I was buried in a project yesterday and didn’t come up for air until late at night, when I realized it was April 12th
– the day MSFT was set to reveal their new mobile devices. From the few things I’ve seen so far, it looks like the reviews were written before the products were revealed, then an image was added and writers clicked Publish, or Send, or whatever. I hope this works for Microsoft and the device division isn’t shown to be a one-hit (XBox) wonder.
The thing is, they’re so late to the market at this point, that it feels like Zune all over again. When Zune was launched in 2006, Apple had a 5 year head start. That wasn’t like Apple were the pioneers who got the arrows, while Zune could be the metaphorical settlers and get the land. Apple had settled, planted and harvested the land, built the infrastructure, opened the stores and couldn’t keep enough of their product on the shelves. Zune was dead late and dead out of the gate. Consumers were on their second or third iPod at that point – and instead of marketing to where there was a slight opportunity – adults 25+, parents, people who had trusted and were familiar with MSFT and Windows and to whom Apple was still an outlier – MSFT went after the 18-24s with Zune – the early adopters who were entrenched in their gen 2 or 3 iPod, and for whom MSFT was decidedly uncool. So Apple continued to sell between 11 and 15 million iPods per quarter, while Zune took over 2 years to sell 1 million units.
Now its Q2, 2010 and Apple has had close to 3 years of selling the iPhone, with over 50 million units in the market and a situation that is eerily familiar. The wind is at Apple’s back. Enterprises have abandoned the once widely used Windows Mobile platform for the Blackberry platform, leaving Microsoft with market challenges in consumer, and professional use of mobile devices. And then there’s that little company called Google and their aspirations for Android’s mobile platform. It doesn’t leave much space for a new platform, tied to a low-ranking manufacturer. And again, MSFT is chasing the teens and early adopters with the Kin 1 and Kin 2 – the demo that only wants iPhones, iTouches and apps. Instead of Microsoft relying on their pre-existing trusted relationships in enterprise and the recollection of the versatility of Windows Mobile by corporate IT departments everywhere.
I hope they Kin make this work… but what they need to do, what they’ve needed to do all along, is to take a wheelbarrow full of cash up to Waterloo, Ontario, kiss Jim Balsalie’s ring, and return to Redmond as the owner of RIMM.
{ 1 trackback }