This is good for the longterm [LWN.net]

This is good for the longterm

Posted May 13, 2008 3:32 UTC (Tue) by mtall (guest, #52045)
In reply to: This is good for the longterm by jmorris42
Parent article: Microsoft vies for budget laptop market with XP price cuts (ars technica)

I'm not sure if I buy your reasoning. Machines like the EEE pc are not aimed at people who buy traditional laptops. Instead they represent a new market segment that is largely orthogonal to normal laptops -- in other words, more sales in this segment is not likely to cannibalize sales of normal laptops. This new market segment is growing, meaning Microsoft isn't undercutting itself, but instead getting an ever bigger slice of the overall PC market.

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This is good for the longterm

Posted May 13, 2008 8:54 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Two things I think you're missing:

Market-leading products have a tendency to be destroyed by something that creates a new, lower-end market, then climbs up. IBM ignored the PC market, assuming it wouldn't damage mainframe sales, as it is a market that's largely orthogonal to mainframes. They hit pain when it became clear that powerful PCs (while not as reliable as mainframes) were Good Enough for most users. Microsoft can't ignore UMPCs, or treat them as a new market segment, as it's all too plausible that they'll become Good Enough for most users; imagine (for the sake of argument) an eeePC with 20GB flash, 1GB RAM, a processor equivalent to today's 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo, and a HDMI port for connecting to your HDTV. Suddenly, if the software on the eeePC is good enough for you, an eeePC is enough; when you need a big screen, you just plug into the TV.
Microsoft have existing customers, who are being told that XP will not be available for love nor money in the near future; they don't yet want to migrate to Vista, and now they're being told, "you're not important enough to sell XP to; other people can have it for less than you've ever paid, but you've got to move to Vista whether you like it or not". This is not good for relations with existing customers, and gives them new incentive to look at (e.g.) Ubuntu desktops, using WINE to run their business-specific applications.

So, in the short term, no change - but, in the long term, Microsoft are facing two competitive pressures, one from cheap hardware with free or nearly free software, one from existing customers getting grumpy at not being treated well.

This is good for the longterm

Posted May 13, 2008 12:25 UTC (Tue) by i3839 (subscriber, #31386) [Link]

I've the impression that mainframes never did better than nowadays. Perhaps you're confused
with minicomputers that were wiped away by micros? (Though it happened all before my time.)

And people, don't forget that MS is a software company that has a lot of small to medium
business customers in its grasp with (semi-)custom software.

BY 1990 mainfarmes were dying

Posted May 13, 2008 14:39 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I've the impression that mainframes never did better than nowadays.

Is this a joke? In 1960-1970 mainframes were THE business computers. All big companies used them. By 1990 they were almost wiped out: only IBM survived and even IBM's mainframes had bleak future. Linux quite literally saved them - but that's totally different story.

Mainframes still selling well

Posted May 13, 2008 16:37 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]

No joke. IBM's mainframes continue to sell well. Consider that mainframes have been used for virtualization for forty years, and companies nowadays often use a mainframe to run hundreds of virtual hosts.

IBM did attempt to slowly withdraw from the mainframe market, but then a lot of companies using them for traditional purposes (i.e., non-virtualized hosts) started clamoring for upgrades and new models. Apparently these businesses have a "it ain't broke, so no need to fix it" attitude towards their IT needs.

BY 1990 mainfarmes were dying

Posted May 13, 2008 18:44 UTC (Tue) by larryr (guest, #4030) [Link]

Maybe mainframes nowadays have a 1% share of a market that is 100x as big as the market 40 years ago of which they had 50%, and in that sense, mainframes never did better than nowadays.