Another 'MS going down' article...

[AcurA]

Interesting read http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13350.
Obviously written by a Tux man - just wishfull thinking again or is he on to something?

[swiftynz]

Interesting read, but wishful thinking imho. He's interpreting financial results and making assertions without showing any facts or figures, and is clearly rather biased.

I would like to think that linux will gain ground on the desktop, but I can't see that happening any time soon. In fact I'd be very surprised if an open source operating system gains more than 33% market share on the desktop, ever.

[Anarchy]

Yes, it certianly seems biased.
Also, if go-mono succeeds, and .net really kicks off, then MS will have some strong leverage.

[TB_]

A good rule of thumb is ignoring the bigred sites, TheInq, TheReg and theres another 2 as well.

[varkk]

It seems alot of tech writers are writing stories about how MS will be facing trouble this coming year. Especially in their 'predictions for 2004' columns. I think it may have some effect on stockprices if share holders read tech articles (Which the SCO debale has shown they don't). I don't think Linux will take over the desktop this year, but we will see more and more shift to OSS applications being used e.g Mozilla and OpenOffice will continue to gain ground especially as more local and national governments shift over.

[Grrr!!]

Interesting read, but there are a few points were it is misleading.

Microsoft does NOT make a lot of money on windows, and the largest proportion of customers DON'T pay hundreds of dollars for a copy ... corparate licences are comparitively cheap, and OEMs pay next to nothing.

The real breadwinner for Microsoft is office. While some may claim that openoffice.org is competition, it isn't really if you use office to it's full potential (granted, if you only type letters and send emails, it makes next to no difference). Unlike what the author of this article claims, office does NOT cost US$500 to most MS customers (yes, it does if you buy a single licence of the full suite at it's worst price). Continuing onwards, how many apple computers do you see running MS Office? ... How many linux boxes are running MS Office? ... and that market will only grow.

While it is true that windows adoption may become less in large organisations (in particular city councils and other non-profit organizations) I don't believe that MS is coming down as a result. While microsoft is still being installed on most peoples machines it will continue to dominate. How many people are there out there who can hardly work with one operating system, the last thing they are going to want is a different operating system at home then at work. However, these said people generally not capable of installing nix (or windows for that matter) on their computer, and unless companies like Harvey Norman and Computer City, where the less educated public purchase their computers, stock nix based pc's, you won't see the world changing quickly.

IMHO:
If linux is going to do anything to microsoft, it is going to cull several of it's loss bearing and pretty much useless products, and replace them with better, until microsoft takes a step back and actually sees that it has an area that it can dominate in once again, and launches a new product with publicity and marketing that the open source community can't compete againts, and regain some of the market.

Take mozilla for instance. It is clearly a superior product to IE. However, it's adoption amoung the general public is low. The general public may cry foul over the fact that popups and virii are making their way into their systems, they don't know that something better exists, and while this lack of knowledge continues, MS will continue to thrive.

If I might suggest something, anyone who takes this seriously, pick up a magazine from say, 5 years ago, and read the microsoft doomsday reports, especially from around the time windows ME was released.

[DiscoStu]

i stop following links as soon as I see theinquirer.com

[Evil-Elmo]

It's '.net' DiscoStu.... :)
I personally think it is biased (isn't all media?).... although saying that open source operating systems will NEVER have anymore than a 33% market share could be a bit bold.

[swiftynz]

Originally posted by Evil-Elmo
.... although saying that open source operating systems will NEVER have anymore than a 33% market share could be a bit bold. You're mis-quoting me, I said on the desktop, not computers in general.

Yea it's a faily bold statement, but one that will probably prove to be true in our time.

[mird-OC]

Originally posted by Grrr!!
Microsoft does NOT make a lot of money on windows, and the largest proportion of customers DON'T pay hundreds of dollars for a copy ... corparate licences are comparitively cheap, and OEMs pay next to nothing.
dude, you're kinda missing the point... development costs are fixed (well, relatively), once they start selling licenses it doesn't take long to start making a profit, and from there it doesn't matter if they're selling a license for $10 or $1000, it's still straight unadulterated profit. and they sell many licenses, like, more than the entire member base of this forum could count on their fingers and toes... and they're selling all the time... ALL THE TIME.

you're right, they make more money off each sale of office than each sale of windows, but don't underestimate the massive amount of revenue windows licenses does pull in.

[Sumo]

Originally posted by swiftynz
I would like to think that linux will gain ground on the desktop, but I can't see that happening any time soon. In fact I'd be very surprised if an open source operating system gains more than 33% market share on the desktop, ever.

Linux has a 50% market share in my house! That is 2 outta 4 computers running *nix the others on Win flavours. (i still aint a Linux genius so Windows helps!)

[varkk]

But Sumo you are more techinically minded than Joe "OMG Warehouse has cheap computers" Consumer. How many places around offer prebuit machines with linux or even no OS? Or where can you see Linux or even *BSD for sale?

[NZSnake]

Originally posted by varkk
How many places around offer prebuit machines with linux or even no OS? Or where can you see Linux or even *BSD for sale?

I can remember seeing one place in Christchurch a while back* selling computers with Linux installed standard, cant remember the name but i'll have a look through the ancient piles of newspapers.

If companies like HewlettPackard-Compaq, Dell, and Gateway put money into the penguin, plus made it more noob friendly then it could take off as a compeditor in the market**.

*Read: 2 years or so ago.
**Read: BSD is more of a server enviroment.

[Helmut]

It does seem OEM manufacturers are getting a bit hot under the collar in regards to Microsoft.

HP are selling rebranded Ipods and are going as far to say they will not support WMA.

IBM are talking about moving to Unix based platforms (whether this is only in house I cant remember)

China and Japan are looking at developing their own distribution of Linux for use in their countries. And companies like Telstra are migrating all their desktops to Linux.

I even read an article a while ago with manufacturers blaming poor tablet pc sales on Microsofts pricing of XP Tablet edition.

Im hoping that unix will make inroads in the desktop market sometime soon.

[mattnz]

Big companies are like roaches; you can stamp on them pretty hard and they won't die.

however, I can see Microsoft being a little less phenomenally successful in the next couple of years than it has been in the last 10 - but "less phenomenally successful" is not quite the same as "dead meat"

Look at Sun; they were all but left for dead a year ago, stock price down the ****ter, key staff leaving all over the show, panned by analysts.
Look at them now, stock price has doubled, massive deals (1 million desktops) in india / china, growth for the last 2 quarters has been double the industry average, are they out of the woods? Nope. But like I said, a massive corporate takes a lot of killing.

See that’s the thing, big companies don't WANT to change. The guys that make the decisions want to play their golf, drive their BMW's and fool around with their secretaries. But when things come down to the wire and they are forced to act they can generally pull something out of the bag.

Microsoft have been lord of all they survey for the last 5 years and being in that position has made them arrogant and listless.
But once they actually start loosing money all that will change overnight - they have cash reserves out the arse and some really bright people working for them. If they are anything like IBM or Sun not one in ten of the really cool ideas they research, develop and package ready for market ever gets sold.

So yeah, I agree with the article to a degree - MS will have to adjust its business model and will eventually be reduced to just a very, very successful company. But that’s a long way from being ruined . I wish it weren't so, I'd love to see those arogant bastards and their crappy second rate software out on the streets tomorrow, but that's just wishful thinking. MS shareholders are still going to get rich. But they might not get crazy stupid rich any more.

In 5 years? Who knows, that’s a lifetime in the Tech industry.

[mattnz]

If I might suggest something, anyone who takes this seriously, pick up a magazine from say, 5 years ago, and read the microsoft doomsday reports, especially from around the time windows ME was released.

Didn't see this before.

There, right there. If ever there was a perfect excuse for Microsoft to be taken out the back and shot, windows ME is it.

I feel sorry for all those poor bastards who bought a PC with ME preinstalled and didn't know any better.

[Helmut]

All it would take is for some to release a stable, mature and easy to use x86 based OS to really shake MS up.

Linux is nice and powerful but its not ready for the desktop just yet. To many variables of things to go wrong, too overwhelming for the average user.

Beos was nice but unfortunately MS used their muscle to keep it off OEM built machines, ultimately killing it.

But imagine what would happen if someone like Apple released an x86 port of Macosx. People would go nuts over it - some would remain apprehensive at the amount of software available, but it wouldnt take long for software to snowball. Its based on unix so porting wouldnt be too diffucult.

The more i use xp, the crappier it seems to me. Sure its more stable than 98/ME, but there are so many functionality bugs its just an awful experience to use - and with all the security holes from rpc's to media player - ms will never get it right.

[2 much thinking]

Originally posted by Helmut
But imagine what would happen if someone like Apple released an x86 port of Macosx.

... Microsoft would make more money since they own apple. Or am I just really looking forward to my smoko break and fogetting something in the process :o

[=/adrenaline/=]

Found this...OS X for PC (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/39/26523.html)

Take it as you want to:p

[Helmut]

MS dont own Apple do they? I remember them sinking funds into Apple to avoid anti-trusts a few years ago but later heard they pulled the funding about a year ago when Apple picked up with the imacs

If Im wrong then please let me know, otherwise do you have a link to further explain this?