back to article Microsoft exec: I don't know HOW our market share sunk

Microsoft's global channel chief has struggled to find the words to explain why his company has not snared the intelligent devices market in the same way as it has done with PCs, admitting "there's work to do". According to tech market beanie Canalys, Microsoft operating systems ran 93 per cent of traditional PC clients in …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ?

    What's this "innovating" thing he's talking about? Clearly it's a verb of some kind, because it seems they're "quite hard at it", but I can't for the life of me relate it to a real actual thing. Perhaps he was thinking of "procrastinating", as in "we've been procrastinating really hard, putting 10 Billion into it, and I can't explain why our market share has shrunk".

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Unhappy

      Re: ?

      "What's this "innovating" thing he's talking about?"

      Quite. It seems to be the word they use when the world does not conform to their reality which is (a) that the answer is windows no matter what the questions and (b) windows is best only when MS has a monopoly. When these answers no longer compute they "innovate" - a word which in Redmondese means "change the discussion to make the answers right, like the OOXML stupidity.

    2. plrndl

      Re: ?

      "What's this "innovating" thing he's talking about?"

      I think he means "enervating".

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: ?

      They're "innovating" new ways to generate license fees and raising tech support charges. I thought that would be obvious.

    4. Charles Manning

      re: ?

      FUD maybe?

      You can have engineering innovation. You can have product innovation. You can have marketing innovation.

      Why can't you have FUD innovation?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: re: ?

        Because FUD innovation is reserved for governments and national security agencies these days. Mere corporations have to stick to well tried FUD and not go trying to be clever.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: ?

      It's weird, Microsoft genuinely think they're innovative.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: ?

        They aren't in any sort of cutting edge fashion. I've always seen them as the "fixer", they wait for new innovations to appear which have flaws and are expensive. They fix the flaws, make it cheaper and more accessible.

        It is a strategy that started to go wrong once Apple were in full swing, they just couldn't quite make their MP3 players as nice (in a market where people carry an item around in public, it needs to look nice). Their re-invented phones were too late to market.

        Instead of fixing and releasing a cheaper product their product is more broken and more expensive.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmm..... Let's see....

    They went from having a competitive, WinCE based, mobile OS, running on excellent devices like the HTC TyTn, to nothing. Perhaps those are the words he was looking for?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hmmm..... Let's see....

      You mean to say that jumping feet-first away from an established, successful and massively useful product line in favour of something based around a basic idea of what a fashionable UI is could be a BAD idea?

      That jumping away from a position where you're on the market-leading devices might be a bad move?

      Nah, that can't be right. Blindfolds on, jump away!

      The thing is they're ALREADY doing what's required- they just actively block you from using it. Using .NET, your backend code can be copied more or less wholesale between Windows desktop/server, the older Windows Mobile (<WinMo 7) and these days even exists in the microcontroller space (e.g. Netduino and other such things). So you need to write the program code once and just re-arrange the UI for the new platforms.

      If you needed something OS-agnostic you could use ASP.NET, again allowing you to keep your backend code the same on every platform and just tweak the UI.

      They even gave assistance to the Mono project, allowing .NET programs to be run under Linux and other competing OSes (including ASP.NET so it can be hosted by a regular LAMP stack- it even remains open source).

      So with this wonderful tech kicking about, how come they try to limit what you can do, to curtail the wonderful bits of development people have knocked together in the past and will continue to in future?

      Come on, MS, stop copying Apple with all this walled garden shit and get on with what you're good at- making things that let other people make things.

      In other words, build the tools, don't pander to them!

      1. Richard Plinston

        Re: Hmmm..... Let's see....

        > get on with what you're good at- making things that let other people make things.

        The problem is that people want to make things for Android, iPhone, RaspberryPi, and such, and Microsoft won't build the tools for those.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    " all intelligent devices - notebook, slabbies and smartphones"

    Well that's an interesting definition.

    My definition of "all intelligent devices" would also have included media stuff (TVs, STBs, BluRay, etc), networky stuff (SoHo routers etc), and so on.

    Microsoft share of that sector: negligible.

    Windows OSes are largely sold where MS can twist the system builders arms.

    Where the system builder is not vulnerable to that kind of StrongARM tactic, there is largely no Windows.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: " all intelligent devices - notebook, slabbies and smartphones"

      Not really wanting to stand up for MS here, but: If Windows OSes are only sold where MS can put the OS on the system to start with, why is Windows Server the most used server in the world* when a negligible amount of servers come with an OS pre-installed?

      *By servers installed and used, not by installs of Apache appearing on the web.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: " all intelligent devices - notebook, slabbies and smartphones"

        Server the most used server in the world

        Most sold units.

        There's a big difference (especially when comparing to something that isn't 'sold')

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: " all intelligent devices - notebook, slabbies and smartphones"

          I you had read my post, you would have seen that I specifically said that the vast majority of server hardware is not supplied with an Operating System. That being the case, it's reasonable to presume that if someone buys any server OS, Windows Server included, they are going to install it on a server. Incredibly expensive software like COTS Server OSes doesn't get bought and left on a shelf.

          There are also plenty of ways to tell if someone has installed a Linux server, there's the licence that you pay for your support, there's the dial home that most Linux installs do when installed, there is the use of update web sites. Now they're not going to get everything, but they and other methods are going to get the vast majority.

          I don't understand why my initial post attracted so many downvotes, except maybe it was percieved as pro MS, surely that can't be the case?

          1. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

            Why all the down votes

            You claimed Windows ws the most used saver OS in the world without supporting evidence, and people do not believe you. By all means, show some evidence. Here is a little for you:

            http://popcon.debian.org/

            Less than 1024 of any ARM flavour, so 2000000 Raspberry Pi's do not show up. Most Linux installs do not phone home.

          2. Richard Plinston

            Re: " all intelligent devices - notebook, slabbies and smartphones"

            > There are also plenty of ways to tell if someone has installed a Linux server, there's the licence that you pay for your support,

            No. You are wrong, yet again.

            The _license_ for Linux is free. The support agreement is _not_ a license, it is a contract. Many Linux server distros are not tied to support contracts (ie they are optional), eg CentOS, Scientific. Most Linux distros, even when not specifically servers, include server applications and can be used as anything from personal servers, SMB servers, to dedicated server clusters. And then there are various BSDs.

            None of these would be in the 'server market' as a cost (or revenue). Note that _support_ costs are separate from 'the server market'.

            Certainly if IBM sells an AIX box or a box with RHEL installed that would be included, but most will buy bare servers boxes and do their own install even if that is RHEL or SUSE.

            > I don't understand why my initial post attracted so many downvotes.

            Because, as usual, you are _wrong_. Market share in dollars is _not_ 'usage'. It is _cost_.

          3. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

            Re: " all intelligent devices - notebook, slabbies and smartphones"

            "I don't understand why my initial post attracted so many downvotes"

            Have you considered "because you're a tool?"

          4. Richard Plinston

            Re: " all intelligent devices - notebook, slabbies and smartphones"

            > there's the dial home that most Linux installs do when installed, there is the use of update web sites.

            While some distros, such as RHEL, do have registrations for the support and thus can be counted, other distros do not. I have several machines here with CentOS (4), Fedora, Mint and Ubuntu. I use CentOS as a desktop (and server) and Fedora as a server (and desktop). Plus I have clients with CentOS servers, and others with RHEL servers they built themselves.

            None of these boxes are in the 'server market statistics', tough possibly some of the RHEL revenue for the OS alone might be.

            As for the 'dial home', while that may indicate 'usage' it does not get included in the stats which only counts _cost_ (or sales revenue).

          5. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: " all intelligent devices - notebook, slabbies and smartphones"

            "There are also plenty of ways to tell if someone has installed a Linux server, there's the licence that you pay for your support, there's the dial home that most Linux installs do when installed, there is the use of update web sites. Now they're not going to get everything, but they and other methods are going to get the vast majority."

            Wtf?

            "I don't understand why my initial post attracted so many downvotes"

            Is this person serious?

        2. Richard Plinston

          Re: " all intelligent devices - notebook, slabbies and smartphones"

          > Most sold units.

          Most _cost_ of sold units.

          The 'server market' is measured in dollars, not units. A bare box with CentOS installed counts as $0 (because it isn't even included), machines built in-house (Google, Amazon, etc) aren't counted, one Windows server counts as $thousands.

          But AC 'The Vogan' will still peddle his misleading stats because he doesn't understand them.

          1. asdf

            Re: " all intelligent devices - notebook, slabbies and smartphones"

            @Richard Plinston

            Looks like The Vogan gave you your downvote for outing him and his shill ways.

      3. Flocke Kroes Silver badge

        Have you got figures for 'servers installed and used' ?

        Microsoft like to quote market share figures and say they sold so many million dollars of server licenses. 100,000 Linux boxes at Google, Facebook or Twitter result in zero dollars of server licenses. My router is a DHCP server and HTTPS server. Smart phones are often MTP servers. Server market share depends entirely on how you count them.

      4. kirovs

        Re: " all intelligent devices - notebook, slabbies and smartphones"

        I am sure you meant the server bringing most money as you DO NOT KNOW the number of servers installed. Unless you want to share some stats proving me wrong. That would be interesting.

        1. Tom 13

          Re: server bringing most money

          Not even sure MS would be tops there. Some of those supercomputer guys only sell a dozen or three servers a year. But man they have a cash flow. I think the definition is actually fairly constrained for their "most of" market. In fact, I think that's how they've slithered out of a few anti-trust cases.

      5. Mad3218

        Re: " all intelligent devices - notebook, slabbies and smartphones"

        That is a good question, and the only answer that makes sense to me is that the Windows Desktop does not play well with other server environments. that plus we have an entire world of highly paid server people out that that are just plan use to it.

  4. Alister

    'can't put adjectives behind the why'

    I could think of a few nice adjectives...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Eight of them to be exact...

  5. Ottman001

    I actually wonder if they're spending too much on R&D. How can a company filled with competent engineers develop the same thing three times? Looking at that $10bn figure, I suggest they're funding so many projects without anyone knowing all of what is going on.

    If solutions to cost restraints never had to be found, it may also explain ridiculous Surface prices. I don't actually know if Surface component costs are significant, its just a theory.

    1. ThomH

      One assumes last July's huge internal shakeup was related to this: probably too many fiefdoms and no centralised control — fine, the design team was separate and did what it did but then everything filtered down into the traditionally separate teams and they did their traditionally separate things.

    2. Oh Homer
      Windows

      How did it happen?

      In a word: Ballmer.

  6. No Quarter

    One word answer explaining precipertous fall

    Metro

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: One word answer explaining precipertous fall

      It's called a Rover 100 now....

      1. Synonymous Howard

        Re: One word answer explaining precipertous fall

        They've just rebadged it you fool!

        I'm not having a Mini Metro

        I'm not having a Mini Metro

  7. Mage Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Integent ... Running Windows

    Amazing, 22% of Humans, Apes, Monkeys, Elephants, Corvids, Dolphins etc are running a Microsoft computer OS!

    Um ... you do know that because they still can't figure out what intelligence is the AI people have completely changed the definition is since the 1970s? That in real terms there has been ZERO progress in AI since 1950s? Any progress is by redefining AI to include whatever program has just been developed.

    Wake me up when you find ANY intelligent device that isn't replicating biologically. Sex is obviously currently involved to produce Intelligence, in a sense.

    If we are talking about devices that are not a laptop, Notebook, All in one, PC or Server, then 22% is an amazing figure, and wrong, as MS are non-existent on Set-boxes, Routers, TVs, DVD, Blu Ray, Media boxes etc . Though in the USA in WinCE PDA / Early Symbian days it might have been more than 45%. But about 10% world wide.

    (*laptop, Notebook, All in one, PC or Server etc I don't classify as a device but "computers" as they are very general purpose and OS can easily be changed. A device running an OS (the word "intelligent" is meaningless) to me is a gadget where you'd have to go through hoops, JTAG etc to EASILY change the OS. The only non-computer devices close to "general purpose" rather than dedicated appliance are Phones (so called "Smart") and Tablets.

    Exactly what is the "Smart" in a Smart Phone? It's as dumb as a basic one that can only do phone calls and SMS with an address book. Just more applications and ability to load applications with awkward Web Browser)

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Re: Integent ... Running Windows

      That in real terms there has been ZERO progress in AI since 1950s

      "I'm gonna make shit up like an economic columnist from the NYT and just post it here. Sounds like a plan!!"

      Yeah.. "Real terms". Really intelligent word-finding here, dude.

      Well, I'm old enough to remember eejits proclaiming how impossibly hard it would be to have computers play chess and from that observation they went on to conclude that AI is too hard for computers. Now chessplaying is no longer even mentioned as an interesting problem. We switched to more interesting problems like machine translation, simulations of cats and robots pursuing you to the khazi to pop a cap into your arse.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: chess playing

        I'm not sure that chess-playing was ever "solved". IBM eventually deployed enough brute-force to outwit Kasparov as a publicity stunt, but ...

        1. Richard Plinston

          Re: chess playing

          > eventually deployed enough brute-force to outwit Kasparov

          I thought Kasparov used 'brute force' (ie evaluating every move to some depth) when playing his games.

          1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

            Re: chess playing

            "I thought Kasparov used 'brute force' (ie evaluating every move to some depth) when playing his games."

            Absolutely not. The number of possible moves grows so fast that a human could only evaluate 3 or 4 moves ahead by brute force. It's well-established that Grand Masters are better because they *don't* do that. At each move, they trim all the obviously crap moves and may pursue a promising strategy a dozen moves ahead.

            Anyone who knew how to define "obviously" or "promising" in robust algorithmic terms could publish it in a book and live off the royalties. (There are plenty of amateurs who'd buy a book that really did teach them how to play at Master level.) The fact that no-one had done so prior to 1960 is why chess-playing was selected as a good problem for AI research. The fact that no-one has done so since Big Blue is my reason for suspecting that BB owes its success more to brute-force rather than cunning.

        2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: chess playing

          Explain to me how any chess grandmaster does anything other than "brute force" the game? They think multiple steps ahead, exploring dozens if not hundreds of simultaneous potential scenarios. Experience teaches them which moves are "generally good" and which are "generally bad." All of this is just a less efficient way of doing what the computer does, less accurately.

          1. RaidOne

            Re: chess playing

            Are we examining chess here as a mean of measuring intelligence? It's obviously not, because many very intelligent people are crappy chess players.

            And people saying that chess players are using brute force are correct - they are thinking closer to how a machine operates by trying all possibilities. Not a sign of intelligence, in my opinion.

          2. RealBigAl

            Re: chess playing

            Dead easy. Chess Grand Masters also learn to read their opponents, just like poker players in a way. The difference with the Kasparov v IBM match was Kasparov couldnt intimidate Big Blue so could only rely on his reading of the game. Despite him being very very very good at that he wasnt as good as the super computer.

      2. Mage Silver badge

        Re: Inteligent ... Chess

        Hmm... Computer Chess playing doesn't use intelligence. It's brute force.

      3. HelpfulJohn

        Re: Integent ... Running Windows

        The much-vaunted Mr. A. C. Clarke, who allegedly invented just about our entire technological base and every fictional theme that ever existed, wrote a short SF story in which a computer larger than some cities eventually managed to beat a human Grand Master at chess. The event in the tale took place sometime in the 30th Millennium or later and it was applauded as a huge deal.

        When I read the tale, sometime in the early 1970's, I thought it was piffle. Tripe. Nonsense. I was entirely convinced of two things:

        a: computers would consistently beat the best humans in about a decade or less, and

        b: chess is *NOT* a sign of "intelligence".

        I was nearly right about point "a". I am certain I'm still right about point "b". Chess, like many other simple "wargame" simulations is simply memory and extrapolation from the current position. It is no more a sign of intelligence than is a bubble-sort or a Celsius-to-Fahrenheit conversion table.

        A sign of true intellect is getting utterly bored out of one's skull when first *watching* chess being played, deciding that it is simply not worth the intellectual effort to learn the rules for such a stupid, unrewarding game and buggering off to party, instead.

        When machines do that we can call them AI's.

        Yes, AI's are excellent at mimicking some aspects of what we generally look upon as intelligent behaviour but so are *politicians* and no one ever accused them of having any great wit.

        I am firmly of the opinion that there is an ineffable quality to intelligence that binary digital machinery can not ever have. I don't know what it is, but I know it when I see it. My cat had some. My wife had masses of it but no machine I've yet seen has any.

        Though I'm sure even a ten-buck toy chess-playing machine could beat me today.

        1. P_0

          Re: Integent ... Running Windows

          Chess, like many other simple "wargame" simulations is simply memory and extrapolation from the current position. It is no more a sign of intelligence than is a bubble-sort or a Celsius-to-Fahrenheit conversion table.

          In this case how is anything a sign of intelligence? And I think you'll find there is far more to it than memory and extrapolation. You do need insights into how other people think etc.

          What you are saying reminds me of when people say Poker is a game of luck. In that case why do the same faces keep appearing at Poker Series Finals?*.

          *example taken from the film Rounders (a good film by the way).

          1. Adrian 4

            Re: Integent ... Running Windows

            You need insights into how people think because the reasonable human approach isn't 'search the whole space', it's a number of learned shortcuts. So determining how your opponent is shortcutting and using a strategy they won't detect can win.

            That doesn't work if your opponent has the ability to search _all_ strategies, even he's rubbish at evaluating yours.

          2. Ken Hagan Gold badge

            Re: Integent ... Running Windows

            "In this case how is anything a sign of intelligence?"

            Once we have an answer to that question, we'll have taken our first baby steps towards AI. A related question is "What is intelligence?" and we don't have an accepted definition for that either. I suspect that once you have the answer to one then you have the answer to another, although I can't prove that since I don't have the answer to either and nor do I have sufficiently rigorous definitions of the terminology to reason about it. Nevertheless, different formulations may be equivalent and yet more or less useful than each other. I suspect that your formulation is more useful than mine, since "How do I tell?" is a call to action but "What is?" is merely an invitation to talk about it.

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Integent ... Running Windows

        There's something wrong with your memory then.

        Chess was always seen a brute force problem, and nothing to do with AI except for grabbing headlines.

        The AI community from the 60s on though very seriously underestimated the complexity at which any emergent behaviour of simple techniques like fuzzy logic, tactical functional programs, logic databases, and neural networks, becomes a structured intelligence.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Integent ... Running Windows

      Slightly OT, the "Smart" in a smartphone is the way it integrates all the different messaging, calendars, contact details and so on, allows customisation of notifications, and can be made context aware so it knows, for instance, not to ring under certain circumstances. These are all things your PA used to do for you that you can now get the phone to do without thinking about it.

      Being able to see email accounts, sms, bbm, Linkedin and calendar in a single view and drill down quickly is a big time saver compared to the basic phone + SMS + email client on computer.

      This, of course, is what Microsoft never really saw coming. Much of what is communicated via .doc/.docx never needed to be. Text + pictures is easily good enough for most business communication; Word is a hangover from the typewriter. The effort they have put into putting their Office applications onto unsuitable devices must be part of the problem; dicking around with ribbons and so on is avoiding the fundamental truth, that Word and Powerpoint contribute very little to business. WW2 was fought with voice telephony, teleprinters and typescript. Yet the pace of innovation was enormous. Microsoft has tried to do a McLuhan and turn the medium into the message. It's failing.

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