Microsoft Is Losing Fight for Consumers, Analyst Says

Microsoft Is Losing Fight for Consumers, Analyst Says
By STEVE LOHR
Copyright by The New York Times
December 10, 2009, 10:00 pm
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/microsoft-is-losing-fight-for-consumers-analyst-says/?th&emc=th


Mark Anderson is the writer behind the Strategic News Service, a predictive newsletter with a wide following among technology executives and venture capitalists, which he publishes from the island redoubt of Friday Harbor, Wash. And each December, he comes to New York, hosts a dinner and delivers a set of forecasts for the coming year.

The dinner was at the Waldorf-Astoria on Thursday night, but I caught up with Mr. Anderson earlier for a preview of his after-dinner performance. One of his predictions, in particular, caught my attention. “Except for gaming, it is ‘game over’ for Microsoft in the consumer market,” he said. “It’s time to declare Microsoft a loser in phones. Just get out of Dodge.”

Regardless of Microsoft’s performance, amid the rise of Apple’s iPhone and phones using Google’s Android software, it seems unlikely Microsoft will heed Mr. Anderson’s advice. The smartphone is becoming the innovative hub of software development and applications, far more so than the personal computer. If Microsoft loses in smartphones, Mr. Anderson noted, “It is pretty grim. Those applications are going to move upstream.”

The underlying problem, Mr. Anderson said, is cultural. “Phones are consumer items, and Microsoft doesn’t have consumer DNA,” he said.

“Walk the halls at Microsoft and you can see it is not a place that gets consumers,” Mr. Anderson said. “Just as if you walk the halls at Google, it’s obvious it is not a place that gets the enterprise world.”

Unlike many, Mr. Anderson does not see cloud computing as a unifying force that would make consumer and business technology increasingly similar. “The computer world is splitting apart, into two separate continents, consumer and enterprise,” he said.

In the consumer camp are Apple, Google and most of the Asian hardware makers, Mr. Anderson said. In the enterprise camp (large companies and government agencies) will reside I.B.M., Dell, Cisco and Microsoft. Hewlett-Packard, he said, will straddle both worlds.