It's Official: Microsoft is Doomed

From Walt Mossberg’s D9 interview with HP honcho Léo Apotheker:

Léo: You’re going to have webOS on the tablet and the phone. We’ll create a platform as a service so that developers can have all the tools they need to create cool applications. We want to create as holistic an ecoystem as we can. We’ll put webOS on PCs. It will go on every PC that we’ll ship.

Walt: Will it replace Windows?

Léo: In the beginning, it will sit on top of Windows.

That’s the beginning of the end of Microsoft’s IT/Windows/Office cash cow. 

It’s one thing when Apple is able to leverage NEXTstep to save the tiny Mac platform. It’s still one thing when Apple then leverages the resulting OS X to create whole new markets in wireless and tablets. Neither is a threat to Microsoft. (Although it does highlight in shocking completeness, Microsoft’s inability to create and exploit new markets.)

But when the biggest computer maker in the world — which makes three quarters of its sales to IT — is openly planning to cut you off on the back end and the front end…

…well, that’s the beginning of the end for MS.