» Microsoft’s relevance

The Wall Street Journal on a report by Forrester’s Frank Gillett:

“The future is one where no single OS or vendor is dominant — Microsoft is extremely late to the market expansion into mobile and has lost its dominant position,” said Forrester Research VP and Principal Analyst Frank Gillett. ”Now it’s one of three contenders. So Windows survives, and is not in the downward spiral of RIM, Palm, and Nokia, but it is no longer the king of the expanded personal device hill, which now includes PCs, tablets, and smartphones.”

Also, an interesting statistic from Frank Gillett’s blog:

Microsoft has long dominated PC units, with something more than 95% sales. The incremental gains of Apple’s Mac products over the last five years haven’t really changed that reality. But the tremendous growth of smartphones, and then tablets, has. If you combine all the unit sales of personal devices, Microsoft’s share of units has shrunk drastically to about 30% in 2012.

If Microsoft seems less relevant than they used to be, there’s a pretty good reason for that.

It’s because they are.

Just making sure you got that.