Musings on the world of software from the sharp end of the long tail
Posted in Business on Jul 6th, 2008
Some good commentary on Microsoft’s Vista flop on SeekingAlpha - interestingly Windows XP sales are booming. This creates an interesting situation for Microsoft. As I’ve mentioned before - they’re increasingly competing against some fast moving competitors (Linux and OS/X) with some very old, quickly decaying technology (Windows XP). So while selling XP might make short […]
Posted in Web on Apr 23rd, 2008
Ray Ozzie gets the Web. Which is a start - now he just needs to overcome the huge burden of Microsoft’s revenue base. That’s going to be the hard bit.
It’ll be interesting to see how far Microsoft go to adopt standards and interoperability and open source - these were fundamental in the rapid growth and […]
Posted in Business on Apr 11th, 2008
We (continue to) live in interesting times. It will be intersting to see how Microsoft fare over the next five years; the knives are drawn - Gartner claims that Microsoft’s troubles are a result of their past success - ie they’re overly burdedned by their installed base in a classic example of the Innovator’s Dilema. […]
Posted in Technology on Feb 27th, 2008
The EU just fined Microsoft $US 1.35bn for failing to comply with a previous anti-trust ruling. IMO - that seems a bit low for a company with oodles of cash (2007 NET income was $US 14bn and equity of over $US 30bn). I just don’t see how this will change Microsoft’s behavior.
Still - Neelie Kroes […]
Posted in Technology on Feb 27th, 2008
Microsoft have finally figured out that Metcalfe’s Law applies to them as much as the next software company - despite their huge footprint. To quote Microsoft’s CEO and CMM (Chief Mad-Monkey) Steve Balmer :
“In a more connected, services-oriented world…one of the greatest value-adds in some sense is what people do on the other end of […]