Vox Circle: Legends of the Digital Fall
Zune Social: ultimate jwing |
By: Julio Angel Ortiz | 2/22/2010 |
Recently, Microsoft unveiled their plans for their mobile phone strategy, the Windows Phone 7 Series. Aside from the somewhat clunky name (you would think Microsoft would have learned their lesson), the new mobile OS looks like the most exciting project to come out of Redmond in a long time. Windows Phone 7 is a complete overhaul of the Windows Mobile experience, where Microsoft has taken the Zune look and feel and made it the core of their new mobile strategy, banking on it as the future. Something like this would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, where Microsoft was more than happy to rest on its laurels, slow to change or deliver new and exciting digital experiences.
In hindsight, Microsoft's stagnation should never have been a surprise. After the 1980's where Microsoft was clawing its way to the top of the office and desktop market, and the 1990's where they cemented their dominance in the PC industry, the 2000's heralded their creative Dark Age. The battle for the office suite was over; WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3 were battered into irrelevance (although those companies share some of the blame in their own demise). The browser wars were also over; Netscape, the once-mighty titan of web browsers, was cast down from its precarious Olympus and relegated to the Tartarus of obsolescence. The desktop was secured; Apple had floundered badly in the mid-to-late 90's, with constant delays in their next-generation operating system and their stubborn adherence to the creaky System 7.x / 8.x. The new millennium dawned with Microsoft the clear victor, content as Ozymandias, staring down at their works.
But then a chain of events began to show the cracks in Microsoft's visage of being unbreakable. Apple debuted the iPod, staking claim in a market segment that no one thought could become a multi-billion dollar industry. Apple also finally released their next generation OS, MacOS X, which grew into a true contender to the Windows megalith. A little company called Google became the Second Coming of search engines. Office 2000, XP, and 2003 were released, each version differing little aside from aesthetics. After a few years of the stale Internet Explorer 6, an unexpected contender arose from the open source sea called Firefox, with it's audacious concepts such as tabbed browsing, extensions support, and fast page rendering. This same poisoned sea also spawned Open Office, a free capable Microsoft Office-compatible desktop office suite. Just as Windows XP began to look long in the tooth, Microsoft released Windows Vista, which became not so much a PR nightmare but a rallying cry for everything that was wrong with the company. The nadir came when the iPhone was released, cementing the perception of Microsoft as a monolithic entity that was hopelessly out of touch in the mobile space.
It is far too early to determine whether the 2010's will be something of a revival for the company. But there is hope. Microsoft has constructed a solid gaming experience around the XBox 360 / Live services. Office 2007's radically different and improved UI was criticized by users upon initial release but has gained acceptance. Windows 7 has been a boon for the company, both from a critical and business standpoint. It is debatable as to whether Internet Explorer's improvements have been substantial, but with two new versions in 2.5 years and a third one in the works, the product is enjoying a development renaissance not seen since its early days. And the Zune, despite its troubled beginnings, has grown to become a critical success, and has garnered enough support within the corporation that the future of Windows Mobile has been married to it.
The true question that remains is how much has Microsoft learned from these past mistakes. Has a shift finally begun in their culture to not only adapt quickly, but smartly? This new decade is a critical one for the company; one that will be the tipping point as to whether Microsoft maintains a strong position within the industry, or becomes like IBM and its former dominance in the desktop computing field, now just an important chapter in the history of the PC, a victim of Digital Darwinism.
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