{"id":137,"date":"2009-01-23T12:04:20","date_gmt":"2009-01-23T16:04:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.payne.org\/2009\/01\/23\/microsofts-aint-the-gorilla-no-more\/"},"modified":"2009-01-23T12:04:20","modified_gmt":"2009-01-23T16:04:20","slug":"microsofts-aint-the-gorilla-no-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/microsofts-aint-the-gorilla-no-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft&#8217;s Ain&#8217;t the Gorilla No More"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was surprised at Microsoft&#8217;s recent layoff news:\u00a0 (a) this is their first major layoff, and (b) they&#8217;re only laying off 5%.\u00a0 The financial analysts are calling this the indicator of general technology\/software woes.<\/p>\n<p>The technology sector is definitely challenged, but Microsoft&#8217;s problems are quite unique. They&#8217;re an old-line software company with a market structure and core business changing out from under them:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Most high-volume, general purpose software components (e.g. OS, productivity, etc.) will be free or pseudo-free (ad supported).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Key exceptions:\u00a0\u00a0 games, and small apps (e.g. $1 iPhone apps).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Most apps will be delivered as on-line services, with subscription or ad-based revenue models.\u00a0\u00a0 Exceptions:\u00a0\u00a0 apps needing heavy client-side interactivity, computation or data manipulation (e.g. PhotoShop).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Many software companies won&#8217;t sell software at all, they&#8217;ll sell the value the software generates (e.g. Google, Kayak.com, etc.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Microsoft has cash and a huge installed base, so they&#8217;re not going away anytime soon.\u00a0 But market structure changes are the toughest transitions for any company to navigate, and Microsoft hasn&#8217;t yet done a great job showing they&#8217;re up to the task.\u00a0 Witness:\u00a0 botched discussions with Yahoo, and I&#8217;m still amazed that Microsoft hasn&#8217;t jumped on a app store for Windows that makes it ridiculously easy to find, buy and install small-dollar applets.<\/p>\n<p>My bet:\u00a0 without bold moves, they gradually fade to an &#8220;inertia existence&#8221; (e.g. IBM, Sun), without the margins typically enjoyed by the gorilla.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was surprised at Microsoft&#8217;s recent layoff news:\u00a0 (a) this is their first major layoff, and (b) they&#8217;re only laying off 5%.\u00a0 The financial analysts are calling this the indicator of general technology\/software woes. The technology sector is definitely challenged, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/microsofts-aint-the-gorilla-no-more\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}