Jul 16
WPC Day 3 Summary
Mark Becker
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Day 3, like the others, started with some excellent keynotes. Here are some highlights:
Windows Mobile Announcement
Blue Bag for Windows Mobile – think Apple’s iPhone App Store. Comes standard on Windows Mobile 6.5 and is a download for Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1. The success of this is going to the number and quality of applications. Don’t scoff yet iPhone users – who is the best software development company in the world and courts the most developers and has the most developed apps on their OS? (Hint: Microsoft) BTW: they say they have 30 million units in the field. On July 27th visit developer.windowsmobile.com – the apps should be available for upload.
Kevin Turner – Growing Our Share Together
Kevin had a lot of great things to say, but it was not as much what he said, but how he said them with the determination and zest. You got the strong sense with Steve and Kevin that Microsoft is going to be hard to stop. Here are some of his points:
“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Rahm Emanuel
In 4 weeks our world changed – Sept. 15 – Oct. 15
Microsoft’s response and strategy to the economic reset:
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Be realistic about cause of the reset – environment vs. strategy
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Prepare for unknown length and depth of downturn
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Deepen and strengthen customer and partner relationships
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Grow market share and compete to win
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Proceed with sense of urgency
While their competitor’s R&D budgets are shrinking during this time Microsoft is holding the line on R&D spending (9.5B). They believe that those who take advantage of the downturn by preparing for the opportunities will be able to advance beyond the competition.
“Winners and losers in this environment will be determined by the market share gained or lost.”
Other tidbits:
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Bing – committed to 2 releases per year. It is gaining share on Google and gaining market attention
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The VMware Tax – cost $58k versus $9k for the same stack. MS grew 24pts of market share with the original Hyper-V with no LiveMigration
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Windows Server – grew in market share +2 pts against the “free” competitors
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Notes seats – 12.9 million seats went to Exchange in last 3 years
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OpenOffice – compete with “good enough”. No innovation, SharePoint, Exchange or BI
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Apple – what about the ads? Unscripted commercials about buying a laptop for under $1,000. Apple lawyers called Kevin and asked him to stop running the ad – they lowered their price by $100! True story!
Good stuff…