Microsoft - What next?

IFA 2014 heralded many new devices from many manufacturers but the mobile and ICT electronics market landscape remains ambiguous. Incremental improvements to screen sizes, resolution and processor speeds continue to be made. However, there are few radical innovations that have the ability to transform the mobility or the productivity landscape. Microsoft - the 800 pound gorilla hasn't decided where to sit.

Satya Nadella's call to focus Microsoft on the productivity as the core of the monolithic organization and their wide ranging efforts provided a sensible direction. A range of new offerings such as Office 365 and portable mobile offerings for iOS and Android came out in the subsequent months. Whilst this has been a welcome offering - Microsoft hasn't served anything that is revolutionary in this space on one platform where they have total control. By virtue of the enormous investments made by Steve Ballmer, Microsoft now has a substantial hardware portfolio - giving it full control of the stack. From desktop / laptop / tablet to accessories to mobile to consumer electronics - Microsoft has access to the entire productivity continuum of it's core customer segment - corporate workers. Yet the share of the market remains abysmal in each of the segment and the impact or mid share of the future applications remains even lower. There is no anticipation nor there is any expectation of any new products to be released by Microsoft. This ought to give a reason for pause to the Microsoft leadership and perhaps hone in on their core value proposition and strategic direction.

Microsoft Windows Phone remains largely a disappointment - it lags in apps to iOS and Android. Staple apps like Flipboard, Belkin, Cisco AnyConnect are not available on the platform. But perhaps the worst offenders are the Microsoft offerings! Microsoft office and One Note offerings remain one of the weakest variants of all the Office 365 mobile offerings. One of the key use cases of tablets for productivity has been usage of stylus or "pen" in One Note or in Powerpoint for road warriors. Whilst android offering has started providing some of the stylus elements - but WP remains MIA. Major OEMs remain disengaged and low cost with obscure OEM handsets seems to be the core strategy. The current launch of Lumia 830 and 730 - used the phrase "right price point" repeatedly without highlighting any new mobility enterprise feature. Given this battle was won by Android and their 70%+ market share a while ago - it seems a futile war.

Tablets / Laptops remain somewhat a better proposition with Surface offerings providing mixed results. Microsoft did a tremendous job in producing a tablet / laptop that set the standard for other OEMs and thus rescued Microsoft offering from mediocrity. However, all that effort went for a naught, as the platform was repeatedly let down by the OS. Lack of integration and forethought into the design of metro and desktop versions made sure that it could never replace the significant XP or Win 7 subscriber base.

There is always latency in getting a large behemoth to steer to a different course and it perhaps is what Microsoft is currently facing. However, these are exciting times for productivity market - as cloud and mobility - transforms the entire landscape. Microsoft's foresight will be critical to them being part of the future or diminishing over time playing catch up - much like the internet browser era.