Sleepless in Seattle
Found a couple ledes from Apple Insider that just don’t go together. Here’s the first one:
In 2007, Steve Jobs set a big goal for Apple in launching the iPhone: 10 million phones sold in 2008. Microsoft is now setting the goal of selling 30 million Windows Phone 7 devices by the end of 2011.
OK, fine. But then there’s the second story:
Ron Spears, AT&T’s chief executive of its Business Solutions unit, told a conference audience this week that 40 percent of iPhones were being sold to business users and that the enterprise is viewing the device as secure, powerful, and even as a potential replacement for laptop purchases.
Enterprise is Microsoft’s playground, and Apple nearly four million iPhones to enterprise users just in the last quarter? And Android already, or probably soon will, generates as many or more smartphone business sales than Apple.
So it’s difficult-to-impossible to see where the market exists for 30 million Windows 7 phones.
Apple “only” sold 8.75 million iPhones worldwide last quarter, so I’m not sure where you’re getting the 10m units to corporate. Not to say that won’t be possible in the next couple of years, if they keep ramping up the amount of kit they keep selling. But they’re a long way from 10m a quarter just to corporate users.
But yeah, your overall argument is solid. Windows 7 Mobile’s a joke. And Microsoft knows it. They’re in a world of hurt, and all the FUD in the universe won’t change that. They didn’t invent Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (IBM perfected that little gem in the 60s and 70s to lock customers into their mainframes); but they’re certainly drowning in it now.
Why yes, I do enjoy a little schadenfreude with my lunch. Don’t you?
FUD @ IBM
Ah, the good old days, when an IBM salesman
could inform a CEO that his purchasing agent
just chose DEC over IBM, get the decision
reversed, the PA fired, and lunch with the CEO,
schadenfreude included at no extra charge.
Oops — typo! I’d only half-correct that sentence after looking at total sales vs quarterly sales. Thanks for the heads-up.
MSFT might could do it, if their phone software makes life easy for the IT departments that have built their corporate communications around Outlook. I doubt anybody’s going to stand in line at the Windows store for one, but a lot of folks are going to be handed one by Corporate HQ. Developers! Developers! Developers!
Outlook and the Office suite would never be my first choice, but the fact is that if you want the convenience of integrated enterprise-wide communications/calendar/project management, Microsoft is the easy choice. Choosing any other set of products means spending time to tinker-toy a solution together, while Microsoft’s stuff comes integrated for free, and you can hire pre-qualified technicians to maintain the stuff. One downside is that you’re pretty much inviting the Chinese PLA to read over your shoulder, but nobody’s software is invulnerable, so you’ve got to use security measures, anyway…
I swear to God, if it’s the last thing I ever do, I’m going to write a complete office management suite for Apple hardware- and software-based systems. Well, not me personally all by my lonesome. But I’m going to get a group of like-minded geeks together and get it done. It can’t be that difficult to do what Exchange Server and Outlook do, only better and safer. Really. It’s not rocket science. It’s mostly making sure everything’s thread-safe and scaleable.
Yeah. My ego writes checks I can’t cash. But so what. Sometimes you just have to toss your hat over the 30 ft. barbed wire fence and then scale the fucker. It’s the only way important shit gets done.
They did, it’s called Open Office.
Open Office is fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t scale. If you need an enterprise-wide project management/Gantt chart database with linked calendars, messaging, and resource tasking, the easy answer is Microsoft. The word processor is really beside the point.
Believe me, saying this brings me no joy. I hate Outlook/Exchange.
Neil. Exactly. Open Office might make a good starting point for the desktop document editing tools. But to go enterprise-wide, you need something that will challenge Exchange, Outlook, and Blackberry. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing out there, even in pieces, that will do that.
I know many people who are really tired of Exchange, in particular. The market seems ripe for the picking. There just needs to be a nice sugar daddy out there who’ll be willing to tolerate my eccentricities, while I herd the nerdy cats into building the system!