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Mobile
Strategy: Service-Connected Devices
CNN/Money
ran an interesting article entitled
Microsoft is a Dying Consumer Brand on
October 27. Although clearly intended to be
provocative, the piece is nevertheless a reasonable
summary of the challenges faced by Microsoft’s
consumer product lines, and it made an interesting
point: the importance of the consumer market is part
of Microsoft’s corporate culture. That cultural
aspect surely goes back at least to Windows 95, a
product which made a huge splash with consumer PC
purchases just as the internet revolution was
getting ready to explode.
However, there’s an even more important point here:
many people believe that mobile computing market
share is critical because the predominant user
mobile platform choice will influence choices in
enterprise computing purchases. While I admit that I
find it difficult to argue against that point, I
also find it to be a little slippery. It’s one of
those things that sound so obvious when you hear it
that you don’t bother questioning it.
One
thing that is clear: mobile is going to continue to
be one of the primary technology market growth areas
for the foreseeable future. Thus, a company like
Microsoft, whose strategy is platform dominance, can
hardly afford to fail in the mobile space.
But
there are two important things to keep in mind.
First, most of the growth in the mobile computing
market is and will be overseas. Indeed, most of the
growth in all of Microsoft’s businesses will come
from outside the US; the company has recognized that
for years.
And
yet, while I find myself characterizing Microsoft’s
mobile strategy as “chase Apple,” Apple has only a
microscopic presence in the overseas mobile market.
And Apple’s strategy – product excellence – differs,
as we’ve already seen, from Microsoft’s: platform
dominance. You don’t need an excellent product in
order to establish a dominant platform; you just
need a good one. But I’ll come back to this in a
moment.
The
second thing to keep in mind is that mobile isn’t
the only growth area in technology. What about
services? Ray Ozzie made this point very well in his
recent
Dawn of a New Day blog post. Indeed, smart
phones are only as compelling as the connected
applications available for them, and those
applications can be viewed as services which require
a cloud platform to run them (see my
Mobile Devices + Cloud post). Microsoft has made
a significant investment in the Windows Azure cloud
platform, as well as in complementary efforts such
as
Office 365. And while Windows Phone 7 exposes a
much too limited developer interface to win hearts
and minds yet, the ingredients for a consistent
desktop/mobile/cloud platform are there. So it’s
through the lens of this “service-connected devices”
strategy, which Ray Ozzie talks about above, that
you can start to believe again in Microsoft’s
ability to win in the mobile space.
In
conclusion, “chase Apple,” also known as “WWSJD,” is
not the right strategy. Admittedly, the
“service-connected devices” analysis indicates that
“chase Apple” may not actually be what Microsoft is
trying to do. If so, they haven’t done a good enough
job of changing the playing field yet. After all,
chasing US-based consumers with an iPhone look-alike
device is hardly playing to Microsoft’s strengths.
What about the BlackBerry users and IT decision
makers overseas? What about the legions of Windows
developers who are waiting for a mobile platform
that will let them shine again? I eagerly await the
game-changing mobile platform from Microsoft that
the market so desperately needs. |
Welcome
to the fifth edition of the JW Secure Informer, our
bi-monthly newsletter. This is an opportunity to
share what’s on our radar, specifically with respect
to enterprise network security, but also regarding
IT and business more generally.
