» Sponsor: Mutual Mobile
My thanks to Mutual Mobile for sponsoring the Very Nice Web Site RSS feed this week. Mixing it up a bit, Mutual Mobile is not selling something, they’re looking to hire… you.
No, not you, Larry.
You.
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» 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.
» Taking chances
Matt Alexander:
For years, Microsoft has allowed itself to become the embodiment of aging and uninteresting computing. But, rather than settle with this narrative, the company has embarked upon a path of introspective disruption. Not only is that a rare quality, but it’s one that I can unquestionably get behind.
I flip Microsoft a lot of shit because, well, that’s what I do. That’s my thing, girl. You know that, baby.
And I may disagree with Microsoft’s boosters about how set Windows 8 and the Surface are for success, but I do admire not only what they’re trying with Windows 8 but also what they’ve done with Windows Phone. Instead of just trying a me-too of iOS, they charted their own path and it was one that required a fundamental change in their own business model. I salute that.
Having to go through a desktop application to change the screen rotation on a touch-based device? Not so much.
Stiff competition
So, we have MG Siegler who thinks that the Windows 8 launch is going to be a “shitshow”, Mat Honan who thinks it’ll be a “disaster” and Jim Dalrymple who thinks it’ll be a “flop”.
Now, I pride myself on being predictably pessimistic about anything Microsoft does these days, but I feel like I’m going to have to up my game a bit.
Bad day for Apple’s competitors
Google’s net income drops from $2.73 billion a year ago to $2.18 billion this quarter.
Microsoft’s net earnings, meanwhile dropped 22 percent, although it has sold out of the low-end Surface, whatever that counts for, which is hard to tell until they announce real numbers. Some of this is, of course, due to the lead up to Windows 8. The real test will be what happens this quarter.
Also not a good day for Microsoft subsidiary partner Nokia, which sold just 2.9 million Lumia devices.
Apple’s numbers come out next week and could be considered weak since there were only a few days of iPhone 5 sales in the quarter, but I doubt their numbers will be down.
Still, despite all this news, the real question is, of course, how long it will be until the Apple board asks for Tim Cook’s resignation.
» ‘Laplets’
Wired’s Alexandra Chang:
Microsoft’s touch-focused Windows 8 operating system is pushing a new form factor for devices: the tablet-notebook hybrid — or, as Gadget Lab likes to refer to it, the “laplet.”
Shoot. I was so close with “kablets”.
» Rocket man
Wired:
The most secretive commercial space company has passed a milestone after successfully test-firing part of its new rocket engine. Blue Origin, the suspiciously quiet rocket company started by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, fired up the thrust chamber for its engine at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.
If I had a metric crapton of money, I’d probably fund something cool like this, too. Currently, however, my funding is limited to the pump-powered water rocket level.
» Surface pricing… REVEALED
You’ve probably seen this already, but the Surface starts at $499 for a 32-GB model with no keyboard. I’d call that comparable to the iPad, not necessarily competitive since it doesn’t have the same breadth of apps (remember, Windows legacy apps won’t run on Windows RT), has lower screen resolution, is heavier and has a truly awful, embarrassing ad. Seriously, that ad makes you not want to be associated with the product. Why they didn’t do something along the lines of the instructive Windows 8 ad is beyond me.
BUT…
Hold on, because the Surface has a killer feature.
Integrated Kickstand provides uncompromised support and flexibility.
*Uncompromised.* Which my spell checker tells me isn’t a word. Probably they meant “uncompromising”. But you get the point. Number of compromises: ZERO.
Well, unless you want it inclined at anything other than about 15 degrees. Other than that, though, totally uncompromised.
Uncompromising.
Whatever.
» First impressions of Windows 8
Chris Pirillo asks people on the street their impressions of Windows 8 and it’s a rough first date. Asking them to try to shut down the computer probably shouldn’t be equivalent to asking them to defuse a bomb.
One woman says “I don’t think we’re going to be moving to this very soon at work.” Looks like she’s probably not going to be alone.
This is a big adjustment. And I think some of it is good and even necessary for Microsoft, but it’s not going to be easy. Windows 8 may end up being a positive first step, but it’s going to be a hard one for a lot of people to take.
Survey sickness
I saw this survey get reported by several sites last week and I’ve spent a number of hours since then thinking about it because I’m a deeply thoughtful person and there was nothing good on TV and also I don’t have cable anymore anyway.
The survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (or SHIELD for short), says the iPad’s share of the tablet market has dropped from an astounding 81 percent a year ago to just 52 percent this year.
Sounds bad for the iPad, right? Once again we see that there is no market share Apple can have that Dr. René Belloq Android cannot take away.
Here’s the thing, though: I don’t buy the results of this survey. And by “don’t buy” I don’t mean “I didn’t purchase the white paper published by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (SHIELD).” I mean I don’t believe the results.
OK, Apple fanboy, lol, and maybe I’m wrong, but this is a survey. I don’t really understand how a survey is more meaningful than published sales numbers. Amazon famously doesn’t release sales figures for the Kindle line, so we’re left to speculate on exact market share, but it’s worth noting that both IHS and Strategy Analytics pegged the iPad’s market share at over 68 percent during the same period that Pew says it was just 52 percent.
I’m no statistician (although I do play in a fantasy statistician league), but I can tell you that all three of these data points cannot be correct at the same time.
Last year Pew conducted the survey before the Kindle Fire was released. This year they conducted it before the Nexus 7 or the Kindle Fire HD were released. Which is part of what I don’t get. While about two-thirds of the shift is attributed to the introduction of the Kindle Fire, the rest has simply no explanation at all. We’re to believe that after consistently turning their noses up at garden variety Android tablets, consumers suddenly started buying them in the last year because… why? Pew says the reason people bought more Android tablets was because prices fell. But prices on tablets not shipped by Amazon and Google didn’t really fall that much. The 7-inch Galaxy Tab 2 is still $350 at Verizon.
(Which is another interesting point here. If you think Google and Amazon are going to stick it to Apple on price, what effect do you think the Kindle Fire HD and the Nexus 7 are going to have on other Android tablets? Devastating, I’d say.)
Yet this survey shows them increasing market share over the last year. For some reason. While I’m willing to accept the idea that the Kindle Fire took a decent chunk of market share, you’re going to need to prove to me that other Android tablets did.
There’s something else a little funky about Pew’s survey. According to the details of the entire study, they only surveyed people 18 years and older. I find it a little odd that they’d make such sweeping generalizations about market share when they left out a rather large segment of the market in their survey.
While I have my doubts about the Pew survey, I truthfully don’t know who’s right. I certainly expect the Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire HD to be competitive and take at least some market share from Apple this year. But given their restricted demographic and published estimates that contradict their numbers, I see no real reason to take the results of the Pew survey very seriously.
Maybe we also shouldn’t take IHS and Strategy Analytics numbers that seriously, either. Or a whole lot of other surveys and polls for which we know nothing about the rigor with which they were conducted.
These are all just individual data points and any one of them may be indicative of a trend but, as you can see with the varied answers we’ve gotten about iPad market share, we really don’t know which one it is.