Microsoft Vista: It's A Dog With Fleas
Ballmer is backpedaling on the future of Vista sales:
[from Microsoft shares tumble on CEO comments]Microsoft Corp. shares fell as much as 2.7 percent on Friday, their biggest drop in nine months, after Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said analysts' forecasts for fiscal 2008 revenue for Windows Vista were "overly aggressive."
Ballmer made the comment Thursday, two weeks after the world's largest software maker released the upgrade to its ubiquitous Windows operating system and predicted that consumers would move to Vista faster than they did to past Windows upgrades.
Microsoft (down $0.66 to $28.80, Charts) shares were down 2.4 percent in heavy Nasdaq trade after falling as much as 2.7 percent earlier in the session.
The investors who pushed up Microsoft's stock price up 30% since last June are now going to have to accept the fact that the world has moved on since the release of Windows. Vista is going to turn out to be a dud: not an OS/2 fiasco, but a long slow road, with users very reluctantly transitioning from Windows XP. It does not offer enough bang to make users crave it immediately.
I maintain that the cadre leading Microsoft are not up to the task, and inevitably, a new bunch will have to be brought in to revamp the middle-aged thinking that seems to be endemic there. The company really looks a lot like IBM in the 80s, when they lost it, and fumbled the future away.
I agree with you that MS needs a major management shake-up to fix that company. Working for AOL as long as I have, MS has been a huge threat and competitor for most of my career. I can't say it breaks my heart to watch them become less relevant. It is sad that most people will stick with Windows because it is what they know. But Vista creates an opportunity for Apple. Since people will switch to vista only when buying a new PC, Apple has an opportunity to become another choice. Their new marketing campaign is perfectly timed for that. I've just posted about this over here.
Posted by: Alan Keister | February 18, 2007 at 07:45 AM
Couldn't agree more, glad to see it though, because it might open up for new companies in areas that Microsoft loose their stranglehold on, just like IBM back then.
Posted by: Henrik | February 18, 2007 at 10:27 AM
Vista is Windows Me with more hardware requirements.
Posted by: alan herrell - the head lemur | February 18, 2007 at 03:12 PM
I got a free copy of Vista so I tried it out... and I hated it. I really like the way that windows swish around, but other than that I don't see many improvements.
Since I got it for free, it's a cool upgrade... but would I have paid $200 to get my windows to fade in and out? Now way.
Posted by: Jeremy David | February 20, 2007 at 01:34 PM
Absolutely agree that there's simply not enough bang for the buck. I fear that Ballmer, et. al. forgot that over the years of development, every bit of truly revolutionary functionality was stripped in order to make some sort of launch date.
Personally, and as a computer geek, I've yet to find a single compelling reason to take the time to upgrade. When their ad campaign is all about "Wow", rather than "Why", there's a serious problem. I mean, come on - the biggest issues for me are security and stability and I've yet to see much of anything that tells me we're not starting over completely with a whole new set of problems (i.e. opportunities for hackers to exploit massive holes).
Maybe it's just the piss poor job of marketing, but here's what I've felt like the overview of Windows Vista is:
- Spend tons of money to upgrade your machine, continue to worry daily about security, trip over extra minor features that have no interest or use to me, all in order to see pretty interface elements.
Cancel or Allow? Cancel please.
Posted by: Jake McKee | February 21, 2007 at 06:16 AM