Chasing Tail-lights at Robert Pogson

That’s what Mark Anderson says about M$’s IT. He says they are in trouble with respect to consumer goods except for Xbox and suggests re-organization. He suggests they should either focus on consumers or stick with IT in business.

I think they are in trouble everywhere. It’s not that they are not making money but their growth is so much less than other businesses that they will become a niche player. Their shrinking monopoly will be all they have. Eventually, they will become a patent troll or bitter failure like SCO. The only thing preventing total collapse at the moment is the loyalty of the “partners” who are solidly locked in. Consumers are not and when the consumer gives their custom to OEMs who are not partners or who break rank with M$ there will be no way to recover from a huge slide.

I am not worried. GNU/Linux can easily take up the slack in software. Consumers have many choices in ARMed gadgets. They soon will have choice in ARMed PCs at the retail level. M$’s shares are down 25% from the post-”7″ highs, about even for the year. RedHat is up 50% in the last year. M$ does not own the future.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.

2 Responses to “Chasing Tail-lights”

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1 guy Jul 7th, 2010 at 7:01 pm

-He says they are in trouble with respect -to consumer goods except for Xbox

Xbox is a success?

The first version lost somewhere between 5 and 8 billion and the 360 is around break even when you take in account the Red Rings fiasco cost the company about a billion too.

Nothing spells success like a 56% failure rate (which means little until you see that the other two are just on either side of 10%).

Of course if we compare this to the OS having HALF of your game consoles fail is a step up for Redmond.
2 Robert Pogson Jul 8th, 2010 at 4:50 am

I remember I was teaching in the Arctic when an Xbox auto-incineration failure became public. I remember reading the notices in class because many students used the thing and were unaware that it had such a problem. Strangely, I do not remember any student deciding to cease using it. It’s a bit like that other OS. You can tolerate a lot of abuse if introduced gradually.