back to article Microsoft fingered for Western Euro PC tragedy

Microsoft last year effectively murdered one part of the mobile PC market that was going gangbusters - Windows with Bing (WwB) - and unsurprisingly this is now reflected in weaker sales across Western Europe. The low-cost WwB portables reached distributors by summer '14, designed to counter what was seen as a growing threat to …

  1. djstardust

    Microsoft

    Another day, another screw up.

    Quelle surprise!

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Microsoft

      Shame it's the OEMs that pay.

      Netbooks mk II - can't they just whack Mint or Ubuntu on the things this time?

      1. P. Lee

        Re: Microsoft

        >>The impact of this was seen in distributors’ official sales data compiled by venerable analyst Context, with units falling nine per cent in Q1 versus the same quarter a year ago.

        >Netbooks mk II - can't they just whack Mint or Ubuntu on the things this time?

        If you can avoid it, you don't want to build your business on someone-else's. They will eventually try to eat your market. That's why HP and IBM and so on do Linux. If Redhat try any funny stuff it is easy to switch and the mere threat of switching pretty much prevents them trying.

    2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: Microsoft

      I disagree.

      Windows with Bing was a race-to-the-bottom thing. In a race to the bottom the manufacturer _ALWAYS_ loses. If Windows did leave Windows with bing alive, manufacturers would have been even worse off due to lower cost of units sold, lower margin and (most likely) overoptimism in estimating needed inventory to support a new type of offering.

      1. Paul Crawford Silver badge

        Re: Microsoft

        Not just no profit for vendors, none for MS and a weakened market for Windows licences elsewhere.

        I guess MS decided it was cheaper/easier just to use malware tactics to get existing Windows users on to 10 by hook or by crook?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Microsoft

        How does this require OEM's to take a smaller margin? Bing meant they were paying nothing for Windows, and the OEM's dropped the laptop price accordingly. No need to drop the price that extra bit that cuts into the margin, is there? And if so, then it can happen any time, not just when their costs are going up or down.

        Also, if local money is not being siphoned off to some other place, that money can accelerate said local economy.

        MS was giving something away and they are a for-profit company. More small tablet sales in Europe is not enough of an incentive to MS to keep doing that, apparently.

        1. Mark 85

          Re: Microsoft

          MS was giving something away and they are a for-profit company. More small tablet sales in Europe is not enough of an incentive to MS to keep doing that, apparently.

          Well, if we read the PR BS from MS, Win10 is a total freebie...

        2. Voland's right hand Silver badge

          Re: Microsoft

          How does this require OEM's to take a smaller margin?

          By having no USP and operating in a price bracket where it is impossible to have an USP or a design differentiator.

          When you race to the bottom, the last set of bottom dwellers right above the rotting ooze on the bottom of the pond all look the same.

    3. Mark 85

      Re: Microsoft

      Is MS a centipede? Or a millipede? They keep shooting themselves in the foot. How many feet do they have left?

      1. Captain DaFt

        Re: Microsoft

        "Is MS a centipede? Or a millipede? They keep shooting themselves in the foot. How many feet do they have left?"

        They just have the normal number of two feet.

        After they shoot one, they just replace it. Clay is cheap.

    4. Dwarf

      Re: Microsoft

      The interesting news will be if/when Microsoft ever produces anything new that people will be interested in - before they go pop and cease to exist.

      They are surfing the last dregs of the wave that used to be WINDOWS and now is more windows.

      There's no innovation, no listening to customers, just constant screw ups that are taking down large portions of the industry. Even today in my day job, there was frustration by the procurement people about the new licencing costs and model, which is just far too greedy and based around the hope that people will stay locked in. Didn't they learn anything from the client PC exodus that they should be watching right now.

      The good news however is that people are realizing that changing to something else is far easier and there are plenty of good alternatives.

      ts a bit like watching Logan's run or the Matrix and realising that there is something better on the outside.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Microsoft

        "There's no innovation, no listening to customers, just constant screw ups"

        I think the problem isn't that they aren't listening, it's that they are listening to the wrong ones. Most of the big established tech/software companies are listening to the local hipsters and mapping those comments and use cases onto the rest of the world.

  2. Warm Braw

    Did the promotion involve Barry Scott / Martin Grellis / Dan Dolan...

    ... dunking orange and purple laptops in a bath of Killit Bing! and announcing "Bing! and your market's gone"?

  3. Mage Silver badge

    W10 vs W8

    Windows 10 vis XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 hasn't helped.

    People didn't want what Vista did. They just wanted an updated less buggy, faster easier to maintain version of XP. MS has been going backwards since 2003.

    Meanwhile 4" and larger HD or near HD phones with WiFi, tablets (and BT keyboard covers) have been making low end laptops and net books in the high street irrelevant for most consumers. Only people mostly creating content really want (or even need!) laptops. The like of PC World, Harvey Norman etc hardly sells decent laptops. They with Tesco perhaps largely supplies school / Uni student market that thinks they have to have budget student edition MS Office? I don't know. I can't figure who would want the majority of laptops in the "high street", even if they DID have a version of windows people want.

    None seem to quote screen resolution any more, or does "HD" always mean 1920 x 1080 (Tesco's budget 128G SSD Lenovo Laptop at about €360, with Win 10, what sort of SSD anyway?)?

    1. Sandtitz Silver badge

      Re: W10 vs W8

      "People didn't want what Vista did. They just wanted an updated less buggy, faster easier to maintain version of XP. MS has been going backwards since 2003."

      People were whining about XP when it debuted. Too much eye candy and so forth. People were fine with Win9x and W2K.

      "None seem to quote screen resolution any more, or does "HD" always mean 1920 x 1080 (Tesco's budget 128G SSD Lenovo Laptop at about €360, with Win 10, what sort of SSD anyway?)?"

      No. 1920x1080 is 'Full HD'. 'HD' means something between 1280x720 and 1366x768. Those Tesco cheapies have 1366x768 resolution mentioned in the specs. Many people are just fine with that, believe it or not. And practically any SSD on the market is fine for most home users. IMHO.

      1. frank ly

        Re: W10 vs W8

        I loved Win XP. It was made useless (on my old laptop) by an amazingly large set of updates just before Win 7 was released, so I got a new laptop with Win 7. When I read about Win8, I switched to Linux Mint 13 because I didn't want to get caught again. With the MATE desktop, I made an XP look/feel setup on my old laptop that ran well.

        Can anyone suggest why I'd want to buy a device running Windows (apart from obvious things like being committed to Photoshop, etc)?

      2. oldcoder

        Re: W10 vs W8

        I though 1280x720 was SD (standard definition).

        HD was supposed to be 1920x1080.

        But then all the crap that wasn't quite but advertised as HD was put out.

        1. Boothy

          Re: W10 vs W8

          SD is old school TV & DVD resolutions, so basically anything (vertically) around 525 (NTSC), 576 (PAL visible), 480p (DVD) is SD. Anything above this is a flavour of HD.

          720p is 'HD Ready' (which personally I always thought was a waste of time).

          1080p is 'Full HD'.

          2160p is '4k Ultra HD'.

          4320p is '8k Ultra HD'

  4. Arctic fox
    Flame

    Please do explain to me why we should have sympathy with a bunch of................

    ...........dishonest, cost cutting, unimaginative arseholes who have never done anything more than ride on Redmond's coattails if they could possibly avoid doing anything else, hmm? I am not remotely defending Redmond but the OEMs are the pits on their own terms. The very idea of sympathising with them gives me the bends.

  5. Magani
    Happy

    Similarities?

    'Windows with Bing' sounds like "The Knights Who Say 'Ni'".

    The knights demanded a sacrifice too.

    Is Monty Python lost on Microsoft?

    1. BurnT'offering

      Re: Similarities?

      Perhaps they should have called it Bingows

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Meh

      Re: Similarities?

      Bing is desirable in a name, because while it isn't a particular thing, it has a positive 'ring' and rhymes with nice things like sing, bling, wing, king, ping, cling, zing.

      But there's also sting...

      1. oldcoder

        Re: Similarities?

        not to mention that:

        sing - also means give up information

        bling - flashy glitzy fake worthless stuff

        wing - and a prayer that it might fly...

        ping - and it might have to be restarted

        cling - as can't get rid of the trash (static cling anyone)

        zing - what a clever insult is...

  6. a_yank_lurker

    Marketing?

    To paraphrase, Slurp's marketing mantra is "Marketing, who needs no stinkin' Marketing?" Consumers have options and are more aware of what the options mean personally. Chromebooks are readily available on this side of the pond in Walmart and Best Buys along side Slurp based kit. So there appears to be reasonable consumer demand for them.

  7. hellwig
    Joke

    How Did this Survive for So Long?

    Distributing Windows WITH Bing!?!?! Surely the EU was only seconds away from suing Microsoft. Sure, Microsoft can distribute a cheaper version of Windows, but the citizens of Europe must STILL be allowed to CHOOSE their search provider, it's only fair.

    1. Boothy

      Re: How Did this Survive for So Long?

      The only difference between Windows with Bing, and a regular Windows install, was basically the OEM licensing, there was no technical differences between the Bing version, and a regular Windows Home version.

      Basically the OEMs had to agree to leave the default search engine as Bing, and so were not allowed to make any deals with Google etc to change it to something else.

      Also as usual, all OS support had to be provided by the OEM.

      The user was still free to do what ever they wanted, and so on first boot could go and change all the Bing related settings to a search engine of their choice.

      Microsoft were betting that most people buying a new Laptop didn't really care, especially those buying budget models, and would simply leave it set to the default, and so drive more traffic to Bing as a result.

      My guess is that this approach didn't drive enough traffic to Bing, and so MS just decided it wasn't worth the effort of maintaining another release of Windows.

  8. Mikel

    The Wintel PC's long tail

    It does seem they're trying to shorten it themselves.

  9. Terry 6 Silver badge

    Follows the pattern

    Microsoft do seem to have lost the ability to provide the public with what we want. Preferring instead to try to give the public what they think we should want.

    Maybe they lost it when they failed to spot the internet coming?

  10. redpawn

    Bing goes the Microsoft!

    Constant change and the chase for the new has driven Microsoft. The illusion of contual refinement and improvement drives their actions. Long term satisfaction with products does not fit with a dynamic company such a Microsoft and leads to very slow upgrades and low subscriptions.

    Chase the future along with Microsoft where the only constant is change!

    1. Gray
      Windows

      Re: Bing goes the Microsoft!

      Watching MS these last couple of years is like watching a whale that washed ashore, rotting and sloughing away to sink into the sand. It's getting so rank that even the seagulls are refusing to touch it...

      (Having a drink, waiting for a big storm to come along and wash the carcass back out to sea.)

  11. Shadow Systems

    It's all Microsoft's fault!

    Everything that's wrong in the world is entirely Microsoft's fault, from poverty in Third World places like Seattle, to starvation in impoverished places like Washington DC, to the high price of basic life saving medications in such backwater places like Canada! They're even solely responsible for my atheletes foot, the dingleberries on my dog, & the fact that the squirrels are insane.

    Death to Microsoft!

    *Head explodes from the sarcasm*

    1. Gray
      Angel

      Re: It's all Microsoft's fault!

      They're even solely responsible for my atheletes foot, the dingleberries on my dog, & the fact that the squirrels are insane.

      I hear that Microsoft has promised a Tuesday patch for that (contingent upon a voluntary Windows 10 upgrade).

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's all Microsoft's fault!

      WOW! Microsoft did all that? No wonder you're angry calling for their death. Can't say I blame ya!

      By the way, you might want to have a physician check out that sarcasm condition. Sounds life-threatening! ;)

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