Reply to post: Re: The rumors of Here's departure have been exagerrated

Get lost, Windows 10 and Phone fans: No maps HERE on Microsoft's OS

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: The rumors of Here's departure have been exagerrated

Data collection from the users is one important aspect, and there may be surprising turns there

Why? If Winpho10 has no significant user base, there's mo reason for the car makers to worry about the handful of users. As much as anything their interest is user>car interaction, so integrating with phones is important for volume ecosystems of evil necessity, but ideally they'd want to capture the feedback via the car nav interface

All of which leaves Microsoft out in the cold. Premium German brands are (guardedly) happy to work with Apple, but who's going to be in a queue to work with Microsoft, when their brand is a bit "dull grey suit", they don't have the loyal user engagement of Apple, and they don't have a data-value proposition like Google? Office for Autos doesn't sound like a compelling proposition to me any more than Auto-Outlook or Auto-Server 2016.

"Should have" translates as "Too late now", but Microsoft should have attempted to own the car information space some ten or more years ago. That would have meant buying a grade A map database assets, and a grade A satnav brand. They could have developed Xbox technologies for entertainment for back seat passengers, and used the car as a springboard to relevance in end users lives. They should have bought a car radio OEM (like Clarion) to make this happen, and invested in self driving developments to keep up to date with the potential, along with other telematics development. Instead of defining themselves as The Car Software Company, and using this to get into home integration, they started off trying to be Google with the utterly failed aQuantive acquisition. Then they tried to be Google again by buying Nokia and controlling their own phone development and an ecosystem, and that failed.

So that's why Microsoft are where they are - relevant to office productivity, relevant to sysadmins, but with no relevance to consumers or business partners.

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