The Demise of Microsoft and RIM

To stay on top of the world of technology, a company needs to be bringing new ideas to the market and reinventing itself. For example, take the cases of Yahoo and MySpace - two ground breaking Internet technology companies in their heyday. Look where they are now. Yahoo, the once darling of the Internet, did not seem to know who they were and the direction they were going. Yahoo's home page is a mess of services that seems to be piped in from Internet sources.  All I wanted was a search without all the rest of the stuff Yahoo was trying to provide and was forcing me to consume. I was a Yahoo user but switched to Google just because of the simpler search home page. Google grabbed the search market by offering a simple yet powerful search engine and then providing additional services to their search clients, some fairly standard but useful – Gmail and Docs, others very innovative – Maps and Earth. When Goggle sees something that they think would enhance their users’ experience, they acquire - YouTube. Let's face it, not all innovations are going to work and as all Googlers know, we are all their beta testers. Some of their innovations have failed but at least they try. MySpace was another great idea that went nowhere. With respect to MySpace, whether it was poor marketing or lack of direction, Facebook came along with a similar idea and drowned it.

Image via CrunchBase

It is this lack of renewal that will take down two technology giants - Microsoft and RIM. If you think about it, Microsoft has not created anything. In the early days, Microsoft made its claim to fame by striking a deal with IBM to have a copy of MS-DOS on every computer it sold. Microsoft did not create MS-DOS. IBM approached Gary Kildall to negotiate a deal with him to acquire his operating system known as CPM. Kildall had philosophical problems with IBM and refused to deal with them. Because Bill Gates was making a name for himself in the new computer industry by writing code for the first personal computer, the Altair 8000, IBM approached him. As timelines were short, Gates bought the rights to CPM and rebranded it as MS-DOS and licensed it to IBM under the name of PC-DOS. With his lawyer father's help, Gates got a sweetheart commission from every computer sold using "his" operating system. (By all rights, if he was still alive, it should have be Kildall who should be travelling the world with Melinda, giving away billions of dollars). With the boom of personal computers in the early 1980's, this commission made Microsoft very rich.

As there is little money to be made hardware, IBM is no longer selling personal computers and Microsoft is a multi-billion dollar organization. Microsoft’s other products are copies of technology on the market. Windows was fashioned after Apple's operating systems and the MS-Office products followed other productivity tools on the market like LOTUS 1-2-3, WordPerfect, and Paradox. It is simply the size of Microsoft that forces users to install its products which are designed to work best in its operating systems that are already installed on computers. Microsoft has been taken to court by smaller competitors to stop them from forcing personal computer users to use their browser.

Microsoft's answer to the booming MP3 player market, Zune, which was released 5 years after the iPod, was removed from the market in 2011. Their recent attempt to break into the cell market is not going as planned and now, with the release of Windows 8, they are trying to break into the tablet market, long established by Apple and Google. Being a follower and an imitator, Microsoft will not be the company that is was in the days of Bill Gates. The cell phone market has long been dominated by companies like Motorola Mobility (recently purchased by Google) and Nokia, who is losing market share to Apple and Google. Now comes Microsoft trying to get in long after the races have begun. They are repeating this error by just announcing that they are getting into the tablet market with their Surface tablet. Once again, the tablet race started with the iPad 2 years ago, which is equivalent to a prehistoric period in terms on technology innovation. With the sale of desktop and laptop computers declining, Microsoft is not going to be selling as many operating systems as they have sold in the past, and as they attempt into the cell phone and tablet market is so far behind, the future of Microsoft is not looking good.

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RIM came out with a very innovative product in 1999. Imagine a product that was so innovative, that you can get your email, answer your phone calls and have a host of productively tools in the palm of your hand. It was a wonderful tool and many people, still swear by it including President Obama, who refused to give it up in spite of it being a national security threat and Oprah who called it one of her favourite things. The problem is that RIM rested on its laurels and other manufacturers took the smart phone idea and ran with it giving us the iPhone and Android phones with hundreds of thousands of apps. They tried to produce other attention-getting products, like the Blackberry Bold and the PlayBook tablet but those products lacked the innovative nature of the original Blackberry. Even with a new CEO, RIM will have a very difficult time recovering from their lack of attention to the demands of the innovative-hungry technology market. They are hoping that their Blackberry 10 will be the saviour of RIM but it appears to be yet another device incompatible with the rest of the suite of productivity tools used by businesses.

The technology market is constantly searching for the next big thing. Microsoft and RIM are both trying to be players in this new technology marketplace using old technology operating strategies that got them to be big players in the market in the first place. Unfortunately, those strategies need to change if they planning to survive. RIM is supposedly trying something new with its new operating system but it may be too late as iPhone and Androids are well embedded in the market. Microsoft has released Windows 8, an operating systems design to be used on phones and tablets in a well-established market, as Google and Apple have a sizeable head. For both RIM and Microsoft - too little, too late.

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From DOS 1.0 to Windows 7 - Nothing's Changed

There is very little doubt that Microsoft has played a big part in the computer revolution. While Apple software and hardware has always been proprietary, MS was willing to sell its operating system to any manufacturer making an IBM-compatible computers thus attaining a huge market share. The market share lead to users naturally adapting software products that interfaced very well with DOS and then Windows which lead to MS Office becoming the de facto standard office productivity tool.

The problem with MS is that they are not innovators. From their beginning, DOS 1.0 was not a Bill Gates creation. He bought the rights to an operating systems called QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) from Seattle Computer Products and adapted it to IBM's specifications. MS Office products have been dominant but other office tools pre-date them. The word processing program WordPrect was available in 1980 (MS Word in 1983) and the spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3 was released in 1983 while MS Excel first surfaced in 1987. Just the power and reach of Microsoft's operating systems has caused these other tools to virtually disappear. The early  Windows products were thought of by many to have a similar look and feel as the Apple operating system of the same time.

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeThis lack of innovation is now evident in MS attempt to enter the cell phone market. After Blackberry and Apple has taken over the market, here comes MS trying to do for cell phone what they did for microcomputers. It was not surprising that there first attempt failed. They are not the only player in the market and they do not know how to deal in an area where they do not have a virtual monopoly. After the failure of Vista and the success of Windows 7, they are trying to carry that success to the cell phone market. With Blackberry and the iPhone deeply entrenched, I believe that their second attempt to produce a cell phone will fail again.

They are in a market place where they do not know how to play the game - a market place that calls for innovation and that is crowded with non-MS products. The failure of the first cell phone caused MS CEO to lose his bonus - the failure of the Windows 7 cell phone will cause him to lose his job.

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Is is a Phone? Is it a Tablet? No, it's Both!!

It is interesting to watch the cell phone and Internet tablet market. Cell phone have been around for many years and it has been fun to watch how the technology has improved, how the phone have gotten smaller and how the features have evolved. From the original Motorla "brick" released in 1973 to today's smart phone has been quite the evolution. And it seems that the evolution is reaching a point where these hand-held devices are so packed with features that the phone capabilities is a small component of the actual device. The ads often lists the features and you need to read the fine print to see any specs about the phone capabilities. Apple suffered the consequences of not focusing on the phone when they released the iPhone 4. Great toy but the phone was hard to use due to the antenna design.


Now with the introduction of the Internet tablets, the line between phone and computer is becoming narrower. Apple, once again, found that out the hard way when they did not have phone capbilities in their iPad. Of course people still bought them but were dissappointed with the lack of a phone and camera which seems to be the defacto standard for hand-held devices.
One player noticably missing from the mix is Microsoft. Bill Gates and company has been given much of the credit for the computer revolution but does not seem to embrace the cell phone market potential. Microsoft has never been innovators. Even their original software product, DOS, was a copy of CPM. They have tried serveral time to enter the market with dismal failure and a new attempt is on the horizon. MS is so far behind the leader, they will never catch up.

By the end of this year, the smart phone / Internet tablet market will be heating up. With iPad competitors on the horizon, MS in the market, RIM fighting to maintaining its smart phone lead, Apple releasing new devices and Nokia trying to maintain its cell phone market lead, it going to be a very interesting time for hand-held technologies.

Image via Wikipedia

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Blackberry in Trouble

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In the past few weeks, Blackberry has been very dominant in the news. Rumors about a tablet PC started when RIM purchased the BlackPad.com domain name. RIM also introduced their latest Blackberry model to be known as the Torch. This model and their latest operating system is RIM's answer to the iPhone and the up an coming Android phones. But things are not looking good for the Canadian cell phone company. A recent statistic claims that half of all current Blackberry users are either considering switching to will be switching to different hardware.

An additional  nail in the Blackberry coffin is the problems RIM has been having with the United Arab Emirates. Because of the strong security on the phone, the UAE feel that the phone can be used by spies and circumvent security. Apparently RIM has come up with a solution to this problem or they could possibly lose 500,000 customers.

Blackberry are great phones (I use one but I'm in the 50% above). Cell phones have become more than just devices for carrying on conversations and organizing personal data. They have become Web surfing tools and social media organizers. These is something Blackberry did not keep up on and iPhone as well as other competitor has surpassed them on. Now, Rim is trying to get caught up and I think its too late. They should focus on being the choice for the business client with enterprise wide services. That is there niche and they have been very good at doing that. The personal Blackberry is fading and soon will be gone.

RIM made the Blackberry one of the first predominately used smart phones and because of that, they have huge market share. Unfortunately, they sat back on their laurels for too long without seeing the potential of the single-user. These single-users need a different set of tools than used by the business client and thus, will be switching to a phone that can provide that need.

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Leading Edge vs Bleeding Edge

I heard part of the press conference given my Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, this morning about the iPhone 4 problem of dropping calls. A few things stuck out for me. Firstly, Jobs admitted that the iPhone 4was not perfect. Good for him for admitted that. Secondly, he minimized the problem by saying that the iPhone 4 dropped just one more call, on average than its predecessor. Granted one more call is not a lot but on a phone that is supposed to be an improvements, it is not acceptable. Thirdly, that the fix is so simple and the problem so obvious, why was not not found and fixed before it was released?

Hold phone like this ...  

not like this ....

But the thing I was most surprised to see was Jobs' attitude about the problem. He definitely did not think it was a big thing which certainly did not deserve the media hype. He certainly did not have the "I feel your pain" attitude. It was more like he was pacifying his whining clients. Watch it and decide for yourself.

The Mother of All Patches

Bought an iPhone 4? If you are in Canada, they are supposed to be available later this month. By the sounds of the problem the iPhone is having may delay the Canadian launch or even begin a recall. The redesigned iPhone has its antenna wrapped around its perimeter. Good idea in theory, but I guess that the test engineers have very small hands as this design mean that when the user holds the phone in a normal manner, the signal is interrupted and calls may be dropped. Apple is playing down the issue, saying its a software problem and has instructions on their Web site on how to properly hold an iPhone as to not block the antenna. Consumer Reports feels that the issue is so detrimental to its use, it cannot recommend the phone. Apple's stock has also dipped below its 50 days average.

Thankfully, there's a fix! It requires a patch! Not a software patch but a real patch. There are many reports that say if you put a small piece of duct tape over the lower left-hand side of the phone, the problem is fixed. Won't Red Green be proud!! (For those not familiar with this piece of Canadiana, Red Green was a character in a TV that fixed everything with duct tape). You can find an video of the procedure on the CNN tech site.

This is not the first time duct tape was used to fix technology. A very famous patch occurred in 1970, when the failing square carbon dioxide filters from Apollo 13's command module had to be modified to fit round receptacles in the lunar module. A workaround was made using duct tape to hold together other items found on board. The lunar module carbon dioxide filters started working again, saving the lives of the three astronauts on board.

If the iPhone is released in Canada as is, I would strongly urge you to visit your local hardware store on the way home from the Apple store. In that way, you will be able to hold the phone the way you want to without dropping any calls. You might also want to drop into your stock broker to invest some money in 3M stock.