A lot of people lately have been pleasantly surprised by the quality technology coming from Redmond. From the early betas of Windows 7, the Zune HD, Bing search, and now the series of awesome announcements at this years E3. Its evident that Microsoft is still very much in the game. I’ve always read “death of microsoft”/”the end of microsoft” writeups around the internet in the same context I watch HBO with. While sometimes entertaining, most of it is far from reality, fails to take into account the companies financial composition, and is of theoretical and not practical value.
What we’ve seen most recently from Microsoft is an increasing amount leverage. It’s not a common strategy of technology companies that is taken into consideration when people analyze the current market landscape, but is a primary factor in what we’re seeing with these recent product announcements. In particular, Microsoft has a product and technology portfolio that allows it to come out with products that no other company can. When you look at competitors, this is a company simultaneously competing with Google, Apple, Oracle, IBM, and Sony. Being in this position while growing as a company unavoidably leads to beuracracy. This is the image most people have associated with Microsoft. A top heavy souless corporation who is out to control everyones computers with OS’s that freeze, crash with blue screens, and don’t understand their end users.
Sometimes we like to try to fit corporations into neat little boxes in effort to understand them and make sense of everything. The problem is we as consumers really can’t do that and expect to have a valid analysis of whats actually happening. This applies especially to companies like Microsoft who have been around for awhile and have a mature and fine tuned management structure. In the case of Microsoft, consider the amount of asymmetric information happening everywhere. Being around for as long as they have (while growing every year) Microsoft has forcasted many things. So looking at the bigger picture and keeping leverage in mind, I believe we will see Microsoft increasingly leverage more of its technology portfolio in effort to integrate experiences across various products to bring consumers more of a complete ecosystem that no other company can deliver. I simply don’t see anyone else offering the ubiquity with devices that Microsoft has been trying to do. This is what I like the most. I can have my media player interact with my video game console that ineracts with my computer. After that all I need are those to interact with my phone and I’m a happy man. User experience is also a cornerstone of all of this and I’ve recently seen Microsoft making serious gains in the design and execution of its offerings.
At the end of the day, its us (the consumers) who benefit from all of this. I welcome products like the zune HD, an improved version of windows, and new xbox capabilites. I think Microsoft isn’t as bad as everyone makes them out to be and actually has some pretty cool stuff. Sans philosophical tech discussion, quality gadgets, improved OS’s, and competition in the web search space are all good things and I commend Microsoft for its latest output.
