Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
 Yeah, Linux and it's <%1 market share have Billy Boy and his >90% SHAKING! Whatever would he do without business advice from us here on the Interwebs! |
We'll see if you are still laughing next year.
As of 1st Quarter of 2011 Apple surpassed Microsoft in quarterly earnings and that should be telling them something.
Still, Microsoft made record profits last year, so they must be doing something right, though I will admit that I'll be damned if I can figure out what it is.
Win7 "pretty good", yep with only 5 times the CPU horsepower, ten times the memory, and more than 20 times the hard drive space, it can pretty much keep up with the features, responsiveness, and multimedia performance I was seeing in Windows 98 more than 10 years ago.
Of course the user interface is much less consistent, and the new Start-Bar layout totally sucks, but I guess you can't expect too much from a generation of programmers who are so lame that they actually think 'XML' is a significant software development.
Above, I mentioned Apple's success, which is all the more spectacular when you consider that the company was hovering on the edge of bankruptcy only a little over a decade ago.
This success was driven in large part by Apple's dominance in the portable devices area, and this trend is increasing, with the introduction of thousands of new applications for smart phones, tablets, and other portable devices.
As successful as Apple has been, they are loosing significant market share in the smart phone and tablet area to a strong new competitor, but that competitor is NOT MICROSOFT, it's to Google's Android OS.
Currently there are on the order of about 400,000 Apps available for Apple devices at the Apple Web Store, and roughly 300,000 for Android in Google's Android Market, but many analysts are predicting that by the end of 2011, Android may well surpass even Apple.
Which brings me back to Linux, and Ubuntu specifically.
Because both Ubuntu and Android are Linux based, the Ubuntu developers are working to allow Ubuntu to seamlessly run Android Apps on the Ubuntu desktop.
Don't underrate Linux. Microsoft made that mistake, and woke up to find that they had lost about a third of the Netbook market to Linux.
If Ubuntu can be given full access to the Android Market, just at a time when Android it is posed to mature into a real OS, it could become one of the largest, most vibrant, best supported, and actively developed, software bases on the planet, and Microsoft could easily wake up to find that they have lost not only the other two thirds of the Netbook market, but virtually all of the desktop, and corporate market as well.
Or maybe not . . .
Either way, between Apple, Google, and Ubuntu, if I were Microsoft I would be afraid, I would be VERY AFRAID.