The Odds Are Increasing That Microsoft's Business Will Collapse - Who'da Thunk It?

Great analysis about the growing attacks on Office and Windows over at The Odds Are Increasing That Microsoft's Business Will Collapse on Businessinsider.com.

Because of their control, Apple does offer a better combination of hardware and software than anyone else in the business. Since Microsoft doesn't offer hardware (other than the Zune, keyboards and mice LOL) Apple's main competition is from the likes of Dell, HP, Gateway, Toshiba and eMachines.  Until you get to the mobile market.

There, Apple's competition is Android.  To me, this is the most important and impressive competition.

Before the iPhone, we had some smartphones running Palm OS and Windows Mobile.  They were expensive and clumsy to use, but put a lot of power in your palm.  The iPhone offered no features that I hadn't had on my Windows Mobile smartphones for several years.

Nevertheless, Apple put it in a sexy package, with a pretty much uniform and good user interface.  Yes, it lacked basic features such as "cut and paste".  However, it put a nice window dressing on commodity features.  Combine that with a rabid fan base and success is almost guaranteed.HTC has managed to provide a similar interface in their touch screen Windows phones, but the non-HTC provided Windows Mobile applications still have a crappy interface.When Apple released the first iPhone just three years ago, the only quality smart phones were the RIM Blackberry and a few Nokia (Symbian) models.  The slick interface and installed massive fan base caused the iPhone to become one of the most desired phones on the planet (despite lacking some basic features like cut and paste, a camera that shoots video and the ability to use bluetooth stereo headsets.)  Of course in 36 months, Apple fixed those deficiencies.Bottom line, the iPhone shoved Microsoft Windows Mobile based smartphones into last place. 

Android though is the big surprise.  The first Android mobile phone, the HTC Dream (G1 in the U.S.) was approved by the FCC about one and a half years ago and was released on the fourth place (out of four) U.S. Cellular network,  T-Mobile. Today, there are over 60 models of Android phones from over 20 manufacturers and every major carrier offers several models.  Multiple sources have shown that Android phones rank 3rd place in market share, behind Nokia (Symbian) and RIM (Blackberry) and will surpass RIM this year.

So Google's Android has done the same thing to Apple's iPhone that Apple did to Microsoft, but in half of the time.

While surprising, it does make some sense.

As I pointed out, over 20 companies make Android phones, having an average of 3 models each.  You can go to any carrier and get an Android phone and again, have a choice from several models.

The iPhone is available from just one US carrier, and they only offer two models.  One that is up to a year old, and one that is up to two years old.  I don't count the choices of 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, etc. as model choices since the competition allow the customer to decide by simply changing out memory cards.  The monopoly US carrier is credited with having the second worst network in the country, some of the worstcustomer service and some of the highest prices.  Nevertheless, the iPhone is a success.

So we have a "pick your carrier, pick your manufacturer and pick your model" vs a "one carrier-two models, take it or leave it" situation.  Who do you think is going to win?

On the Microsoft Office front, it IS the standard office suite for business, managing to kill off Ami Pro, Lotus 1-2-3, Wordperfect, etc.  However, It's been over ten years since Microsoft ran out of useful things to add to Office making it worth giving upgrade money to Microsoft.

• Deeply discounted, it costs $100 or more to get a current version of Microsoft Office with a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation program.
• Apple users can get iWork '09 (the current version) for almost $40 and get a very good word processor, spreadsheet and presentation program.  In fact, I find them better than anything Microsoft offers.
• Anyone running Windows, Mac or Linux can run OpenOffice for free and get a good word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program as well as a database.
• Anyone running a web browser can run Google Documents and get a basic word processor and spreadsheet for free. 

Office is one of Microsoft's two cash cows, the Windows operating system being the other.  However, there are three major alternatives, two of which can run on Windows and both of those are free.  How long do you think people will continue to give Microsoft money for Office?  Oh and by the way, all the alternatives handle Microsoft Office documents just fine.The article points out that Google ChromeOS, Android OS and "the cloud" will eventually make the desktop computer redundant.  I believe this will take longer than the author believes, but yes, I can see it happening.  In the meantime, a Mac runningOS X is a great (and I believe better) alternative to Microsoft Windows.  For about the same cost as a Windows license plus hardware, you can buy commodity hardware and build (or have built) a desktop PC running Apple OS X.  Perhaps not legally, but it works.Then there's Linux.  I like Linux.  When it comes to getting the job done and stability, Linux is right up there with Apple's OS X.  When it comes to cost, nothing beats Linux.  But... Linux isn't near as polished as OS X or even Windows.  Ubuntu Linux is almost there... Where you could give the average grandmother a computer loaded with Ubuntu and she'd be able to use it easily.

Yes, Microsoft is under pressure.  Microsoft is under a lot of pressure.  The corporate world will probably keep Microsoft alive in decades to come.  But I also remember when IBM was expected to continue to dominate the corporate desktop world as well.