One more badly received purchase by Ballmer.
http://seekingalpha.com/currents/post/1255892Plus, Nokia gets to keep the Nokia name. MSFT phones will be "Microsoft Lumia" going forward. Oooh, gotta go out and get me one of them hip Microsoft phones. Windows has a very small % of the mobile market, so what's not working should apparently be doubled down on.
Nokia CEO Elop looks to be a very possible replacement for Ballmer.
Comments
Regards,
Ted
If Elop becomes CEO, it will be just another uninspired choice that the company has made.
But I agree that Surface RT is a tough sell and I could even see them abandoning this one in a few years --- though you should see renewed interest in Surface Pro tablets with the next gen hardware. A lot of people who held off on the 1st gen Surface Pro are very interested in the new models coming out running the new Intel Haswell chips that are considerably much more power-efficient (therefore longer battery life) and should also be able to offer slimmer and lighter machines.
So there are a lot of people would rather just see just a single Surface Pro edition running on both powerful Haswell chips and the next-gen less powerful but less expensive quad-core Atom-based chips...and both can run your conventional Windows apps as needed. Thereby eliminating the need for the limited Surface RT which has been difficult to position as to where it fits. The Kindle Fire, Google Nexus and iPads have a stronghold and fits those markets nicely.
Globally, Androids are going to be incredibly difficult to catch up to because the sheer number of different sleek devices that keeps coming out. For example, the HTC One is an awesome Smartphone with an awesome camera on it to boot.
But yeah - I just mentioned a couple of funds - lucky for them about their Nokia holdings. Bad for guys like Whitney Tilson who I think had shorts on Nokia.
But yeah - it's a very different world --- Gartner predicts for 2013 and 2014, Android devices will dominate shipments of new devices.
Oh, I don't disagree. MSFT certainly has the power and scope to take market share if they wanted to. However, if Nokia's Elop does indeed become CEO, I was hoping for a more inspired choice (Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg is a rumored possibility, that would be interesting) to actually shake things up at the company, which I don't see happening if that goes forward.
I wanted to like the Surface devices, but came away feeling mixed. I hated the keyboard, but I'm sure there are other alternate options available. Surface has potential, certainly, although I just have to wonder if Microsoft is viewed in some regards as not trendy, not sleek - I mean, as Ballmer noted, "“You don’t need to be a computer scientist to use a Windows phone and you do to use and Android phone…It is hard for me to be excited about the Android phones.”
People these days want feature-rich, challenging and dynamic technology. They don't want dumbed-down, simplified tech. Android is certainly not difficult to use, but again, Ballmer for so many years provided the face of someone who not only didn't see trends, but laughed and cracked jokes about said trends as they gained steam. Ballmer had successes at Microsoft during his time and certainly the company is making money, but what's Ballmer's legacy in the eyes of many? A bunch of viral videos of him screaming on stage in a way that makes Jim Cramer seem like decaf in comparison.
Anyone seen the awful "Don't Get Scroogled?" Microsoft ads? They look like bad late night infomercials. Where you can find these ads? Why, under the official Microsoft Bing account on Youtube, of course.
I certainly have nothing bad to say about the XBOX and only hope that that the release of the next console goes as smoothly. Windows 8 is ... not awful?
I've played around with a number of different smartphones (including Nokia), but currently use a Nexus 4.
Again, MSFT certainly is a very successful company, I just think in terms of what I call the "public face" of their company, they need someone with vision and someone inspired.
Lastly, Nokia's new phone offers 41 megapixel images. WTF do I need 41MP images. People don't need 15 MP images. Obviously there are options for lower image sizes, but 41MP images are a selling point. What is the file size for a 41MP image? Oy.
I definitely do not think that Microsoft is "over" by any means and - something I never thought I'd say - if it actually appears that someone that isn't "new boss, same ****" may come in, I may buy a bit.
This is another reason why Blackberry has been selling well outside of USA.