CNN reports that the Microsoft consumer brand is dying. With Windows running at 90%+ market share, the XBox 360 performing excellent, Windows Phone 7 just released, Windows 7 selling record amounts, and on and on… Reading comments from around the web from anyone with an open mind, not biased (Apple fans are laughing), they are saying “What?! CNN is uninformed.”. I just have to say that their opinion is slightly off from reality. They may not innovate (Yea, Kinect is old school…), they may not have very much market share in the consumer market (Windows with 90%+), and their server products suck (a lot of enterprises don’t seem to think so), overdue on tablets (the medical industry uses them very successfully, iPad wouldn’t be viable in that situation)… CNN, you need to send back the check Steve Jobs sent you. The whole bashing Microsoft is so cool trend is over. Long over.
It’s not like Microsoft didn’t foresee the changes ahead. With a staff of almost 90,000, the company has many of the tech world’s smartest minds on its payroll, and has incubated projects in a wide range of fields that later took off. Experiments like Courier (tablets), HailStorm/Passport (digital identity), and Windows Media Center (content in the cloud) show the company was ahead of the game in many areas — but then it either failed to bring those products to market, or didn’t execute.
UPDATE: Microsoft’s answer to the article: #notdeadyet.
Frank Shaw, the Redmond company’s vice president of corporate communications, is fighting back on Twitter by pointing out the areas where the company sees strength or new momentum in its consumer businesses. He’s using the hash tag, #notdeadyet, in hopes of making his ad-hoc social media campaign go viral.