The conspiracy theory is that they want to lock you in for no other reason but to give you no other viable option. That's absurd. They want to sell you as much software as possible, of course, they're a company.
But the reason they will stay in the mobile space isn't to keep you from getting any other mobile device. But because there's money to be made in it and it fits into their core competency.
I suggest reading the e-mails of the executive-level management (including Gates) that were disclosed in the antitrust case and in Comes v. Microsoft. Aggressive lock-in was a conscious and deliberate part of their business strategy. A mountain of evidence and testimony is available from http://groklaw.net/.
You see no evidence that an operating system for a mobile device is not their core competency? Clearly, determining core competencies is not one of yours. :-)
My bad. Trying to be cute. Let me actually attempt to give a little evidence, since you claim to have none.
First, if you think MS has no core competency or that software is not one of them, then we could end the discussion right here.
But otherwise, it seems clear to me that mobile OS software is among their core competencies.
I start with the premise that operating systems are one of their core competencies. They have sold more units of OSes than any other company (or among the top 3). They employ probably the most renowned set of OS experts (David Cutler, of Vax VMS and NT fame. Rick Rashid, who did mach, the kernel that OS X is built on, Butler Lampson and Chuck Thacker, Turing Award winner for their work in operating system. Leslie Lamport, etc...).
Now you may say, "but they have no experience with mobile OSes". Except they were one of the first companies to do a mobile phone operating system. They also do operating systems for kiosks, embedded systems, and of course desktops and servers.
And while Windows Mobile is not a popular OS, the reason is not the OS itself. It's the shell that is problematic. The underlying OS is solid, and is being used in Windows Phone 7. They need a new shell and app deployment model, but they aren't going in and ripping out the kernel. And from people who have used it, they say the OS in WP7 is snappy.
IMO the company has 3 core competencies: OSes, Dev Tools, and Business Productivity sw. They have some secondary ones: Online Services and Video Gaming.
In summary, I think for them to give up in a space where they've actually produced a solid code base over the past decade, just when the space is now showing it can generate profit seems absurd.
Microsoft has the technical chops for OS's, no doubt.
The business chops to introduce and push device platforms is iffy--they got XBox through, but against weak competition and with very high expense. Apple and Google are much stouter competition than Sony and Nintendo and have significant advantages over Microsoft, not least among them the fact that Google has completely undercut Microsoft's traditional point of entry in the OS market (the low cost commodity OS).
Since Xbox, Microsoft can't get a decent offering together until well after the real competition and growth stage in the market is over. It's not like IE where they can leverage their desktop monopoly and deliver a compelling product 2-3 years after the competition and clean up--lately they're only really competing 4-8 years too late, in markets where their dominance in other markets gives them no advantage and their competitors have already moved on to newer, higher-growth markets. Maybe if they weren't spread too thin and were focused on Windows Phone 7 as much as Apple was focused on iPhone years ago and it was still 2008 or 2009, but none of these conditions are true. And they're not likely to become true in time to affect this particular project.
> Microsoft has the technical chops for OS's, no doubt.
Kind of. How many really good OSs they made? DOS 4? Windows classic? Windows 3? Windows NT?
Out of that list, only the VMS-inspired NT could be called cutting edge. It had a microkernel-ish architecture with multiprocessing, multithreading and security wired in from day one. And they hired the NT team out of DEC.
I have great respect for the SQL Server team. Even after diverging from Sybase, it matured nicely and is a very good database server, comparable to MySQL and PostgreSQL. ;-)
Their main problem is that their release cycles are too long across all of their product lines.
It takes a year for Microsoft to release a minor revision to Windows Mobile 6. In a year, Apple releases a major revision to iOS. Google releases multiple revisions to Android.
It also took them 2.5 years to release Windows 7 to essentially fix Vista which should have been way better considering XP came out 5 years before Vista. Meanwhile Apple and Google have been continuously innovating and iterating.
When they did try to rush to market with the Xbox 360, they ended up having to take a $1B charge to repair the shoddy hardware.
> Their main problem is that their release cycles are too long across all of their product lines.
You can't please everybody. You mush choose between offering a cutting edge product and a stable one. Windows thrives on stability-staleness. Make updates too frequent and users will learn not to depend on browser specificities, API quirks and specific technologies. If Microsoft teaches its clients to be vendor-independent, they'll be doomed.
"If Microsoft teaches its clients to be vendor-independent, they'll be doomed."
It's this sort of statement that is absurd. In some sense it is fundamentally true, but true of virtually all companies.
Apple doesn't want iPhone users to be vendor independent. Otherwise they'll use Android phones.
Google doesn't want users to be search engine independent. They make their money from people clicking ads on their search engine site.
Nike doesn't want you to be shoe-independent.
Starbucks doesn't want you drinking tap water rather than coffee.
Every company wants you using their product. And the more the better.
My issue with the statement is that there seems to be this odd implied notion that MS will go into a space where there is no upside for them, simply to create downside for another company. This is patently false. They go into markets where they think they can make profit, either directly or indirectly. This is not any different than what Google or Apple does. The only difference is that MS has done it longer (Apple has struggled with its core market that it never had the chance, but now they're flourishing, you're seeing Apple doing things just like MS did if not more egregiously). And there's nothing wrong with it. It's business.
Apple uses paid apps to make switching away from iPhone painful. Google doesn't have that leverage (@gmail addresses excepted, perhaps) and so does Nike - no leverage unless you purchased that iPod gizmo. It's also pretty painless to switch from Starbucks to any other coffee shop.
Very few companies enjoy the network effects Microsoft depends on. And yes, Microsoft will enter a market, even burn tons of money, so that no other company gains a foothold there that could be used to threaten its dominance in other markets. They did it with the Xbox - they burned tons of money and did not achieve anything close to dominance, but were extremely successful on preventing Nintendo and Sony from doing so.
When you have a network of monopolies (or mutually reinforcing market positions), it's very smart to disrupt every market you can't dominate because, if it doesn't strengthen your position, it will at least weaken your competitor's and prevent giving them a position they could leverage against one of Microsoft's captive markets.
So where is MS's Facebook? Where is MS's Google Voice? Where is MS's Yelp? Where is MS's Netflix? Where is MS's JumboTron API? Where is MS's line of televisions? Where is even an MS computer?
And noting the network effect doesn't mean that companies won't user other means to stop their competition. For example, try to get Lebron James to wear shoes you make. Not going to happen. I don't care how comfortable your shoes are. Also, try getting your shoes into FootLocker. Also, not so easy, and Nike won't lubricate the process for you either.
Try getting Starbucks to open up a kiosk in your building with a Seattle's Best right next to it. Starbucks has enough influence that they can use other means, besides network effect, to push out competition.
Network effects are a beautiful thing to leverage. Actually I think MS is in trouble, because it has very little of it. Compared to Facebook or Apple. Google is trying to strengthen their network effect.
But again, there's a fundamental difference between trying to create and leverage network effects. And what you're saying, which is to simply disrupt any other company.
http://www.thespoke.net/
"Microsoft's digital lifestyle club for students from around the world, with message boards, hubs, blogs and 10 MB of upload space for members"
The problem for them is that their network is losing relevance fast. The value of desktop software lock-in is in sight, server software is coming next.
The Spoke predates Facebook I believe. At least the site as we know it today. The Spoke existed far before people believed there was a ton of revenue to be made on those sorts of sites... otherwise sites like MiGente and BlackPlanet would have probably been more richly funded.
Apple is making focused, strategic expansions into one new market every 3-6 years. They were a computer company, but in 2001 they introduce iPod and expand into MP3 players. In 2007, having dominated MP3 players, they expand into phones. In 2010 they expand into tablets. Apple wins every major extension and ends up--to this date--with only 4 major product categories (Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad). And each of them is massively profitable. They're like a sniper, picking off market opportunities once at a time. Headshot. Years pass. Headshot. Years pass.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is just unloading shotguns at the hip.
I would also agree that it's not their core competency. Four to five years is a terrible product response time from a company with an existing codebase and the financial means to improve it. Apple/RIM/Google ate their lunch because they sucked at mobile products.
I don't think it's absurd. They've demonstrated several times over that they're willing to accept short term losses for the sole purpose of damaging or killing off competition.
Hell, they even invented the slogan "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish".
Everyone is willing to take short=term losses to kill off "competition". I'd expect they'd do that in the mobile space too. It's called "competition".
But why are they competing in the space? Microsoft could get into the soy bean industry, but the margins there really suck. They are in the mobile space because there's money to be made.
Lets put it this way, if you could prove that this mobile industry is at its peak now and there effectively no profits ever to be made in it, do you think MS would stay in it just so people would have no viable choices? Of course not. They're in it for the money. It's absurd to think otherwise.
But the reason they will stay in the mobile space isn't to keep you from getting any other mobile device. But because there's money to be made in it and it fits into their core competency.