How Microsoft Lost the Future (Updated with Ballmer Quote from Seoul)

Microsoft saw the sudden appearance of a paradigm shift in the PC market. The world was changed by Apple. Microsoft reacted and poured tons of money into the transition to ensure it could continue its dominance in the new vastly different world that was emerging. It was not easy and not cheap, but Microsoft did succeed. The secret was something called a 'migration path'. The story was the transition of DOS to Windows, when the Apple Macintosh shook up the establishment. The year this started was 1984. The CEO who handled that transition was of course Bill Gates. Microsoft prospered to become the biggest software company and made the biggest profits in all of the computer tech industry. And Microsoft's brief reign as top software operating system maker in computers was extended by two more decades.

(NOTE: This story updated on 23 May with brand new quote from Steve Ballmer he made in Seoul South Korea, see below)

Microsoft was still the world's bestselling operating system maker last year, mostly on the PC side, but also in some smartphones. You know what. The reign of Microsoft has just ended. We now know that this year, 2012, for the first time the world's most installed operating system for computers will not be Windows or any software from Microsoft. It will be.. Android, mostly on smartphones, but also on some other computing devices like tablet PCs.

SHOCKING STATS

How did this happen? Where did this come from. Yes, it came suddenly. We have just seen the numbers for Q1 results in smartphone market shares, as I reported on this blog two days ago. Android powered 56% of all smartphones sold in Q1 (this is up from 49% three months before). Now lets take a few other interesting data points. Gartner tells us that this year 2012 there will be about 370 million PCs sold (including tablets). Gartner also tells us that this year 2012 there will be about 655 million smartphones sold. Ah.. Now lets do a little bit of math.

So if the world buys 370 million PCs this year, roughly speaking about 70 million (probably more) will be powered by Apple's software, as Macintosh PCs and iPad tablet PCs. That leaves us with about 300 million PCs not powered by Apple. Most, but not all, of those will run on the Microsoft Windows operating system. Some will have pirated software, some will run on Linux. But lets keep this very easy, lets just say the level of PCs running on Windows will be that 300 million. Ok?

Now lets go to smartphones. Gartner says (conservatively, I might add, I am confident the number will be bigger) that this year we'll see 655 million smartphones sold. And Android already powers 56% of smartphones sold now (and grew strongly from last quarter). Lets just say that Android stops growing and takes 56% of the new smartphones sold this year (its a fairly safe bet that Android will do better than that). 56% of 655 million is 367 million smartphones that will be powered by Android, sold this year.

Now. Microsoft does sell its operating systems Windows Phone and Windows Mobile used on some smartphones as well. How many was that? Combined, they had 2% of the smartphone market right now, in Q1. Yes, this includes the new Nokia Lumia smartphones that run on Windows Phone OS. 2%.. Lets say, for the sake of argument, that Microsoft has a massively successful 2012 growing smartphone market share. Lets say it grows to 3% this quarter Q2, then to 4% in the next quarter and 5% by end of year. That would mean less than 4% for the total market share for the full calendar year 2012. That is unlikely, considering all the headwinds that Microsoft has including the fact that carriers/operators are reluctant to sell Microsoft powered smartphones because carriers/operators hate Skype (this is something Nokia CEO admitted to the Nokia Shareholders' Meeting two weeks ago). 

But lets be very very generous to Microsoft, for the sake of argument. Lets say they do double that! Lets say Microsoft achieves 8% market share this year in smartphones. Even if we give Microsoft a fairy-tale unbelievable jump in market share from 2% now to 8% for the full year (meaning it should be something like 14% by year end - nobody, not even Apple has ever achieved that kind of massive jump). But lets make this provocative to prove a point. Lets say Microsoft gets 8% smartphone market share this year. That would be 52 million smartphones sold. So if we now pretend that there are no Linux PCs and no pirated Microsoft PC software, but all 300 million non-Apple PCs are powered by Microsoft. And we add to that the incredible 8% market share for Microsoft in smartphones and 52 million more smartphones to the total. We get 300M + 52M = 352M total Windows operating systems shipped this year.


UPDATE MAY 23, 2012 - Steve Ballmer has just spoken in Seoul South Korea, and said that Windows will ship 350 million copies of all Windows 7 based operating systems this year, as reported by CNet. Ballmer mistakenly calls this being the biggest OS in the world (conveniently ignoring Android). But 350 million? We heard it now from the horse's mouth. And yeah.. I do know my numbers, eh?


And in contrast, even while ignoring Android on tablet PCs and other devices, and assuming no growth of Android, Google would be powering 367 million smartphones this year (probably will be far bigger, ie close to 400 million).

Yes, game over. From about year 1982, for three decades, up to last year 2011, Microsoft has been the world's most deployed computer operating system. That ended now, in year 2012. Three decades is what Microsoft had. Now even with the most Microsoft-friendly and simultaneously most Google-unfriendly assumptions, it is clear Google's Android will ship more than all Windows operating systems this year. The King Is Dead, Long Live the King. Congratulations Google Android team!

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

Much as I'd love to blame this on Stephen Elop the inept CEO of Nokia, this time no, the problem is Elop's former (and some say still today) boss, Steve Ballmer. The man recently called the worst CEO of any US corporation. What did he do? He had the model, from Bill Gates. He had seen it done, in his own company. He was there to see it done. And yet he messed it up. That takes exceptional level of incompetence to have the model of winning, and to throw it away and fail instead.

We know the big picture story rather well on this blog, don't we. Smartphones were invented by Nokia (with help form Hewlett-Packard). Early smartphones were not seen as 'real' computers until Apple's iPhone came along. Now all major computer makers (HP, Dell, Lenovo, Apple, Acer, Toshiba) agree, smartphones are as real computers as desktop PCs, or mainframe computers, or laptops or tablets. Two years ago, PCs still sold more units per year than smartphones. Last year, smartphones passed the PC in selling more. This year smartphones will outsell all other types of computers combined, by 77% (nearly twice as many). Next year smartphones will easily sell more than twice as many as all other types of computers combined.

Microsoft saw this threat coming and was pro-active in preparing for it. When Nokia was collecting its rival handset makers to join in the Symbian partnership - yes, Nokia was partnering with all major handset rivals a decade ago like Motorola, Samsung, Siemens, SonyEricsson, LG, Panasonic etc - Microsoft was having none of that. Even as Symbian had almost the total market, Microsoft bravely set up its own OS and started to recruit handset makers to come build the Windows based rival group of smartphone makers, led early on by HTC. 

At its peak, Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS was the world's second bestselling smartphone OS and had 12% market share. And if Microsoft would only hold that today, combined with PC sales, Microsoft would still be bigger with 379 million compared to the 369 million that Google's Android will be shipping. Ok, maybe my assumptions were so lopsided, that it would still end as Google's win this year, but at least Microsoft could put up a serious fight to the wire this year. But no. Ballmer threw this all away. How?

Remember how Microsoft beat Apple's Macintosh the first time? With what Bill Gates had designed for existing DOS users, a 'migration path'. I remember back then, working in the PC industry, how clumsy it was to install Windows after you had installed DOS. And many subsequent Windows editions still had the DOS 'kernel' visible and even had user-adaptable elements to it. But yes, Microsoft took the trouble to provide a migration path from DOS to Windows on the PC. That gave Microsoft two full decades more of global industry dominance and massive steady streams of profits.

Now, what did Ballmer do? He had his 12% with smartphones (and growing). He then found that the new Apple gadget, the iPhone, was too radical and would change the smartphone experience (touch screen and all that). So the Windows Mobile OS was clearly uncompetitive and needed to be completely overhauled and/or replaced. And so Microsoft decided to replace it completely, with what is now called Windows Phone. Yeah. Except that rather than take Bill Gates's model, Ballmer took the cheaper and more abusive shortcut, befitting his personality. He screwed his developer community (and owners of Windows Mobile handsets) and decided there would be no migration path.

Long story short? Microsoft's market share in smartphones is now 2%. The collapse of Windows Mobile's market share started immediately after Microsoft made the announcement that there was no migration path. Ha. That is where the game was lost. And the captain of the team that gave up the world's most powerful operating system empire, set to rule the next generation of computers as it had the two previous generations - was Steve Ballmer. Congratulations fool, you are the most inept CEO running any US corporation. You saw the future, your teams had secured a path to victory, and you destroyed it.

EVIL, THE EMPIRE

The PC world is familiar to Microsoft. They've been one of the pioneers of that industry. In it as Microsoft soon gained a monopolistic position, Microsoft also started to behave like a bully, gaining soon the reputation of being the Evil Empire. We don't need to relitigate this on the blog, we know the stories, from all the court cases over the years up to the levels of US and European governments suing Microsoft for unfair practises.

That was the history. The future belongs to the far more widely selling smartphones. We sold 472 million smartphones last year, Gartner says 655 million smartphones will be sold this year, and next year 2013, the annual sales of smartphones will pass 1 Billion units (says TomiAhonen Consulting). For contrast, the PC industry might sell 400 million units next year according to Gartner. If Microsoft loses the battle for smartphones, we can also see the Kodak'ization of Microsoft, sitting on an ever diminishing part of the tech industry slowly fading to oblivion. The smartphone battle is make-or-break for Microsoft. They cannot afford to lose this war.

Which brings me to mobile. In this industry, totally differing from the PC industry, the sales of individual smartphone models and their volumes are disproportionately controlled by a handful of giant global telecoms carriers/operators. Giant companies like Telefonica, Vodafone, America Movil, China Mobile, Deutcshe Telekom and NTT of Japan. These are not little 'VARs' (Value-Add Resellers) that Microsoft can easily bully around. These are giant global Fortune 500 sized companies that are all larger than Microsoft itself. Their bosses will not take kindly to bullying tactics. And they control which handsets by which manufacturers - running which software - will be sold. Microsoft knows this painfully - as it was the carrier community which killed Microsoft's own Kin mobile phone project - the two youth-oriented Kin phones were globally rejected by the carrier community and the Kin project was killed by Microsoft in six weeks - literally, the fastest death in handset history. Bear in mind, the development cycle for handsets is 18 monhts. So Microsoft spent 18 months and countless millions developing its own handsets, and less than 2 months later, killed the whole project. Yes, we've seen Microsoft fail also in other attempts, like say, Zune, but never this fast.

CARRIERS HATE MICROSOFT

So what is going on? Microsoft was never the darling of the telecoms industry. The industry has long memories and remember all the grief that Microsoft has brought to the industry, from the ruining of its first handset partner, Sendo, to recently suing past Windows partners like Motorola. The relationships of Microsoft and the carrier community were strained already a year ago, as explained for example by former Windows Phone boss, Charlie Kindle. Then came Skype. I've explained why carriers hate Skype more than anything else. I've just last week given a deeper updated analysis of the OTT threat to carrier revenues and profits (OTT or Over The Air providers are better know for brands like Blackberry Messenger, iMessage, Facebook, Whatsapp and yes, Skype). Skype is the ultimate red flag to carriers.

Microsoft bought Skype in May of 2011. Since then, the reaction of the global carrier community has been sales boycotts against Microsoft. Charlie Kindle admitted that during 2011 Microsoft took the bad carrier relationships and made them worse. He did not explicitly mention that it was Skype which poisoned these relationships. I did, on this blog, just days after the deal was made. And now, two weeks ago, at the Nokia Shareholders' Meeting, Nokia new CEO Stephen Elop answered a question from a shareholder, asking about whether it was true that carriers are refusing to sell Nokia's Lumia series of smartphones because Microsoft owns Skype - Elop replied not just that it was true, but he added the phrase 'of course' to underline how clearly this is known in the industry.

Carriers hate Skype and now they are punishing Nokia Lumia sales - not says Tomi Ahonen, so says Nokia CEO himself - even as Lumia current smartphones do not have Skype pre-installed! They are punishing all Windows Phone makers because Microsoft bought Skype and now provides the deep pockets for Skype to continue to haunt carriers. The CEO of AT&T just admitted at CTIA that these OTT providers are keeping him awake at night. They are an existential threat to the carrier business, and Skype is the biggest threat of them all, threatening both voice and messaging revenues.

WINDOWS 8 MAKES THINGS WORSE

So carriers already hate Microsoft, because of Skype - even as Microsoft's own smartphones do not have Skype and rival smartphones often do have it pre-installed. They don't hate the app, they hate Skype itself and how it is disintermediating the carrier business itself. And now comes Windows 8. Yes, I am sure Windows 8 will be a great success for Microsoft in the legacy PC business. Think of Kodak. But in the future of computers - the smartphone business - if the carriers already boycott Microsoft due to just it owning Skype, how much more will carriers hate Microsoft when Skype is on every Windows 8 desktop, notebook, netbook, tablet and smartphone. The carriers cannot prevent the sales of Windows 8 to the legacy PC industry (think Kodak) but here, in the future of the computer industry, the carriers can and will punish Microsoft for it.

Ballmer (and Elop) has been talking of a 'third ecosystem' in smartphones out of Windows Phone. That was a joke when he offered it, it is now a farce. Microsoft once had 12% market share, it is now roughly 2%. Windows Phone market share fell every quarter last year, and now even after Nokia's Lumia sales, has only recovered to 1.6% (the remainder is the lingering Windows Mobile market share, which you'll remember is incompatible with WIndows Phone). Is that a 'third ecosystem'. Well, it depends on what kind of new math you learned in school. But the biggest ecosystem is Android. Second is iOS. Third is Blackberry OS, fourth is Symbian and fifth? Is Samsung's bada. Yes, they launched at the same time and Samsung's bada has sold nearly twice as many smartphones as Ballmer's 'third ecosystem' Windows Phone. No. It isn't and it won't ever be the third ecosystem. Windows Phone is the.. sixth ecosystem with no hope of even catching fifth place any time soon.

Which brings me back full circle to the migration path. What of Windows Phone and Windows 8? Many who have bought for example Nokia Lumia series phones (incidentially, the Windows Phone is so poorly suited for smartphones, it has 101 elementary design mistakes that even 'obsolete' Symbian can easily do - many veteran smartphone users think Windows Phone was designed by children or total incompetents, but thats another story). Yes, many who now have Windows Phone based smartphones like say the brand new Nokia Lumia series, are asking, since Windows 8 is coming at the end of the year, can they upgrade this smartphone to run Windows 8? I mean, Apple offers upgrades of its current smartphones to the next OS. Nokia has been doing this regularly on its current Symbian series and the next versions of it. Microsoft used to do that with Windows Mobile of old. But even as both Nokia and Microsoft have been asked many times, there is no confirmation. They are not saying. Why is that? Is Ballmer now set to repeat once again his mistake? No migration paths!

So that is where we are at. Microsoft ruled the computer operating systems for three decades. Now thanks to Ballmer's bad choices, Microsoft has ruined its chances in mobile and has abandoned the dominant position it held. The new superpower is .. Google and Android. Wow. That happened fast. Congratulations Google, you are this year going to take the title from Microsoft as providing the biggest number of new operating systems deployed on computers this year. And haha, Evil Empire, Microsoft, I am not shedding any tears for all the mean acts you've done in the past. About time we start to relegate you into the trash heap of history. Yes, you'll live on for many more years, but think Kodak. Your time has come and gone. You lost it!

PS for anyone who needs data about the mobile industry, don't forget my free Almanac 2010 edition. The data is obviously 2 years old, but still quite relevant in many cases and for any totally free resource on the big picture numbers of this industry, the 171 page unrestricted pdf file with over 90 tables and charts is a treasure-trove. Download yours now (no registration needed either) and share with your friends too. Download now at Lulu.com TomiAhonen Almanac 2010 Freeware Edition.

 

Comments

[So Vatar]

Tomi, you write Microsoft lost it when they had no migration path from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone.
Isn't it an irony? Nokia lost it when they switched to Windows Phone with no migration path from their existing systems (Symbian, Maemo/MeeGo).

Interestingly enough Nokia previously presented a migration path from Symbian to Maemo / MeeGo using Qt.

So an ex-MS executive hired by Nokia replaced a strategy with migration path (Qt) with a strategy without migration path (WP). Interesting parallel, don't you think?

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi So

Totally correct.. Yes, that is one of the many ironies of what is Stephen Elop to Nokia. But in this case, I think the even bigger story is Microsoft. After all, Nokia only ruled handsets for 14 years. Microsoft ruled operating system software for 30 years.. And I had been expecting this milestone to come this year, as I plotted Android growth and PC industry maturing, but didn't expect it to happen in Q1 haha..

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Rei]

A bit rough, but true.

Somehow the leading product just have to be of shitty quality: when Windows finally started to catch up with Apple's OS X, it gets beaten by Android, which is easily twice as buggy.

[Spawn]

And to top that: google also expanded Androids field. ICS did a huge step forward to become more usable on tablets. I would expect that fron there the jump to desktops isnt that huge. Taken into account how wide-spread and common Android is already on mobiles and tablets and taken the amazing large ecp-system of apps and partners into account I would expect that Androod can reach significant share on the desktop within short time. Maybe something we will already see with the next androod iteration.

[Dipankar Mitra]

Hi Tomi,
Pretty good post. I was sure Microsoft's OS dominance days are over, when in Q1 2012, Apple became the largest seller of personal computing devices. I wrote a smallish post back in Feb (http://dipankarmitra.blogspot.in/2012/02/apples-q4-2011-results-makes-it-largest.html).
As I mention in my blog, I see it possible that Microsoft returns to it's days of writing applications for Apple's devices. Full MS office suite on iPad, anyone?

[Spawn]

As sidenote: both, from a technical and strategical, viewpoint Android is miles ahead its competition Windows and OSX. I do not think Microsoft can change that. Windows is to large, has to much history inside and is bound to its current path to keep the eco-system. They try to change that with WinCRT but WinCRT is flawn bu design. Just like the faoled Silverlight was. HTML5 is the nexy try but cause of binding it to IE only sibject to fail too. Compared to this Android already suceeded with a flexible and thin system that can and does adapt to new requirements faster then anybody else while keeping apps and solutions, taking them over to new paths.

Compared to Microsoft I think Apple does well. The thing they will address next is to bring iOS and OSX closer together. I think they will make it and stay a good competitor in the future.

That makes 2 non-burning platforms. Keen to see how Tizen will perform. I do not see anu alternate in the mix.

[Sander van der Wal]

The difference between Android and Windows is that Google is not making any kind of money on Android, while Microsoft made money by the boatload with Windows.

Android can be and is being forked (Amazon, Baidu), Windows has always been under complete control.

The number two in volume, Apple, is now making two orders of magnitude more money than the number one. Compare that to the amount of money being made by Apple in the beginning of Windows.

But fortunately for Microsoft, the smartphone is not going to take over the job of the PC, like the PC took the jobs of mainfraimes and mini's. Nobody is going to create powerpoints on their smartphone.

[svensson]

I personally like Microsoft. They have provided me with a working pc-software as long as I can remember, they have provided me with a good office package and saved me a lot of money letting me pick out any hardware I wanted in my pc, and it always worked. Win7 is fantastic, everything works with everything, it's even backward-compatible and all odd sorts of hardware is fully supported. Just plug it in. I can plug in my N8, back up with Nokia Suite, sync photos with Picasa and sync music with WMP. Freedom of choice.

What MS is trying to do now is just wrong and alienating, this locked up, poor connectivity and under-performing OS they have created could bore the mind even out of an ios user. And it doesn't stop there, what is the purpose of Zune really, why not let me choose how and with what I want to add more music or copy photos from my smartphone. Until MS figures this out I will not be one their customers on the smartphone market.

Thanx Tomi for another great post.

[JohnatNokia]

Tomi, you’ve become a serial distortionist. Recently, we called you out for your blanket practice of attributing bogus “admissions” to Stephen Elop. Some of your readers were compelled to do the same, in some detail, in the May 9 comments on this blog (hope you did not delete them).

Other bloggers got it right when they read Elop’s verbatim remarks, yet you continue to distort, so let’s try this again: Among other things, Elop never characterized operators’ view of Skype as “hate.” He never said anything like Microsoft’s ownership of Skype was punishing Lumia sales.

And to make it distortion in the first degree, you also dodge the crux of Elop’s Skype comments … that Nokia is turning around Skype to our advantage when it comes to discussions with operators. How convenient for your agenda. How inconvenient for your credibility.

You are entitled to your opinions, but – despite your bloviation, obfuscation, personal insults and profane rants – we will continue to call you out whenever you twist things, cherry pick words, or in any way distort to fit your agenda.

[jiipee]

@Sander van der Wal
You are making good points on the division of profits. Google's earning logic is so different that it will make competing difficult.

What is the future of PCs might differ in my opinion. I could personally invest in mobile hardware that I could easily dock to TV, laptop frame, tablet screen, home entertainment system etc. The future of current PCs I see as tools for heavy users such as data analyst, media,... Powerpoints or simple spreadsheets one can easily make with a mobile device within few years.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

This to Johnatnokia

Hey! You have the nerve to come here and leave a comment in this thread, with more accusations, while you STILL HAVE NOT TOLD ME WHERE I MISQUOTED YOUR BOSS.

You accused me of 'fabricating' things Elop said. You accused me in public on Twitter on 9 May. I responded, asked more than a dozen separate times for you to point out where in my blog was a specific quotation that I attributed to Elop, which was a fabrication - and you never showed it. Instead like a coward, like a 'chicken shit' you made your accusation and then refused to back it up.

I am not playing this game with you Johnatnokia, John S Pope Nokia Director of Communications, in charge of the Social Media Strategy for Nokia. You MUST first show me where I falsely quoted your boss Stephen Elop, where is my fabrication. What did I put in quotes claiming Elop said, that was false. You show me that. Then we'll talk about what else nonsense you claim.

I clearly quote Elop for his words. Then I explain what he means - as he often - in fact 'serially' distorts the truth and at times he deliberately lies - such as his claim of Nokia Symbian sales in decline when he issued the Burning Platforms memo, when Nokia own Quarterly Results show Symbian was growing.

So - John Pope, johnatnokia - I will keep your posting here. I will not only leave it here for all to see, I will drive my Twitter followers here to see it, and I will post a full blog reply to you, calling you out for being the coward that you are. You accuse me of fabrication - you show me where in that blog post is one word wrongly attributed to Elop. Unless you can do that, you owe me an apology. Shame on you John S Pope. This is exactly the same arrogant bullying you did over at Dell previously in your career, when Dell went through what is known as Dell Hell. Shame on you!

To all who want to know what this is about, read my posting about John's accusations at entitled - Electronic Echoes and the Bizarre War Nokia's John S Pope is Waging on Me. It is at this link

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/05/electronic-echoes-and-the-bizarre-war-nokia-communications-director-john-pope-now-waging-with-me.html

And if you want to read the exact quotes of Elop from the Shareholders' meeting and how I quoted Elop, it is entitled Nokia So Alarmed, Release Full Text and Video of Elop to try to Spin the Story. It is at this link

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/05/nokia-so-alarmed-release-full-text-of-skype-comment-by-elop-trying-to-spin-the-story.html

John S Pope johnatnokia - you are despicable for these accusations. Is this how Nokia intends to bully its way in the era of social media. Shame on you!

Tomi Ahonen

[JohnatNokia]

You have our response. And shame on you, sir, for deleting/censoring on-topic commentary on this blog that also called you out, e.g. the short-lived comment from "nokiafan" who said he disagreed with Nokia strategy but thought it wrong of you to put words in the mouths of others.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

JohnatNokia ie John Pope of Nokia

I delete spam and trolls plus there are rules about what kind of comments are accepted. Funny you should 'notice' that comment. I saw where it came from haha, did you two coordinate this actually on a strategic plan or what? No. You don't get to make NEW accusations, John Pope Director of Communications of Nokia, and in Charge of Social Media Strategy of Nokia. You accused me on 9 May of fabricating quotes about your boss. I asked you, I asked you MANY times to show what quote was wrong. You never even offered me one such instance. Only you continue with new accusations. I do not play that game John S Pope of Nokia. You first answer to your FIRST accusation. Where have I misquoted your boss on that blog. Where is one word misquoted? When you tell me, we can examine that, and then either I need to correct the error, as I do on this blog when I make mistakes, or else you apologize to me, and to my readers and followers for making a false accusation.

We are not playing a game where you get to come here to harass me every week with new UNFOUNDED complaints. You tell me where is the fabrication, where did I misquote your boss, Stephen Elop about his words to the Nokia Shareholders' Meeting in May. You tell me that. It was not me who started this, John S Pope, Director of Communications at Nokia. YOU started this by accusing me of fabricating words said by your boss. So show me where, or apologize.

And John, this will only get worse, you know it. I have tons of articles and stories already waiting to be published in Electronic Echoes part 2. You are only making this worse for Nokia. How unethical is it for you to attack some blogger and then not specify where is the error. You are a disgrace. Shame on you John S Pope, Director of Communciations at Nokia. Shame!

Tomi Ahonen

[vijay]

1. Silly you think MS will live and die as an OS Vendor:

a. ofcourse it cannot survive being just an OS vendor;

b. being just an os vendor changed around the year 1991, when linus torvalds said sw dev should be philanthropy and not biz. nobody can beat free as in "free beer".

c. our dear redhat entered the billion dollar club this year[took 20 years]

d. selling an OS is just a side biz for MS - but which is fortunately making 20 billion/quarter revenue

e. apple sells hw and experience with free ios; google sells ads thru search with free android/linux. MS RELIED ON PARTNERS TO BUILD GREAT PC'S WHICH BOMBED.

f. its core biz is "BUSINESS SOFTWARE" - office, sharepoint, dynamics/crm, exchange, etc. [ofcourse all of them have good competition which is good]

g. it missed the boat with mobi, but there are atleast 5 future trendz where it is in: cloud[azure], tablets[win8/nook], livingroom[xbox], apps[skype/office(not on ipad yet for strategic reasons)]

h. MS good @ 3E

i. it already has a war chest of patents and is constantly increasing it @10Billion/Year; [12000patents] which are sufficient to just live happily ever after [licensing the stuff]

[vijay]

Tomi, your interpretation of
"- Elop replied not just that it was true, but he added the phrase 'of course' to underline how clearly this is known in the industry. " is baseless

I think he meant

1. "anyway skype will be available in all handsets:ios,android,etc"

2. "keeping skype from being bought by apple and google is much better;"

3. "carriers thru microsoft" "having control over skype" is much better than letting it be in the wild and cause shivers.

[don_afrim@twitter]

Tomi,
I think you're too good and way over their heads, John Pope and Steve Elop, to argue with them. They are too dumb to even argue. These fools have no clue about mobile and they just destroyed the biggest smartphone company in the world.
I really give the blame to the Nokia Board. They have lost it completely. Why no intervention with a pink slip to both Elop, John Pope and all the incompetent new people at Nokia who are ruining this company is just beyond me.

I HAVE A MESSAGE THE NOKIA BOARD: FIRE STEVEN ELOP, JOHN POPE AND ALL THE NEW INCOMPETENT PEOPLE ELOP HAS BROUGHT SINCE JOINING NOKIA.

[Grim Reaper is coming to town!]

@Vijay, that rings so true! I've been following the software business 30 years and when I have a gut instinct about something it usually holds. There's so much more than just OS, but as you said it makes huge profits for MS. Windows powers this planet's PC's. It is as simple as that.

This January I thought that Nokia is going under real soon. I was not wrong. There is max. 1-2 mo's left.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Vijay

I have a policy here that comments that do not reflect that they have read the blog - and would necessitate a response from me starting with 'if you read the blog' - are a waste of time of my readers, and will be deleted without mercy. Now, in this case (your second reply) you are not talking about this blog article about Microsoft, you refer to the debate we're having with Johnatnokia ie John Pope and I'll give you some lee-way. Please vijay, go read the actual blog article I refer to, called "Nokia So Alarmed.." (see link in the above or click on the link to the right here among recent blog postings). This is what Elop was asked, verbatim:

"I believe Nokia has a problem with product distribution. Operators do not want to sell Windows Phone smartphones, because Microsoft has acquired Skype, who offers free Internet calls. Skype calls are eating operator revenue. There may be ways to block Skype, but there will always be ways to get around it. What will you (Nokia) do to get over this problem."

This is the relevant part of Elop's answer, that had the phrase 'of course' - notice how explicit his response is and how 'of course' cannot refer to the three matters you mention. Elop said, verbatim:

"The feedback from operators is they don’t like Skype, of course"

It cannot be more clear. The phrase 'of course' refers to 'operators don't like skype' which is Elop's direct response to the shareholder who asked whether its true that operators do not want to sell Windows Phone smartphones 'because Microsoft acquired Skype'. Vijay, please go read the actual blog - and if you still feel there is some ambiguity about it, that blog comments thread is the best place to continue this discussion, not here in this blog about Microsoft becoming another Kodak.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

To the rest in this thread..

Sorry about that, my policy is usually to respond in sequence of comments left here, in chronological order. But because Johnatnokia ie John Pope has been waging a war on me and my reputation both on Twitter and now here on this blog, and that started on 9 May, I did want to address his comment immediately, as it goes to his accusations about my credibility and honesty.

I will return with comments to the others in this thread, and will do that now, just so you guys don't need to wait for your replies haha, while that moron from Nokia hijacks the valid discussion with totally new unfounded and baseless accusations. Like 'serial distortionist' ??? It wasn't my company who demolished its loyal customer base falling from 29% to 8% in just 15 months, setting a world record in scaring away customers. It wasn't my company that saw its share price collapse from over 8 Euros to under 2.30 Euros in the same period wiping out enormous value from its shareholders. It wasn't I who accused Pope of fabricating stuff - he accused me - and if you accuse someone, you should at least be man enough to point out where that happened... Well, he's a moron obviously, and not competent to be in charge of Nokia Social Media Strategy haha..

Comments coming to you all, Rei, Spawn, Dipankar, Sander, svensson, jiipee, vijay, don and Grim. Hold on

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Rei, Spawn, Dipankar, Sander, svensson

Rei - haha, yeah the irony. And I'd add that at least Google is working far harder at bringing Android up to speed than what has been Microsoft's pace in the past haha. They found it so bad that they even quit giving year numbers to their software, they could not commit to a schedule to launch in any one year haha..

Spawn - very true. At the same time the traditional Desktop market is shrinking. The laptop is becoming ever closer to netbooks and part of portable PCs is shifting to tablets. All the trends are in favor of Android

Dipankar - good blog posting BTW, and yeah, haha, I forgot that yeah, early on MS made apps for the Mac that it didn't even offer for the IBM side haha like Word..

Spawn (2nd comment) - totally agree, Windows became bloatware, massively

Sander - good points but beware that thought 'nobody will make powerpoints on smartphones' - apart from many who already do (remember for many in less affluent countries, a smartphone is often the only PC they have access to) - same could be said for Cobol based business reporting software of the 1970s and early 1980s. Nobody bothered to do that on PCs because we had something far better (Lotus 1-2-3, Excel, Quattro, Visicalc etc spreadsheets). The input options on modern smartphones totally dwarf those available on PCs and we may well see a similar leapfrog making current powerpoint as outdated as Cobol was to PC users (says one so old, who still learned Cobol at university haha..). I'm not saying it is in any way inevitable, but it is likely. So just you might re-think that part as you consider smartphones as the new computer paradigm for this decade haha..

svensson - and you are not alone. Windows runs on roughly a Billion PCs and most of those users will also have some kind of Microsoft suite of apps and many of those are very happy using Word, Excel, Internet Exploder etc. Nothing wrong with that, but yeah, thanks for mentioning. Microsoft is not about to disappear this year or next, they have a long decline coming - but so it also looked for Kodak at the start of the previous decade. I see very strong parallels with Microsoft today and Kodak about year 2003 or so, when more pictures were taken on digital cameras including cameraphones, than on film and paper..

Thanks to all, more comments immediately next

Tomi Ahonen :-)