Dead Pink phone fallout hits Microsoft's top brass If killing the KIN after just two months was bad for Microsoft, what happened next is far worse – especially for its corporate captains. This single act has blown the lid off what appears to be smoldering frustrations inside the consumer products group and divisions between that group and the rest of the company. Allegations …
That speeding train is still speeding. Towards an even bigger crash with Windows Phone 7.
It's still Ballmer in the driver's cabin, with his team of merry executives still back-stabbing each other not far behind.
Many of the same problems facing Kin also face Windows Phone 7. The lack of features compared to the competition. Running late. Buggy.
Added to that, the 'Windows Phone' brand is now mud. WP7 has no chance whatsoever.
Those who think this is M&A failure are the delusionists who think that MS is on the Right Track.
Sorry, folks. WIndows and Office are your cash cows. There's not much more grass growing where your cows are grazin' so milk 'em while you can.
The greener grass is elsewhere and Ballmer isn't going to help you find it.
As this article notes, Microsoft used to be known for innovation. But some years ago they seemed to stop feeding off creativity and living off "hubris-reserves," like some giant beast in cryogenesis.
I don't know if anyone can explain the extended-trainwreck of Vista, or how anyone with a functioning XP system is going to jump into the maelstrom of SKU-bewilderment/rip-and-replace-and-pray world of W7. But the actions of Microsoft over the last few years resemble a sibling-rivalry-obsessed little brother with few skills. Oh, big brother made a phone...well, *I* can makes a phone all by myselfs! It'll be better than my own mp3-player, and you know all the Ballmer kids have their very own!!
What happened to this company?
m$ have completely lost the plot.
Since XP which I actually have come to like we have had nothing but shitware from m$. vista and windo$e 7 are total crap. Sure the screen is great with loads of eye candy, but you still have the rotten unstable, untested core of the pile of shit to deal with.
Bring back public flogging and put the entire bunch past and present m$ manangement and executives in the pit to be flogged. The only way the useless bunch of arrogant, ignorant retards are going to learn.
you havent actually OWNED windows 7 then, you might have USED it briefly in which case i understand your confusion. Its stable, fast, works with ALL my hardware and i have some odd hardware.
Vista was shit but even though the core is similar the end product is very very different.
XP is still very very good also and people will use that long past 2014.
This post has been deleted by its author
Microsoft are an old and terminally ill collapsing star.
They have no focus and no desire to stick with thier core business, the PC. Instead its this device (console) and that device (phone) and they are all worse than the core PC is it any wonder that people are not buying?
when microsoft stripped gaming away from the PC and focused on the console, they rang the death bell for the microsoft PC in the home. along came the linux netbooks and tv's with browsers, and the return of the mac, these have all enabled people to opt out of buying a windows pc but to buy a better chaeper internet device, and because they have a console under the telly, they dont need a pc anymore. so what is this doing to microsoft's core business? well its a little bit more than micro-shafting it!
As far as I can see, MS only has two problems:
1 - leadership. For setting a strategy to profit you need a clued up thinker, not a show monkey. Show monkeys are supporting cast, but without leadership, well, QED.. Ballmer is a bully who you need to target to get results. He doesn't have the brains to set targets himself, he lacks the required long range view.
2 - innovation. Traditionally, MS has lived off buying or stealing innovation, and putting a more glossy wrapper on it. The problem with that is that the company itself is actually arch conservative - unless an idea feels safe they're not going to run with it, and, what's more, it has started to believe its own projections. Most of the new market innovation has been properly branded, locked up in patents or done under a license prohibiting proprietary use, leaving MS with almost nothing new to market themselves. What do you do when you don't have a clue about innovation? Well, you pretend. Hence the MS Office ribbon and the confusing interface changes in Windows - all are glossy (and actually detrimental) covers over old technology, which only the blind, the fanatical, the paid and the gullible will herald as "improvement".
MS has bought enough talent to come up with new ideas, but it suffers a real classic problem: it is scared of that talent, because the good ones speak their minds.
Though seriously needed, criticism is never welcome in a company with weak leadership.
It will get out there, but it will always lag about two years behind everyone else unless they throw some resource at it.
It seems like an interesting UI slapped on top of Windows CE.
I really do wonder why IE gets so much attention and resource when it's free. Yet something which could make them a lot of money (phones) doesn't get much resource.
With mobile computing predicted to become more popular, the desktop OS and office tools are going to diminish in the next 10 years.
because it was needed to kill Netscape and prevent the desktop OS from becoming commoditized down to a zero-profit product that could be easily replaced. So they kept the desktop OS as a high-profit product that's not so easy to replace (I'm a Linux fanboi, and I realize that fact), and made the browser the zero-profit product. Remember, this happened in the days when Microsoft's Total World Domination via Windows 95 and Office wasn't assured. Netscape (and the concept of the Internet) scared the crap out ofMS and they needed some way to marginalize the threat. Netscape didn't sell an OS, so by giving away IE (as well as bundling it in with later versions of Windows), Microsoft almost completely gutted Netscape's market.
Mobile phones have always been something MS chases, but can never really seem to catch. They get some traction in Corporate, but consumers don't seem to care too much for the MS mobile offerings. Or at least, MS is still looking for the "killer app" that will sell phones, instead of looking for the killer phone that will sell apps.
... having looked at the videos of the UI, I think it looks quite well suited to a tablet. In my opinion, Apple have stretched the iOS a bit. moving from the phone (where it was very well suited) to the iPad. By contrast WP7 looks a bit crappy as a phone UI, but could work nicely on something bigger.
I bet that won't happen, though.
I am not amazed the KIN was killed after six weeks, I am amazed such a product got approval for release. It looks the typical product noone dares to kill, while everybody knows it should.
Since they acquired Danger, the landscape changed a lot. If management didn't understand it, time to change it - dropping a product is not enough.
No, not the KIN debacle; but the Microsoft Press Centre photos.
Does 'eating their own dog food' extend to graphics packages? Have they used Microsoft Paint to do the cut outs on the photos (Roz Ho's in particular. Feather guys, feather). Surely MS can negotiate a good deal on Photoshop...
This doesn't bode well for Windows 7 Mobile System 7 System or whatever it's called (not that I'm suggesting the same dev team are involved) and really ups the ante on Microsoft. If it can't reverse the decline in market share or at least hold it at current levels then Microsoft are toast in any market where the target hardware can't run a version of its desktop OS.
Personally I expect W7MS7S to miss the target by quite some distance. The product needs to be performant, stable, provide an intuitive user experience and above all appeal primarily to consumers not businessmen. Microsoft don't have a brilliant track record in these areas...
It would be nice to see them comprehensively blow away my expectations so that we have another solid platform and plenty of choice - but I'm not holding my breath.
I was in Best Buy in Denver last week and saw a Kin avaiable for sale. I wish I'd brought it now as it can join my Google Phone as a collectors item\curio in the future. Mind you, my Nexus One is a great business phone and I suspect I'll be using it for quite some time to come.
Similar stories were coming out of IBM when they were losing their grip on the mainstream computing market in the late eighties. Because Microsoft is driven by the needs of the Windows and Office cash cows, this sacrifices the needs of the games, mobile phones and Internet services developers into choosing approaches consistent with another family of products.
For example, it's very unlikely that anyone proposing a Linux or even open-source based mobile phone or games console would get very far in Microsoft, regardless of which methodology is more effective in that development space. Large vertical corporations become inefficient to the point of becoming ineffective, due to over centralised control stifling innovation and initiative at ground level. The former Soviet Union was a classic case of this kind of hubris prior to its inevitable collapse.
"TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."
That is all.
Microsoft are not the only company who stifle creativity, innovation and drive so much that developers feel they may as well be working for an Indian coding shop. It usually ends with developers resenting management and then the company, while management accuses the developers of not being "team players", blame them for the failures of their own making.
Good on the Danger crew for speaking out.
I was under the impression with Bach and Allard gone that they already had though.
Any manager who allowed the KIN to get to market has some serious explaining to do. The WinPho7 team who apparently tried to kill this off by killing off their support were on the right track. Why weren't they listened to? Why did Microsoft release a featurephone when the now is a smartphone?
People deserve to get fired for this. That Windows cash cow has clearly bred a culture of complacency. Execs better lay down the law.
'A company that prides itself on harnessing the best in new thinking and funneling ideas into innovative products'. Huh? Really? Are we talking about a different Microsoft that I don't know about, because that has certainly never described the one I'm familiar with.
They pride themselves. Only they don't actually manage to do what they pride themselves on. You're right on the last bit; I've never ever seen them do that either. But they do pride themselves a lot.
FUD and empty promises are their main weapon... er, yes, the long red medieval one's mine, thanks.
I can't help but comment on this type of article about Microsoft. The only question is: why did anyone in Microsoft get carried away enough with the hype that this project wasn't stopped much sooner.
If you are an investor in Microsoft, you know you have two product suites in Windows and Office that cannot be replaced. Some call them cash cows and maybe they are. But despite many valiant attempts no organization or group has been able to seriously dent Microsoft's hold on the huge markets in which they operate. There will always be offerings on the fringe that find a niche. Like any product, Windows and Office cannot be everything to everyone.
By contrast, as Google and Apple have shown, it only takes a couple of years to create a phone. There's a low barrier to entry. Why would investors want Microsoft waste money competing in a market with a low barrier to entry? Explain that logic?
Sure, the short-term investors would love Microsoft to do something sexy to drive the stock price up so they can make a killing. However pension fund managers will only worry if Microsoft fails to protect its core businesses and so jeopardize the billions of dividends they receive. It's core businesses are not about creating short-term retail fashion products.
Microsoft has always done well when it worked to support the hardware manufacturers. This is presumably why they managed to pull off a rare success in X-Box (which is really a PC running Windows with slightly specialized hardware). My set top box runs Windows CE, again possible because
The phone business is hard because the barriers are too low and the customers fickle. Ask Nokia, ask Google about Nexus, ask Apple in a couple of years time.
Micros~1 Windows[tm] and Micros~1 Office[tm] _can_ be replaced. The only real reason it hasn't happened more widely yet is people believing things can't be replaced. But it's fairly easy if you can manage to wrap your head around a switch. Yes, things will change, but that was the point.
Currently working with an office full of "windows users" that talk about "office" like they're using a micros~1 product, only they're not. Where it proves bothersome (``docx'') everyone knows to blame micros~1 for failing their own astroturfed standard. Swapping out micros~1 windows[tm] would be a tad harder for these people, but could be done and probably will be when it's cost-effective to do so. It doesn't even hinge on micros~1, but on 3rd party software vendors. Changing "office" already clearly was cost effective.
“a company that prides itself on harnessing the best in new thinking and funneling ideas into innovative products”
I think you mean “spotting the best in new thinking and acquiring the company responsible”. You’d think by now they’d be able to handle acquisitions better, though - they’ve had enough practice!
I think was awesome... multi tasking and working in a tiny memory footprint...
sometimes it could be a little laggy, but so is my iphone.
app store? I dont think that there is much on my iphone that I didnt already have from handango and I had the freedom (if I had the skills) to write my own apps for the phone...
windows mobile had a much wider market than just phones too... have a look in your local Tesco, there will be probably more winmo devices in there than all phones put together... pretty much all the handheld devices in retail and delivery are windows powered... end user modification and lockdown, custom rom images, etc are all possible...
not sure what im getting at here, but basically winmo hasnt been a dead duck... although winphone7 does look to be dumping all that for a closed, fluffy, apple clone system.... which could cause issues for these markets....
It's simple. Ballmer is a sales guy, without a vision. Don't get me wrong, a company needs good sales people, but they are a bad match for the top position in what needs to be an innovative and focused tech company.
Say what you like about Steve Jobs, but only an idiot would deny that the man has a very clear and definite idea of what Apple should be and what products it should be making. And they stay true to that idea.
Ballmer is like a spastic octopus in comparison, thrashing desperately around at anything that comes near. If only he was the psychic octopus that predicted the world cup results, they might have a chance.
Informative and objective, I like it.
Seems things are a little poorly over at MS but on the other hand, they _should_ be pushing in new directions (though Office is _not_ going to die soon). And at least they do have the funds to do so. However, maybe some big internal rebuilding is in order.
There is nothing like wasting people time and effort in develping a new and interesting ideas only to see it snuffed out. What is needed is a fresh and open minded management team from the top down, which mean clearing out all the old execs including Ballmer and bringing up on comming people.
There needs to be a full review on future projects and plans for new way of developing future OS's including window 8,9 etc.
So they had a buggy device with problems.
MS then started cutting features to try to get something out the door.
The developers *then* started having long lunches and looking forward to their fat paycheque.
Or
They had a buggy device with problems
MS then started cutting features to try to get something out the door
The developers spent more time congratulating themselves on being bought by MS and didn't bother producing a good product because they knew that there was a fat paycheque coming, and besides everyone hates MS so they can always play the victim.
Danger got bought because they had something "cool" going on, and that "cool" consisted of its mix and match of features. So, cutting features cut right into the point of buying Danger in the first place, and was therefore the worst possible answer to try and get "something" out the door. I think that right there is the core of the failure.
Besides, a very large company that prides itself on the high-quality talent it acquires would be able to spot whether the talent they're buying is any good, one supposes. Then again, they've shipped absolute lemons so often, that it's hard to suppose they're doing anything useful with that talent, or even anything but banking on being entrenched to stay big and banking on being big here to become being big there. That neatly explains their obscene margins.
...tech teams don't work like that. They are often dedicated but can get demoralized really quickly if Mr. Armani from upstairs shows up and thinks he knows what he's doing and has this tech knowledge down pat because he has an MBA from Unsoldered University. Erratic feature control, marketing interference and micromanagement then gets you something out the door, but it's just boving excrement.
You also lose the tech team.
Whodapunk's web blog has been flinging this sort of opprobrium at Redmond's management for years. At first, people thought they were witnessing The Boston Tea Party (only with towels), but in fact nothing ever changes. When Brummel first arrived they were all dancing in the streets: "Ding dong, the wicked curve is dead. We're saved!" Poor fuckers. They'll never be saved.
Minimsft serves as an interesting Window into a delusional world, where the culture of Ubergeek Visionary has been enshrined, and where none of the normal, sweaty, low-functioning geeks can understand why an environment entirely populated by aggressive geeks( and in which only aggressive geekiness - or something that can fake it - is rewarded), can be such an unpleasant place to work. It is interesting to see which talentless slacker is getting the blame for this week's snafu, but don't expect George Washington to turn up any time soon.
If this is 'fallout', it only serves to explain why everyone who gets promoted above about level 66 instantly mutates into something nasty, with cannibalistic tendencies.
If the lack of writing skills displayed by the writers of those blogs is indicative of Danger employees in general, the product would have been crap anyway. I've yet to find a top notch technical person who writes poorly, but I've found all mediocre-to-poor technical talent cannot write decently.
That's not to say Microsoft would not have turned gold into lead anyway.
This post by Joel Spolsky is dated 2008:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/05/01.html
If it's not phones it's some other things your customers don't want from you ...
"between Microsoft and Google the starting salary for a smart CS grad is inching dangerously close to six figures and these smart kids, the cream of our universities, are working on hopeless and useless architecture astronomy because these companies are like cancers, driven to grow at all cost, even though they can't think of a single useful thing to build for us, but they need another 3000-4000 comp sci grads next week."
MS studies how child molesting catholic priests operate, and then uses the same mindset to ingratiate themselves into the lives of consumers......
I on the other hand, am doing everything I can to slap their heads, from the vantage of not having to use any of their products.
"Second, it demonstrates a dangerously blinkered culture inside a company that prides itself on harnessing the best in new thinking and funneling ideas into innovative products."
Aha ha ha ho hee hee...
Bill G outsourced thinking and innovation to India or was that Vietnam before he went on to his new pet monopoly Corbis.
What was left were resume polishers and old timers looking to mature options before the whole ship sunk.
@ Jack the Bat: "Microsoft used to be known for innovation."
Like the GUI, web browser, spreadsheet, word processor or even DOS? Actually no - this is all stuff they bought, borrowed or stole.
Microsoft has a history of inventing and innovated virtually nothing.
On the footnote of history, Microsoft will be a byword for "me too".
Well, poot. I had hoped, in my ignorance, that there would be some sort of amazing controller synergy to be announced between the Kin phone and the Kinect input device. Seems hard to believe that two similarly named devices could be introduce by the same company in the same time frame and have nothing in common than the name.
Don't forget that this is not only Monkey Boy's mess. Ray Ozzie, the man who inflicted Lotus Notes on an unsuspecting world, is Chief Software Architect at Microsoft (God have mercy on them) and has been since Bill's departure. And as several others have pointed out, this has been par for the coure at MS for at least 10 years.
Windows 7 is an improvement, but only in the sense it was a direct reply to the problems Vista was facing the in the market. On my second Windows 7 machine I can't use the SD card reader as every time I insert a card it brings up an error about a file not being read. It turns out somehow the Bitlocker service thought it was trying to read an encrypted volume on the SD card. This is compounded by how I'm using the Home Premium edition which allegedly doesn't even have Bitlocker on it, but as we all know it's the same OS with different features enabled. So I can't run Bitlocker to fix this error, and I can't use my card reader.
Further is I had all kinds of logs telling me when it happened, how long it happened, what modules were involved, and so on, but still only had an error number and had to dig around the MS website to find out what was going wrong.
And you think these people can build a smartphone?
they have had the handheld OS for something like 12 or 13 years yet they can't make a contender after Apple showed them what the system needs to do? Android seems to be doing really well and they were probably not even close to the size of the team Microsoft has had working on the Windows Mobile Phone platform.
They really look like they are flailing badly and the Kin/Pink disaster shows it's even worst than we thought. This is just a little phone device, yet they can't pull it off. They couldn't even pull off the media player market either and that too they once owned with Windows CE based MP3 players.
It sure seems like with Microsoft, if it's not some how tied into working with Windows, it's a failure. Now, with the iPad and Android based tablets and netbooks starting to show up, how long before they start losing more and more of their desktop position? I was just at a party where a guy said he put Ubuntu Netbook Remix over the Windows Starter on his new netbook he got for $250 online and his wife loves it. Apple is eating at their high end and with the iPad, Android, and netbooks eating into the low end there's less room in the middle for Microsoft.
The article says that the blog in anonymous. But the posting quoted contains "....we were not going to have any real affect on the product..." which must be a give-away if there ever was one. I can't imagine that there's more than one person at Microsoft who doesn't know the difference between "affect" and "effect" so tracing the author would be trivial: just give everyone a spelling test.
There's 80,000 of them: I suspect there's more than one who doesn't know a bit of grammar.
The real problem, is that there are around 1,000 people, in the top positions in that company, who do not know how to *affect* an *effect* in the marketplace (spell it how you want, it still smells the same) and yet that these same1,000 people seem to feel no compunction about sharing out around a billion dollars (of the 10 billion, that comes in, each year), amongst themselves, as a *performance* *related* bonus.
That's right. Just over 1% of the people take 10% of the money - before anything else has been costed, or any shareholders are paid - despite the fact that most of them are running fantasy product groups. Would that engender any affection in you, or would its effects be more akin to what you see in the comments section of that blog?
As I say, the real tragedy is that, week after week, month after month, Whodapunk posts his latest ruminations on the blog, and week after week , month after month, commenters name names and point fingers, and help each other identify "the problem", and yet nothing every happens. Nothing ever will. Not as a result of that blog, at least. Really, they should all just up and leave - walk away and let the hairspray department try and run things on their own. Remember: cool guys don't look at explosions.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
