Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
What tends to be forgotten is that MS is oriented to institutional customers, not individual consumers, and their target customer is the Fortune 500 CIO who can sign off on a PO for a 10,000 unit Windows and Office site license with platinum support.
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As you also pointed out, MS needs to alter that situation in order to continue to grow, and they're obviously trying to do so (witness the Zune... not that that's a great device, it just demonstrates their effort to penetrating the recreational consumer market).
Point of order: The Ballmer quote didn't actually say that "PCs are best for reading." In response to the question of whether MS would build a dedicated device, Ballmer said No, because they already make a device for reading e-books which is "the most popular device in the world": The PC. This point may be debatable, but frankly, why bother? It's very popular. And it can read e-books in lots of formats. 'Nuff said.
I think it's already been established that the PC is not necessarily the best device for reading e-books, just as we have failed to establish what device is the "best"... it is clear that "best" is in the eye of the beholder.
So, maybe we should be debating instead Ballmer's suggestion that they do not need to build a dedicated reader... does anyone think MS could do a better job with a dedicated e-book reader to further e-book reading than is being done by other readers, or by existing MS software?
Ballmer mentioned in the interview that he'd love to see a PC app allowing users to read Amazon content on the PC, and I'm in full agreement with that (especially if said content could be ported into your portable device of choice once it's in your PC). I'd also love to see OEB alternatives to the PC: Digital Editions works, but is proprietary, does not run well on older or lesser-powered devices, and presently encourages non-compliant ePub files.