BeerFiles is a sometimes irreverent blog concerning all things to do with IT, technology, people and the media from the point of view of a hard boiled technology journalist and commentator. Stan has been in the IT game for about a quarter of a century. He has seen and written about the rise and fall of more than a few IT players and made many friends, some of whom he has even crossed swords with on occasions. Everything in this blog is purely Stan’s opinion so if you agree, wish to expand upon, correct a post or tell Stan he’s a clueless know nothing, please feel free.

Ballmer sees Google, Apple and open source as main competitors

by Stan Beer

Thursday, 12 October 2006

Page 2 of 2 The third business model that Ballmer articulated was monetizing software through hardware. Once again,  Microsoft couldn't get away from using a major competitor as an example, directly naming Apple's phenomenally successful iPod. Ballmer said that all the cool things that its upcoming Zune player can do will be enabled by software but the payoff will be built into the margin in the hardware sales. Featured Whitepaper 5 Best Practices for Smartphone Support The interview didn't get into the emerging threat in the business space from software as a service delivery companies such as Sales Force. So what we can surmise from Ballmer's musings is that Microsoft is going to have to keep producing software so much better than what's available from the open source crowd that people are willing to pay hard cash for what they could otherwise get for free. While the software company struggles with that, it is somehow going to introduce an advertising driven model without sabotaging its legacy business. Finally, Microsoft is going to leverage software to make money out of hardware, against a competitor which has 80% market share and well over 20 years of experience making money off leveraging software to make money out of hardware. Microsoft has exceptionally deep pockets thanks to its legacy monopoly desktop software business. That's good because, based on the three challenges just mentioned, Microsoft is going to need to spend a lot of that money to maintain its position as an IT market leader.{moscomment} Tags See All Tags Apple  Google  Hardware  Microsoft  Software  Zune  iPod  Powered By Joomla Tags Please enable JavaScript in your browser to post your comment! << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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