Microsoft, An Empire Under Siege, Makes Its Next Moves
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer speaks at a Microsoft event in San Francisco in July. This week, Microsoft launches Windows 8, a radical redesign of its operating system, as well as a new set of tablet computers.
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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Is it only Tuesday? Anyway, it's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
DAVID GREENE, HOST: And I'm David Greene.
We're going to talk now about two companies that are not what they used to be. They are trying to keep up with a changing world.
INSKEEP: Newsweek, a staple of newsstands for decades, announced last week it is suspending its print edition after years of large financial losses. And we'll hear from Newsweek's editor in a moment.
GREENE: But first, Microsoft, the company that defined the PC, is still enormously profitable, just not as profitable as it once was. This week Microsoft will try to regroup. It is rolling out the largest upgrade of its Windows software in more than decade. All of this is meant to help the company break into the exploding market for mobile devices. Here's NPR's Steve Henn.
STEVE HENN, BYLINE: Microsoft's CEO is Steve Ballmer. And he's this big, bombastic, balding guy. These days he's pretty riled up about Windows 8.
STEVE BALLMER: Windows is the backbone product of Microsoft. Windows PCs, Windows phones, Windows slate. Windows, Windows, Windows...
HENN: But every time I've seen him speak recently, my mind begins to wander.
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WINSTON CHURCHILL: We shall fight on the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air...
HENN: Steve Ballmer is no Winston Churchill. He's not fighting the Nazis. He'll never win a Nobel Prize in literature. But like Churchill, Ballmer is a man who commands an empire that is under siege.
BALLMER: The industry continues to move, and change and advance dramatically.
HENN: But most analysts say Microsoft has not. Last quarter, the company's profits fell 22 percent. PC sales have stalled. And Microsoft has been left behind in mobile. Joshua Shapiro runs Princeton Analytics, a technology consulting group.
JOSHUA SHAPIRO: Microsoft always sees itself as besieged.
HENN: And right now, Shapiro says it actually is.
SHAPIRO: Google has gone after Microsoft in a very clear way, attacking Microsoft's major profit sources, which are the operating system and its office productivity suite.
HENN: Shapiro's talking about the programs installed on roughly a billion computers: Windows and Microsoft Office.
SHAPIRO: And Google has tried to essentially give away what Microsoft sells. So this is a huge threat.
HENN: And that's just the beginning. Shapiro and others argue that Microsoft has fallen behind on the most important technology trends of the past 15 years: the rise of the Internet and e-commerce, search and social. In mobile, Microsoft is years behind. Its new operating system, Windows 8, will work on tablets and with touch, and it's supposed to help it catch up.
CHARLES GOLVIN: This is a battle of ecosystems.
HENN: Charles Golvin is a mobile market analyst at Forrester. He says Microsoft is actually facing three enormous, focused, well-managed adversaries: Google, Apple and Amazon.
GOLVIN: It's not a world of competition among devices. It's not a world of competition for communication services and media consumption.
HENN: Instead, everything is rolled together. If you buy an iPhone, you're probably more likely to buy your movies and music from Apple, too. Ditto with Amazon's Kindle, or devices running Google's Android. Microsoft, if it has a strategy, is probably trying to be a fast follower, says Shapiro. He says the Surface, Microsoft's new tablet, is kind of like an iPad with an Excel spreadsheet. And then there's...
SHAPIRO: The Microsoft version of the Apple store and the Microsoft version of the Apple app store and the Microsoft version of Apple design...
HENN: It's leveraging the fact that millions of us are required to use Microsoft products at work to sell us products that are almost like Apple's. But both Shapiro and Forrester's Charlie Golvin agree, it would be a big mistake to write off Microsoft.
GOLVIN: Their core products, Windows and Office, continue to generate a lot of revenue.
HENN: Golvin says some of Microsoft's own innovations, especially in mobile phones, are now being imitated by its competitors. But the biggest reason not to underestimate Microsoft, say Golvin and Shapiro, is that this company is tenacious.
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CHURCHILL: We shall never surrender.
HENN: Steve Henn, NPR News, Silicon Valley.
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