Intel is talking about thin and light PCs, again.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-05-31/intel-seeks-to-challenge-apple-s-ipad-with-new-ultrabook-pcs.html
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/computers/computex-2011-intel-unveils-ultrabook-talks-medfield-tablets/6004
Since 2007, there were Ultra Mobile PC, netbooks, and OLPC (my blogs on UMPC). It was clearly the writing on the wall for the system vendors that the mass market was ready for easy-to-use computing devices. But to Intel and Microsoft, it was just a series of protection measures to delay and deter. Intel gave up StrongARM and kept its low-end CPUs one or two steps behind what the market needed them. Microsoft tried to put a limit on netbooks to under 9-inches upon its OS licensees. Maybe it was important to protect the margin of company's bread-and-butter products. But to end users, those decisions did not add any value to them. In the end, competitors step in and eat their lunch. Companies tried to protect their profit margins by preventing new product categories from happening ended up losing more.
All those decisions must have gone through a lot of deliberation, market data analysis and signatures from layers of directors and VPs in both companies. In the end, the defense looked like being built more along departmental business lines than to the battle front line. If Intel and Microsoft had worked with the trend and all their partners, the market might have been filled with different kind of interesting products than just overwhelming Apple iPad and upcoming Google Android tablets, neither uses Intel processors nor Microsoft OS.
Speaking of surprised development and different revenue sources. A Citi analyst said Microsoft makes five times more income from Android than from Windows Phones, thanks to patent licensing fees.
http://gizmodo.com/5806227/did-you-know-microsoft-makes-five-times-more-money-from-android-than-from-windows-phoneAll those decisions must have gone through a lot of deliberation, market data analysis and signatures from layers of directors and VPs in both companies. In the end, the defense looked like being built more along departmental business lines than to the battle front line. If Intel and Microsoft had worked with the trend and all their partners, the market might have been filled with different kind of interesting products than just overwhelming Apple iPad and upcoming Google Android tablets, neither uses Intel processors nor Microsoft OS.
Speaking of surprised development and different revenue sources. A Citi analyst said Microsoft makes five times more income from Android than from Windows Phones, thanks to patent licensing fees.
Of course, this is not a development Microsoft would like to see. After all, no company is operating and competing in a vacuum. Market cannibalization is not a complicated concept, but can be so hard to get it right for a big company.
