Slow out of the gate...again.

As geeky as I am, I am also a sports nut and I tend to make a lot of sports analogies. This is admittedly a poor one, but stay with me…

I’ve never been a believer in momentum carrying over from one season to the next. At the end of a sports season, sometimes a team, possibly mired in losing throughout most of the year, end the season with a flurry, get a couple of empty wins, and generate a bunch of buzz going into the offseason (see: Detroit Lions). This gets fans and media all excited about the upcoming season. But in the offseason, that excitement fades, the team starts slow again the next year and then fails to deliver on the perceived momentum and all the good from the previous here is forgotten very quickly.

Microsoft is that team to me. Now, the analogy doesn’t fit exactly…historically Microsoft, the largest software provider in the world, would not really be considered to be a “losing team” overall and in the business world, there’s no real offseason. But looking specifically at Microsoft’s “winning percentage”, if you break it up into individual “franchises”, some win big (Windows, Office, Server products, etc)…some lose big (Zune, Windows Mobile/Pocket PC)...but all talk big. So you really have to separate the various products to get a good picture.

In markets other than Windows and Office, where the software giant has real competition, they are usually slow (if not the last) to the party, and generally show up rather unnoticed. I mean honestly, I know people that didn’t even know that Microsoft made phones up until now (and possibly Microsoft was better for that. Maybe it’s better to keep quiet and have people think you’re inept, than to open your mouth…and remove all doubt).

At the end of last year there was a lot of big talk coming from Microsoft about their “game plan” for the upcoming year. Windows Phone 7 was released the latter part of 2010 with a lot of marketing and industry buzz and honestly hit a much needed “home run” in that market and vaulted back into the Smartphone conversations with Android and iPhone (where have you gone Blackberry?). They promised more fluid and consistent app availability and bug fixes/updates. Umm…yeah, not so much.

The new Windows Phone is fantastic and should be a strong competitor with the iPhone and push Apple to develop smarter and include features that should have been in long ago. But it isn’t. It’s almost as if Microsoft is putting so much effort into not trying, that they’re going to ruin all the good they have with this new platform. Everyone wants what they potentially can get from the Windows Phone…but don’t get because it’s just not quite finished…yet (“yet” is a popular word with Microsoft).

There was a lot of buzz coming out of Redmond last year about a strong response to the iPad and some of that noting it would do what it did with the Netbook and “come from behind for the win” (ok, last sports crossover). There was some talk of a possible big splash coming at CES about this new generation Windows-based tablet. Instead, Ballmer failed to address most of Microsoft’s key consumer brands and didn’t even use the word “tablet” until his closing remarks…a token mention at best.

It’s still early in 2011, granted, but this year seems to be more of the same.
The strategy for mobile is still quasi-sound, but there’s no movement on it. And in the tablet world, it’s in shambles. They still seem to be holding on to the belief that the status quo is still so dominant in the business world that they’re untouchable. Clearly a historically proven strategy (see many IBM PCs anymore???). Consumers are buying iPads in droves, sure. But now even the Corporate world is coming onboard. Besides, how many people do you know that have a Windows 7 netbook?

And this isn’t even touching on the gaming world where they were late to fix major hardware issues with the Xbox and wallowed in mediocrity behind the technologically inferior Wii for years. The Kinect is a great innovation that’s really 2 years overdue.

I’m not a doomsday guy and I don’t buy into the fact that these failures spell major trouble for the “franchise player” (ok, I lied…one more) in Windows. They are still dominant in the desktop and laptop operating system markets and will be for the foreseeable future. By all accounts, Windows 8 will further many of the advances made with Windows 7 and add even more.

That said…who would have ever thought that we’d even have the conversation?