Tag Archives for Microsoft
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
It is great when you can get some reading done about a major electronics goods event without submitting oneself to the hype devoted to big things.
TechCrunch, surprisingly, pulled this off this weekend. Jon Evans did it indirectly with a strong post on the failure of interapp operability on smartphone devices (he’s looking at you, Apple and Android):
Nowadays even Web links are likely to terminate at warnings, paywalls or registration screens. Anil Dash rages that “Facebook is gaslighting the Web” with its treatment of content outside Facebook. Jon Mitchell and Jamie Zawinskicomplain that Google Plus will “mess up the Internet” for its treatment of content outside Google+ff (and Zawinski adds “they just ripped off this model from Tumblr.”) Google’s Tim Bray, in turn, is irate about single-page “hash-bang” JavaScript sites breaking the web.
Meanwhile, six months ago, according to Flurry, time spent using mobile apps surpassed web consumption. You can link out of apps easily enough — clicking on a phone number to open a dialer, or a hyperlink to open a Web page — but it’s hard to reliably link in to an app.
Oh, the infrastructure is there, as Sarah Perez pointed out last week in “A Web Of Apps.” In theory, Android’s Intents, and Apple’s Custom URL Schemes allow apps to open each other and pass information to one another. But it’s still very difficult and frustrating to use them for inter-app communication.
And then there was another indirect article, this time about Microsoft paying a commission to sales people to sell the Windows Phone. Nobody sells it well, argues Greg Kumparak, because Windows Phone is not good enough. I agree it’s a good phone and a great new OS, as I have written here. But I have a slight disagreement with his attitude about how sales should work.
Image via CrunchBase
Kumparak states:
When phone guys sell phones, they’re selling whatever they think will be the easiest sale and make their customer (and their managers) happiest. They do this not necessarily because they’re wonderful people who have deep compassion for everyone who sets foot in their store — but because dealing with angry people (and their returns) sucks. For now, this means iPhone or Android. Both do all of the snazzy things people see in the commercials. Both have a bazillion apps. Both have such massive user bases that few would ever look out into a crowd of people all with smartphones in hand and think “Crap. Did I pick the wrong phone?”
As I wrote in the comments, I think the perspective that created this article might be changed a bit. Kumparak’s point seems pragmatic, honest and right on point.
But, sales people don’t strictly behave this way because they hate dealing with angry customers doing returns. Sales works as sales works, because sales training is not aligned with true discovery of customer motivations and beliefs. You will not find many sales people who dig to find out WHY a person buys. Because to them, this isn’t selling. It’s prying.
If we could change this belief, I think you will see a radical difference in customer appreciation, not just of the devices they buy, but their experience with sales.
And what else in our CES wrap?
Image via CrunchBase
Nobody wins at CES, by Jon Biggs, was great.
CES is really for buyers. Sure it’s a hoot to see what gadgets will launch at back-to-school in September and we, regrettably, will be there reporting on start-ups and cool gadgets we find. But it’s buyers – men and women who love to spend a week eating steak and playing backgammon at MGM grand – who really drive CES. Buyers may be considerably more plugged in these days than they were in the past, but the orders they place at CES are usually the last time they actively pursue the noephillic instinct until January of the next year. Again, with the rise of the Internet, this is swiftly changing but for now the mom-and-pop electronics shop in Scranton trying to fight off Amazon and Best Buy comes to CES to see which TVs to stock.
The point is, consumer awareness is for the blogs, and blogs in the tech age are really marketing platforms for the people who are trying to boost sales and create the indoctrination relationship consumers need with smart devices to keep them churning.
We are at a point with trade shows and with tech blogging where it has become less about situational awreness and informatino about what is new and what is best.
The new pivot is about relationships with consumers. We need to know more about what consumers think and feel, not really what smartphones or mobile devices work, and how. We are moving away from tech geekiness to intuition and emotional savvy.
Watch this space.
Image by beatak via Flickr
If Microsoft started to develop apps and productivity Office software for the iPad, would that be a signal that Microsoft is willing to cannibalize some of its own product suite and go for the innovation? And even if it was, is Microsoft targeting the right innovation in order to disrupt its own sales for more profit?
I think they are having a forest for the trees moment here.
Microsoft will be bringing all of the software we know and love to the iPad, according to this TechCrunch report. Up till now, you have not been able to do much real office work on an iPad. It’s a consumption device, meant to trigger sharing of links, or the viewing of video when you are flying from point A to point B. It’s a handy e-book reader. It’s a lean back machine. I see people using them on the subway all of the time. I’ve only seen one person using the iPad like a desktop. A flight attendant searching for flights to book last minute opened her iPad cover on the desk of a ticket agent at an airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, and revealed a spring-loaded keyboard, which she used to type in URLs.
And come to think of it, I talked to another guy on a flight from St. Louis to NYC, who said that he never bought an iPad because he could never find any ergonomically satisfying keyboards that would attach to it.
Therein lies the disruptive problem within the disruptive architecture of the iPad. I don’t think that adding a Microsoft Office Productivity suite to it will help, because the problem with the iPad and its gaps in consumption is not software, it’s hardware.
It’s a great machine, but people want it to do something it’s not doing, but they can’t get it to do that thing. They don’t like the keyboard on the touch screen, so they normally don’t use it for that. When they do use it, they have to put another keyboard attachment to it.
The Daily has a little more information on the move.
In addition to an iPad-ready version, a new edition of Office is expected for OS X Lion sometime next year. The current version of the desktop package, Office 2011, officially supports iOS versions up to Snow Leopard. A Lion version, likely available via the Mac App Store, is widely expected. Windows, too, is due for an update, with Office 2012 currently in beta form.
It’s assumed that both of these would work with Office 365 as well as mobile versions, such as Windows Phone’s Office Hub. Because it would be compatible with these full suites rather than as stand-alone apps, the pricing will most likely be significantly lower than existing Office products. In fact, it’s likely the cost will be around the $10 price point that Apple has established for its Pages, Numbers and Keynote products.
Microsoft already has numerous popular — and some not so popular — apps available for the iPad. They include Bing, MSN Onit and MSN OnPoint. There are even more available for iPhone, including Microsoft Tag, Windows Live Messenger and Wonderwall.
Re-Wired Group member Chris Spiek saw things a little differently than I did in a chat with him about it.
I think it’s an opportunity to provide a great solution. If they can ensure that .xlsx, .docx. and .pptx files open and display formatting correctly on the iPad, that will be huge for iPad users.
Right now, you can open those files in the Apple-equivalent programs on the iPad, but formatting is always terrible, so editing/enhancing is limited.
