21
Dec

Prediction for 2008: consumers say goodbye Microsoft - Hello Apple

Posted by Steven Hodson in Friday, December 21st 2007      

changing the rules of the game. This is going to be a long term prediction much like the one that Dave Winer made with Martin Nisenholtz of the New York Times about RSS but I think that the possibility of 2008 being the beginning of when Microsoft will start to feel the shift of consumers away from both the operating system and Office suite.

While their enterprise market share will be safe for a very long time the same cannot be said for the general consumer market and while Google Apps may be the winner on the web side of things I believe the really big winner will be Apple.

I’ve been around for computers for a very long time and of that Microsoft has been my only platform; other than the occasional foray into the different flavors of Linux, for that time. I remember when Apple was declared dead and buried. I remember as well all the snickering when it was announced that Steve Jobs was returning to bring Apple back from the dead and here we are at the end of 2007 and Apple is far from being dead and buried.

As MG Siegler points out in two posts today on his ParisLemon blog Apple has sold 5 million iPhones in six months and that he believes this is just the first step to mobile computing exploding in 2008 with Apple leading the way. This may be true; and I don’t doubt that the iPhone will make us rethink the whole mobile computing landscape, but I also think that we will see a growing movement to the Mac as a preferred consumer desktop.

For this Microsoft only has themselves to blame and for a number of reasons other than the typical anti-Microsoft fanboy type of nonsense. The main reason though is because of the concentration on their enterprise business and the cash cow that it is the consumer has begun to feel like an over used hooker on a Friday night with nothing other than some bloated eye candy to show for it.

But the real blow to Microsoft had to be the release of Vista this year and the great big thud that was heard echoing everywhere in the weeks after the WOW campaign failed to get Windows users all hot and bothered. It even got to the point that Microsoft had to back step on its usual policy of killing off the previous version of Windows to OEMs. At the point when XP should have been marking its retirement date on the calendar Microsoft had to breathe some more life into it.

During all this Apple brings OS X Leopard to the marketplace and even though it too had its problems the anticipation for it was palatable with just about everyone in the tech blogosphere talking about it. This was one of the first times that I had ever seen such interest outside of the Mac community over a release.

The other big thing that has worked in Apple’s favor is the fact that with recent versions of the OS X platform the ease of being able to run Windows and all its applications from within OS X has never been simpler. No longer are users feeling tied to running just Windows in order to do what they want. Along with this is the rising popularity of the Apple laptops which have seen the largest increase in sales in the laptop market.

While Microsoft may consider its core business being corporations and their massive workforces Apple is all about the consumer. From the iPod right through to the MacBook Apple has shown that the consumer wants more than just a collection of parts that runs the latest flavor of Windows on it. Granted you can’t blame Microsoft for the ugliness of the typical PC box that gets shipped out but that doesn’t change the fact that people want something more than a utilitarian desktop.

The consumer market may only be the gravy for Microsoft’s business but that gravy is starting to seriously look elsewhere. Sure Vista maybe a stellar product but the fact is that people are coming to realize that it isn’t the only kid on the block anymore. they are beginning to see that like the iPod they can have function and form and not be consistently gouged in the pocketbook for forever growing bloated software.

They are beginning to see that they have an alternative and that is one that doesn’t require running Windows. So while Microsoft continues to chalk up its volume licensing deals with corporations the consumer is beginning to step out from the weight and expense of Windows. This consumer marketplace is Microsoft’s to lose and I only hope is that MinWin (Windows 7) is where the real WOW is and that it comes to market before the shift become more substantial.

Oh and yes I am a once Vista but now XP user and have been a faithful Microsoft customer since my first day on a computer.

Listening to: Enigma - Lounge By The Essence - Erotic Dreams

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    The sooner this becomes a reality, the better. Currently, consumers are faced with the ultimate dilemma. Do they by trash because it's "universal", or do they buy something that does it's intended task proficiently and with some style, but to then be limited because of incompatibility issues. I am waiting, waiting, waiting for the day that Apple becomes the standard.

    Actually......Naaah, stuff it, I WILL buy an Apple this year....
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    • v
    Okay, so MSFT is safe in the enterprise market for now. How long will it take before people want to experience in their workplace what they have at home? Is it reasonable to think that they live in the Apple world at home and don't want the same at work? For how long can IT-departments resist this need for change? I will give it a couple of years, no more than three.
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    I've been around a long time as well and I have two points to contribute:

    1. Leopard being "talked" about in the tech blogsphere is not the same thing as market adoption or a forthcoming, general market trend. check out the awareness/adoption stats on google apps vs the amount of airplay they get on blogs for reference. virtually no one outside the tech blogsphere has even heard of them.

    2. nothing about a mac makes me want to use it. I'm not exactly a windows fanboy, but i quite simply do not believe the pain in moving away from my current computing environment, to a set of apple products is going to bring me a large enough of a return. windows works fine. mac probably also works fine, and it probably has many of the same problems (including security problems) that windows has. PCs are "sticky", given the hardware expense, software expense, and the peripheral expense -- so what's the real motivation to move? if I were buying my first machine, I might go with a mac, but as an overall percentage of the pc market, how many are "first-time pc buyers"? in my mind, apple may have the majority of first-time buyers, they will have a cut at the upgrade market, but overall, in my mind, general windows users are relatively safe. I really do not see a lot of them moving, as your post attempts to foreshadow...
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    Right now I'm on a Mac with Mircosoft Office and I hardly use it. I find I'm using Word and Excel much less, often just firing up Simple Text (the text editor that comes with the Mac) or Google Docs. The only Microsoft thingie on my Mac is Internet Explorer to check out web design stuff.

    I do believe there are still gamers that prefer the PC. But in that case - one could just install boot camp and get windows on a Mac, too.

    By the way this comment thing is amusing - Disqus huh? Might have to check it out.
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    Agreed, but the question is will YOU say goodbye to Microsoft and 'hello' to Apple in 2008?

    And yes I realize my two posts ended up on a somewhat similar tilt :) The 2nd didn't start out that way, then I realized the iPhone selling that fast was just more backup for the points I made in the first. But I really have thought that since day 1 with the iPhone - that Apple has absolutely revolutionized mobile computing - that we were going to start to see actual useable devices beyond the laptop.

    That said, I also think you're right that for many customers the transition will indeed be to the mac desktops and laptops first. Those are far from dead, but I cannot wait to see what computing will be like in 10 years - I think Apple is leading the way in these first steps.
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    As much as I might like to try out Apple and OS X it isn't like to happen. I just don't have the finances to do so and that isn't likely to change at all in the future - unless of course the blog actually starts making any money beyond enough for a coffee.

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