What if Windows 10 fails?
What if Windows 10 fails?
For Microsoft, new Windows revenue may mean
'subscriptions'
By Scott M. Fulton, III
IDG News Service | Jan 16, 2015 11:05 AM PT
It has been 25 years since the potential market failure
of a Microsoft operating system carried serious consequences outside the
corporation’s own campus. MS-DOS and Windows versions have failed to gain
traction before and even been publicly lampooned. But in that quarter-century,
Microsoft’s dominance of the desktop has kept the platform afloat, even when
consumers and businesses stalwartly refused to upgrade.
Today, the word “dominance” doesn’t really apply to
Windows, and especially not to Microsoft.
Windows 8 was a spectacular flop, sunk to a large degree
by the start screen. If Windows 10 performs no better, there are two views of
the consequences. One is that the Windows platform is now vulnerable to
obsolescence. So, like a prime minister facing a multiparty no-confidence vote,
a Windows 10 failure would force Microsoft to make an airtight case for why a
Windows operating system must continue to be produced.
Yes, Windows versions have failed before, without Taps
being played or world economies crumbling. It’s not because Windows hasn’t
mattered that much. As with mediocre leadership or poor cable service, people
will put up with what they have in the absence of a better alternative. But if
Windows 10 doesn’t catch on, device makers may move away from PCs altogether.
The products they make, using other native OSes or even virtual desktops, may
look less and less like laptops and not much different from tablets.
Some analysts have an alternative view: It’s Windows 7,
not 8, that has the lion’s share of the operating system’s installed base. If
Windows 10 performs no better than Windows 8 in the consumer, small business,
and enterprise markets, Windows 7 will simply linger on.
“Windows 7 offers strong competition to any new desktop
OS,” said Al Hilwa, IDC’s program director for software development research,
in an email interview. “But as long the new environment is sufficiently
familiar to both users and developers, the replacement rate for PCs will ensure
a continued switch, and some success.”
Nonetheless, these experts feel, the best thing Windows
10 has going for it right now is the lack of a viable alternative.
If Windows 10 were to become a market failure on the
scale of Windows 8, would OEMs and device makers abandon the Windows platform
outright? And then would users and
businesses follow? “I think the scenario you’re painting is an unrealistic one,
and unlikely to pan out in practice,” said Jan Dawson, chief analyst with
Jackdaw Research, in a Skype interview.
“There’s really nothing else obvious out there,” Dawson
said. “Chrome OS is really the one mainstream alternative that’s gaining some
traction, but it’s largely been in the education market. It has some serious
shortcomings for anybody that spends any time on their PC away from home,
because of its dependence on constant connectivity for most of its functions to
work. It won’t run many of the applications that people want to run on such a
device.”
And while consumers may look more and more to Macs, keep
in mind that no OEM will ever produce one.
A dearth of alternatives
“If Microsoft were teleported to another planet tomorrow,
it would still take a long time for Windows to disappear,” stated Ross Rubin,
principal analyst with Reticle Research, in an email discussion.
“There are Chromebooks at the low end and Macs at the
high end, but [Windows] still has very high share in the meat of the PC
market,” Rubin continued. “Android might step in, but Google would have to
loosen the reins on it in laptop form factors.”
In a follow-up phone discussion, Rubin expanded on this
point. Chromebook may yet make a rejuvenated play for the middle of the market
from the low end, and MacBooks from the high end, he said. But the users who
constitute the majority of the market in between the two have built up high
expectations for functionality and reliability that neither product may be able
to meet.
“For many users, there is no ready alternative,” said
Rubin. Google hasn’t shown the capability yet, he noted, to offer the services
Windows users expect; and Apple hasn’t demonstrated any willingness to compete
on cost, in what retailers call the “value” segment. “So you’ve got this huge
swath in the laptop market between, say, $300 and $1,000, where... it’s
Windows.”
Said Jackdaw’s Dawson, “Even though I think Chrome OS is
kind of the best runner-up, it’s not a super-attractive option for most of the
OEMs out there. Most have dabbled with Chrome OS to some extent anyway, but I
think they recognize it has somewhat niche appeal, unless something changes
pretty dramatically there. Any Linux distribution seems to be a real long-shot,
frankly. It means people learning a whole new way of working with the computer.
And if they’re willing to do that, they may be willing to consider using a
Mac.”
One of Windows’ greatest assets, the experts believe, has
been its familiarity for users. Much of that familiarity is presented by its
software base, and its resistance to the idea of change even in the presence of
a compelling new form factor and runtime environment.
“Windows 8 created a discontinuity in the user experience
that neither consumers nor enterprises were able to get past,” said IDC’s
Hilwa. “People were upset that they have to learn new things; meanwhile there
are alternatives in the form of cheaper, lighter, and more usable tablets.
Microsoft underestimated the reaction to change, which a bit befuddling. Tech
firms in general, being pre-occupied with ‘disruption,’ seem to have a blind
spot for the value of familiarity.”
“It is unlikely that Windows 10 will fail,” he declared,
“as long as it provides people the ability to use the system in the same way
they are familiar with.”
While PCs might linger on in some form, the failure of a
cross-platform Windows 10 could mean Windows Phone joins the Newton and the
TRS-80 Model 100 among the ranks of mobile relics. For that reason, among
others, Jan Dawson believes next Wednesday’s Windows 10 rollout event in
Redmond, Washington, expected to be geared toward consumers, will focus
primarily on Windows Phone. Microsoft may have to make an extremely compelling
case for Windows Phone 10, and do so immediately, for it to have any chance of
success after its general release late this year.
But what constitutes “success” for Windows Phone 10? How
much market share would it need to gain to remain a realistic player in small
devices into 2016?
Even though Windows Phone 8.1 gave Microsoft a boost in
phone sales, the company still lost market share, Dawson said.
“So the first job is to turn that shrinkage back into
growth,” he said. “I don’t think Windows Phone becomes a really significant
mobile operating system until it’s two or three times the size that it is now.
I think if it were to double its installed base over the next year-and-a-half,
that would be a massive achievement. But I think it’s actually a longer-term
project to make it really relevant, and I’m still not convinced that Microsoft
has the tools it needs to make that happen.”
Microsoft shouldn’t extend its vision for how Windows 10
functions too far into the phone, Rubin warned.
“History has shown us that people don’t want a
traditional PC experience on their phone,” Rubin said. “That’s what Windows
Mobile was all about. They don’t want it on their TVs; they want more of a
leaned-back, video-centric experience.”
For too many users and probably more would-be users,
Windows 8 is genuinely disliked. The last Microsoft OS to receive such disdain
was MS-DOS 4.0.
In 1989, when Microsoft shifted its strategy from
producing DOS and OS/2 to producing Windows 3.0, the company explained the
reason for its shift as a result of listening to its customers, and recognizing
that the market had reached an inflection point. If Windows 10 fails to prove
Microsoft has not only listened but contemplated what it heard, at the very
least, it may find itself extending the support lifeline for Windows 7 while it
watches the rest of the world move on.
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