Microsoft has nothing to fear. There have been many rumors, reports, and news articles lately talking about the Redmond company. Journalists and bloggers have covered all of Microsoft’s latest efforts in the marketplace and some of them just love to make predictions and yell “FAILURE”.
They"ve made comparisons between products, some good some not so inspired, they"ve analyzed market data, again some accurate some just pure speculation, they"ve posted, listened to, analyzed, debunked and flourished rumors regarding upcoming products all the while wondering and asking: is this good for Microsoft, does the company have what it takes, will this new/old OS kill Microsoft’s efforts and so on and so forth.
But I personally want to say Microsoft has nothing to fear. 2012 was an amazing year for them as we have pointed out many times before. They launched two brand new operating system, both of which are far superior to their predecessors. They launched new Surface hardware to some excellent reviews, albeit on the hardware side of things, and have started transitioning as a business. They refreshed what is arguably their most important product, the Office suite. They have also greatly improved their services such as Skydrive, Outlook and so on. They"ve set the foundation for their upcoming push into the living room with such services as Xbox Music, Video and Smartglass. Now they’re saying they will foray into the video content creation market to give them a stronger lead against competitors. They also have extremely good relationships with developers as well as OEMs even though the latter seem to be somewhat strained at the moment.
And despite all of these pretty incredible achievements most folks still look at Microsoft as a bumbling giant with a very unclear future. These are the same people that love to say that Windows 8 isn"t selling (it is!) and that IE sucks (it doesn"t!).
Now don"t get me wrong I"m not saying all of their products work great or that they don"t have a lot of work to do. That"s just the point: they have a whole lot to do and they seem to be doing it. Lately we"ve seen Microsoft take a very real interest in what their users are saying. We"ve seen them acknowledge mistakes and shortcomings and that is very encouraging.
Microsoft has nothing to fear because they have a great suite of products. They are innovating and iterating and that"s exactly the way to go. They now have a very solid portfolio, therefore don"t need to launch new products or go after what other companies are doing. They need to "double down" on their own work and make their products best in class.
This has always been Microsoft"s problem but now, finally, they seem to get it and they seem to be more focused than ever. Let"s hope this lasts.