Microsoft has lost; there's no getting back the head start they once had. It's not like Windows 8 is going to set the record straight and grow Microsoft to 10x the size of Apple and Google combined, like it once was. In part, this is because of their utterly flawed understanding of internet and the way humans (not businesses) work. Steve Ballmer is a joke of a CEO; a loud, screaming monkey that thought the iPhone was "cute". The guy is a moron.
>Microsoft has lost; there's no getting back the head start they once had.
Couldn't we have said the same thing when Apple lost to the IBM PC when they didn't "get" business computing? (the debacle that was the Apple III - a supposed "business" machine)
Apple didn't reinvent itself. It cut products to a bare minimum, invested in an OS (and infrastructure) to move beyond MacOS, and then used that success to invest in and build new products.
Ballmer has been filmed screaming developers and talked about throwing a chair. MSFT revenues have grown under his time, but the company isn't sexy. Have there been opportunities lost? Yes. To say it has lost? They have many years of mocking their cash cows before all is lost. MSFT has an odd habit of learning and adapting. We will see if that still exists.
It has been awhile but at one point MSFT spent more on pure research than AAPL did on their whole R&D budget. Research takes time, but AT&T and IBM aren't doing much of it these years. Investing in research is another plus, not in the near term.
I think that it is only in the long term that Balmers mediocrity becomes clear. Short term analysis turns up that he really likes "DEVELOPERS!" and throwing chairs, but all the real criticisms (not amusing anecdotes) that I am seeing span several years.
