I should have posted this video with my last blog post, but seeing it again its crystal clear to me that Steven Ballmer is not seeing the threat of tablets and smartphones to the PC. Clearly Steve Jobs lost the 'battle of the PC', so what he is doing now is obsoleting the PC.... A process that will take quite a few years but its well underway. The Windows client needs to get mobile and fast!
10 comments:
I would definitely agree with this. Just take a look at teens use of mobile devices (as an example). They are able to do an incredible amount of things quickly. My daughter can type on her phone faster than I can on a keyboard. This generation will consume mobile devices as if PC's didn't even exist.
The Internet and 3G/4G/wifi untethered us from the corporate network - however the PC and large notebooks with poor battery life are keeping us from really capitalizing on it. Mobile devices such as the Ipad/Iphone/Droid truly make computing mobile AND useful.
Nick, depends what you mean by mobility. Ballmer is acknowledging that 'PCs' will keep changing in form and factor. What I believe you mean is whether the 'PC' will remain a general purpose machine or a special purpose machine with more and more people doing away with some current functionality that is taking useless hardware resources... Ballmer is acknowledging the latter as well in the vid... so where I am not sure is where you are disagreeing here? I think you are pretty much saying the same thing, only in a different way.
@wayne - Steve still thinks of a PC as a device that needs to boot up, log on to a domain, allow you to boot up the bulky clunky outlook, connect to the exchange hog, and if you are really unlucky load up word or excel. And his idea of mobility is doing that everywhere.
But at home you want to listen to music, play a video, browse a web page. WITH A CLICK OF A BUTTON. SCROLL USING YOUR FINGER INSTEAD OF CLUNKY MOUSE. Check your email or facebook account. Take the device when travelling (watch a video on the plane) or just round the local coffee shop and make a phone call. Most of the time we no longer need what the PC is good at. We need other stuff that PC cant do at all.
We want to use it to get directions to get somewhere for example. Make a quick foto or video.
And the stuff that the PC could do so well, allow us to check email, we can do on these devices too. At least on smartphones such as the Iphone or Android. Of course it excludes dumbphones such as Windows mobile or BB :-) But lets wait and see whta Windows Phone 7 brings :)
Re directions i meant Tom TOm like, not just print out directions from Google Maps. And Re BlackBerry, i guess you can use it for email yes but thats about it....
Mike, I see your point. And with virtualization picking up (needing less and less hardware resources) and the increase in bandwidth technology (higher bandwidth at a cheaper price)... we might eventually end up docking our mobile phone as our desk machine at the office. Having said that, it is not clear to me yet where Microsoft is lacking? vision and focus perhaps? boggled down too much into battling the Google search engine and ignoring players like Apple in the meantime, hence a dangerous game to play?
After all I remember Bill Gates mention in one of his original books that hardware will become less and less relevant, and will eventually be replaced by software as a service on an internet that was still in its infancy at the time. Are you saying that Microsoft is not delivering on this vision? Might come to agree there.. at least from a focus point of view
@Mike - Couldnt agree more. I never forget getting one of the first itouch and giving it to my 3 year old. I never explained anything, she knew how to use it immediately. Not a single question. And she couldnt even read. So thats one way to reduce user support :)
Docking our smartphone with the keyboard and monitor at work will happen much sooner then you think. Microsoft will need vision and focus to retain its leading role when that happens. Lets see how good Windows 7 embedded for tablets / Phone 7 will be. It will be a strategic battle, and once lost, Microsoft will be the next IBM.
Needless to say that our next deskphone will be a docking station for a smartphone....
with 3CX as the voip platform of choice ;)
Ofcourse, with choice of iphone or android client - full mobility of your corporate extension, presence etc... Android client is coming soon :)
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