http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/jan/08/microsoft-windows-8-future?CMP=twt_gu
A good read which is not just about Windows 8. The good news, and the potential for MSFT, are in the subtitle:
Windows 8, the PC giant’s new operating system, is stylish, award-winning, multi-platform – and critical to its future
But check out the “critical to its future” challenges:
Windows Phone took just 1.5% of the mobile operating system market in the third quarter of 2011, according to research firm Gartner, compared to over 50% for Android and 15% for Apple.
The danger for MSFT around the shift to tablets and the post-PC world:
Research firm IDC forecasts that in affluent western economies, desktop computer sales will slip from 57.8m a year in 2010 to 49.8m by 2015. Laptop sales dipped by some 7m in 2011; they are expected to recover this year, but go on to grow at a far slower pace than previously. Sales of tablets are heading the other way, rising from 17.6m in 2010 to 77.4m last year and a projected 326m in 2015.
Check that last sentence again. That’s 440% tablet growth year on year last year. And 420% more growth over the next 4 years.
On the Ballmer point: why is there not more outrage that the company’s stock is at the same price it was in… 1998?
Got Schwartz? 