office suites as a dying breed. I personally
would not double down on them. Same with high-end computer OSes, another one
of Microsoft's cash cows. If microsoft wants to exist in 20 years they need to be in
the tablet, smartphone, tv console, and other growing markets that continue to reduce
the need for a full blown desktop at home. I know a lot of people who no longer have
a desktop computer or see no need for one. This number will probably continue to
grow as tablets/smartphones and roku/xbox type devices continue to add features.
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"Both are currently weak and can only get better. "
I'm sold! Take my money now!
What money? The examples I mentioned are free and will likely remain free so
microsoft's high-end projects are having to compete with both "free" and "good enough"
With Elop's record (Score:5, Insightful)
focusing on office would be bad (Score:2)
It used to be that MicroSoft defeated WordPerfect and they had the only usable office suite available, running on what at least 95% of potentially paying customers had as their only means to do office stuff on.
These days, potentially paying customers use a plethora of devices, over half of which are totally not under control of MicroSoft, neither architecture or operating system, let alone business model. Many of these already offer quite capable alternatives to the MicroSoft office products, or free altern
Re: (Score:3)
I think part of the reason Microsoft is slipping on the office suite is their insistence on tying their office tools to their operating system products. (The only exception of which I'm aware is Office on Mac.) If they dropped the OS and concentrated on apps, there'd be a lot more incentive to have Office on a variety of operating systems, rather than trying to force people into Winders so that they can use Office, which as a strategy is demonstrably not working anymore.
Elop CEO? I doubt MS board is that dumb. (Score:2)
Even if Elop was staying loyal to Microsoft while working at Nokia, he failed them big time. Microsoft expected him to drive Windows Phone market share up, not to burn Nokia down.
I find it hard to imagine the Microsoft board is dumb enough to view such an underachiever as a serious candidate for the CEO job. All these stories leaking to the media telling the contrary might just be made up to give the impression that the whole Elop / Nokia / Windows Phone story was not the tragic failure it really is, and th
Cripple and save at the same time? (Score:2)
Sounds like a wonderfully horrendous plan. Certain aspects, such as those designed to allow Microsoft to compete in non-Windows environments (if implemented properly) are definitely good ideas. Killing off divisions like the xBox division... not so much.
It makes it seem like he's trying to both hurt them and save them at the same time - sadly, I don't think it'll get them anywhere.
That's of course assuming that the speculation is more than just speculation (and he actually plans on doing such things).
Burning platform v 2.0 (Score:4, Funny)
Alright, in all seriousness (Score:3)
> A new Bloomberg report suggests that Stephen Elop, who's apparently on the short list of candidates to replace Steve Ballmer as Microsoft's CEO, would eliminate company projects such as Xbox and Bing while focusing resources on Office.
Firstly this seems like wild conjecture to me, but let's say for the sake of argument that this is actually Elop's plan, and that he'd have the authority, personal power, and get the buy-in necessary to do all of this. (A huge leap of faith, but let's say it all happens.)
Is this necessarily a bad thing, moving forward? The time where you could make huge amounts of money selling operating systems is past. We can all see that. The practice of tying all products irrevocably together to, I dunno, circle the wagons, and make other Microsoft income streams mandatory in order to participate in any other Microsoft income stream, also appears to becoming less and less effective.
So, if you're going to sell software, what software is there left to sell? Why not drop (or spin off) the side products that aren't part of the company's core comptency, and also drop the infrastructure and operating system stuff (let other people do that for free) and concentrate on applications? I've felt for a long time that Microsoft's attempt to own everything is a conceit from a time that doesn't exist anymore, and will ultimately result in owning nothing. As an app developer, they could eck out a long term existence, although perhaps as a somewhat smaller company. But a smaller company that has long term survival prospects is a heck of a lot better than a huge company approaching a wall at speed.
Re:Alright, in all seriousness (Score:4, Insightful)
Except the only real reason to buy Office is if you need 100% compatibility with the latest version of Office producing the latest version of Office files. For the rest of us, free software is good enough.
Re: (Score:2)
Except the only real reason to buy Office is if you need 100% compatibility with the latest version of Office producing the latest version of Office files. For the rest of us, free software is good enough.
There is something to what you say. But the reason people only use Office because they *have* to, instead of (here's a new idea...) *wanting* to, is because that very monopoly meant that Microsoft did not need to make the product engaging. It's that part that would need to change. (Also, the pricing needs to be restructured.)
terrible idea (Score:3)
Microsoft doesn't need to concentrate on Office. Microsoft needs to concentrate on integrating all these many pieces of the puzzle that they already have.
They could do some kick ass stuff if they could make it easy to do all the things people would like to by having settings / media ownership and compatibility between all the different platforms and form factors.
No one else has all the pieces that they do right now. If they could just stop infighting and head towards a common goal they could accomplish really cool stuff.
Microsoft hater but come on! (Score:3, Insightful)
I've had a dislike for the company since the 90's. But I'm thankful to them for the job security I enjoyed supporting and maintaining their products in enterprises. But I come home at night to Mac and Linux systems.
But seriously, Long term, Office and Windows are doomed. There is some interesting tech in Xbox Connect that could create some game changing product categories in enterprises such as Medical Tech etc. Bing, is the only thing that I can see that could even approach giving Google a ride but it's way too far behind. These 2 divisions should be spun off or at least unleashed (e.g. MSFT retains an ownership stake but takes them public) and run on a profitable basis (if they can). The bureaucracy at MSFT is killing innovation.
The other interesting things MSFT is doing are their Azure platform and universal identity management. But a mistrustful tech community will hamper adoption of these products.
Google better hope that MS doesn't abandon Bing (Score:3)
There was an interesting piece a few months back, What if Microsoft exited the search business? [dailycaller.com], arguing that the abandonment of Bing would lead to a near-immediate antitrust action against Google, either from the FTC or as a private action undertaken by Microsoft itself.
It may be that Google needs Bing to hang around as plausible competition the same way that Microsoft needed Mac OS to soldier on in the late 90's as a putative competitor to Windows (and remember, Microsoft was still found to have engaged in illegal monopolistic practices anyways, something that Microsoft arguably never recovered from).
The correct strategy (Score:3)
Here's what they should do. Sell off the XBox division for a pretty good price. Then, after a few years, arrange for a former Microsoft Executive to be put in charge of the new company. He would then drive that company into the ground and arrange for Microsoft to re-buy the company for pennies on the dollar.
Somehow, I just know that would work.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Back to Basics (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has a different problem: their older products are their own stiffest competition. Why will anyone buy Office 2016 when Office 2013 already does everything the typical consumer needs?
It used to be easy to sell new versions, because the old versions were buggy, bloated, hard to use, and missing a lot of useful features. But Microsoft has dramatically improved their quality. They've added piles of features. They've improved usability for the average John and Jane Does of the world. They've built a system that does everything the typical user needs. So their old free-ride path of "upgrade our old crap because you need to" is over, because it's no longer needed.
What they've since recognized is that their customers suck at owning computers. Most people don't make backups, they get viruses, they don't know how to manage a home system. So they are offering Office365 in the cloud to appeal to people to not have to care any more (for only $9.95/month). All John Doe has to do is remember his password, and everything else is taken care of for him. They can continue to offer token features and upgrades thrown into the price, but the real money of tomorrow will be made hosting people's data for them, not in the software. It's not the back-to-the-basics approach you advocate, but it's what they're betting will be their future.
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft has a yearly song and dance routine how they are committed to PC gaming when some executive notices how Valve is making loads of cash and realize that could have been them if they hadn't screwed it up, but it never lasts.
To be fair, PC gaming is the only reason I keep a Windows PC around, so they've made about $100 from me in the last five years buying a copy of Windows 7 for the new gaming PC.
No ninth-gen Xbox means PS5 vs. SteamOS (Score:2)