Re: Falling Windows Market Share

On Tue, 6/24/2025 9:01 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Tue, 24 Jun 2025 19:57:40 -0400, Paul wrote:
 

Microsoft still has a pile of cash, and there's no chance of it just
disappearing ...

 
Everything will be fine until the day you wake up and realize it isn’t.
 
Now we see the reason for this Windows/Xbox mashup idea that they’re
promoting: by joining two different declining markets together into a
single product, they hope to prop up both businesses.
 
The trouble with that is: combining different product lines only makes
sense if you get some synergy out of it. In this case, we just have two
mediocre product components dragging each other down.
 

One thing you have to remember, is Panos Panay quit, who was
previously juggling this set of balls. Is the replacement person
any good ??? What MBA school did they graduate from ?

And when you're managing this stuff, your PowerPoint slide
does NOT start like this:

1) Declining market.

Instead, you propose a strategy that surprised both your
competitors and your customers, where bullet 3 is

1) Profit!

You DONT look in the rear view mirror. There is only the
forward direction, and an understanding of what your
customers want. Also keeping in mind, that whatever
you do, needs a profit margin to work for the company.

Intel has done many things, where the eventual outcome
was as easy to predict as a "Google Cancellation". For example,
if you make 8085 clones for $5 a unit, who are you fooling ?
The CFO is going to tell you "now, cut that out!". And the
project will be canceled.

So whatever you do as the Panos Panay replacement, it has
to fit somewhere in the "useful zone" and can't be too extreme.
If you give the appearance of "floundering", nobody is going
to trust you.

   Paul