Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has offered some choice criticism of the tech company, while also essentially affirming the Redmond, Wash.-based company's recent moves toward mobile technology.
According to the Financial Times, Allen writes in the book that the company got too big and lost its "cutting-edge" mojo, spending too much effort trying to copy the ideas of others instead of pursuing true market opportunities. It's also been too dependent on the PC.
"Complacency has taken its toll, most tellingly in the newest competitive arenas of smartphones and tablets, like the iPad," he writes.
Allen urges the company, which pioneered the PC market, to retool with a focus on mobile devices. "Here's what the death knell for the personal computer will sound like: ‘Mainly I use my phone/pad, but I still use my PC to write long emails and documents.' Most people aren't there yet, but that's where we're headed."
In recent months, Microsoft has indeed renewed its mobile focus. Steve Ballmer, the company's chief executive, is said to be reorganizing company management to refocus efforts on smartphones, tablets and cloud computing.
The company has also announced that it is tailoring its Windows operating system to smartphones and tablets rather than PCs. It also just launched an enhanced smartphone-optimized web version of its increasingly popular Bing search engine. And it has partnered with Nokia to develop Windows smartphones, though it won't be until next year when products are ready for market.
The long-term partnership with Nokia, the world's largest phone manufacturer, has provoked research firm IDC to predict that Windows Phone will become the number-two smartphone operating system by 2015, behind only Google's Android but notably ahead of Apple's iOS.
Still, this rosy future will only happen if Microsoft learns from its spotty past and present. The release late last year of Windows Phone, after all, was supposed to regain Microsoft's position in the smartphone sector, but its market share remains in the single digits, with Apple's, Google's and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion's platforms splitting most of the rest. And the software has also struggled with botched updates and glitches since release.
Meanwhile, Apple shot past Microsoft to become the world's largest tech company by market value last May -- an ironic development, considering that Apple, Microsoft's early rival, was all-but left for dead in the mid-1990s.
Paul Allen's memoir, "Idea Man: A Memoir by the Co-Founder of Microsoft," is due from publisher Penguin April 17. An excerpt in Vanity Fair focuses on his testy relationship with Bill Gates, including allegations that Gates tried to cheat his fellow multibillionaire co-founder out of even more money, as well as minimizing his credit for the company's innovations.
Mobile technology is quite new and growing exponentially through use of tablet pc and therefore more focus will bring better quality and innovation.
ReplyDeleteMicrosoft has finally woken up and realized that the future is going to be all about mobile that many several important features like Traffic, Voice search etc will only be available to US users at first, so it definitely nice to see that some real focus is being put on this. Thanks a lot.
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