Microsoft Closes In on Apple as World’s Most Valuable Company

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Microsoft briefly unseated Apple on Tuesday as the world's most valuable company

 

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*** A company cannot continue to permanently live on what it did 40 years ago. Even it is still a giant tech company.

Every company today must try to innovate and disrupt its business, before others will do so.

Slogans, political propaganda, promises without cover about existing and new products, aggressive advertising in subsidiary social businesses, fake news and stories about the perspective of a lot of money today and in the future have lost their shine since long ago.

* There is no way to stop technological innovation.

In July, 2017 Microsoft stopped support for Windows Phone 8.1, indicating that Windows phones are all but dead.

A year and a half down the line, it seems like Nokia never left the smartphone business. Nokia's phones, such as Nokia 8 Sirocco with the crown jewel Android One are among the most innovative and the best designed devices in the mobile phone business market today.

With a lot of creativity, talent, innovative mindset and very hard work Nokia enjoyed an outstanding comeback. After years of trying to win over Google via competing platforms, Nokia joined Android and launched the first smartphone device in January 2017 – the Nokia 6.

However, Nokia's handset story didn’t end there. HMD Global gained the rights to make and sell smartphones under the Nokia name by the end of 2016, bringing the brand back to life.

Instead of focusing on making its own phones, Microsoft, under Satya Nadella, has focused on making apps and services available for Apple's iPhone and iPad and for Android devices. And then Microsoft decided to kill Nokia's brand.

When Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer proposed buying Nokia to boost the company's mobile phone division, Satya Nadella thought it would be a big mistake. He hasn't changed his mind since then.

Steve Balmer knew that without Nokia, Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system would never be able to compete with Apple's iPhone and Google's Android.

Steve Balmer failed to move the company beyond PCs, he was unable to foresee the consumer revolution of the smartphone, he missed out the tablet innovation and failed to take advantage on new business opportunities.

Steve Balmer will be reminded in the history that the software giant Microsoft faltered under his leadership.

Steve Balmer was never a product guy. Steve Balmer has never known much about product development and technology. He was always focused on making money, much money at Microsoft.

And from that day forward Steve Balmer thought about 'How do you make money? That's why I was hired to do. I've always thought this way.'

Speaking about his job at Microsoft, Steve Balmers said that he 'always was the business guy, whatever that meant when Microsoft was just starting out.

So John Akers is worth remembering in the history not for his successes at IBM, but for his most notable failure.

As a salesman, John Akers wasn't the best person for coping with the new PC world when microcomputers were starting to disrupt the minicomputer and mainframe industries.

IBM lost the PC market under John Akers CEO, a salesman who was successful during the mainframe era, when IBM made huge profits.

Then Nokia started making Windows-powered smartphones. In 2013, Microsoft bought Nokia's handset business as a first-party platform for Windows Phone, which was struggling against iOS and Android.

Nokia is not unique in its anticipation of future trends. Like Palm with webOS, Intel with Mobile Internet Devices, and Xerox with the graphical user interface, Nokia has demonstrated that being first with a great idea is no guarantee of success.

So that it is fair to say that Apple and Google together achieved Nokia's vision.

Google Android then created a very interesting smartphone industry that not only did overtake Nokia, the market share leader for 14 years, but was very soon making more profits than Nokia ever did.

When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, Nokia controlled over half of the global market for smartphones, which were mostly considered gadgets for enterprise users.

Apple set the standard for a new type of smartphone, one that anyone can handle. Apple gave customers what they wanted and became the first manufacturer to really nail the execution.

Before the iPhone had apps and Android had Maps, Nokia phones had both. However, it was Apple's iPhone that actually achieved Nokia 's dream to combine the best digital camera with the best hardware. It was the software that prevented Nokia to fulfill its dream.

There was once a time when many people's search for a new smartphone started with Nokia. This was the best and widest choice, with the best design and the most respected mobile phone brand around the world.

Microsoft handled both hardware and software. Not only Microsoft couldn't develop Windows Phone fast enough, but it mainly couldn't develop it well enough. So customers left Microsoft in silence, and became fans of iOS and Android, instead.

designed for small embedded systems, left us too hobbled to ever catch up.” Terry Myerson said.

“We had a differentiated experience, but it’s so clear in hindsight that the disruption in business model which Android represented was enormous, and that building our early versions of Windows Phone on an incomplete Windows CE platform,

Android was a disruptor in the smartphone industry. And while Google developed the software, it let Samsung to handle the hardware business.

When Microsoft decided to win over Apple and Google it was already too late.

Microsoft was never successful in the mobile business. Its dominance with desktop computers running Windows never transferred over to phones and tablets. Nobody ever understood why, until Terry Myerson revealed what caused Windows Phone to lose to iOS and Android.

That's how Windows Vista earned the name Gizmodo gave it: 'one of the biggest mess ups in tech history'.

But just some months later, 'Forrester Research' revealed some of the many problems with Windows Vista, like incompatibility with other software, slow processing, and the many, many bugs and security flaws.

Microsoft Windows Vista was a case in point. It was launched at CES 2007 and won the 'Best of CES' award in the computers and hardware category.

But such dominance often comes together with serious drawbacks, which mean compromise on quality, flawed products and a fear to make real change, in order to not disturb the successful core business.

By the beginning of 2007, Microsoft had 97% share of the operating system market. That's why Microsoft products were automatically launched with a lot of accompanying fanfare.

In 2008, Apple came with the iPhone and completely changed the game. So Swatch and Fossil watches with apps from Microsoft died.

But then smartphones developers came with better display and more functionality and looked to integrate their products with WiFi and Bluethooth technologies.

At CES 2003, Microsoft launched the SPOT watch that could link to PDAs, radios and coffeemakers. SPOT offered some quick information at a glance.

It’s dejavu all over again.

Apple remains a 'one trick pony'. iPhone and nothing else.

ExxonMobil has made an unexpected oil and natural gas discovery. This dwarfs other discoveries made in its past and current inventories. The discovery is so large as to inrease WORLD stockpiles by 59%.

Up and runing to overtake yes because it is allowed. Think the thinker.

Thank you Apple

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