Nadella steering Microsoft back towards software for economic reasons
Microsoft sold more physical devices than Apple did last year - due largely to its purchase of Nokia - and still managed to lose $700M last quarter. No wonder Nadella is steering Microsoft away from hardware and turning his back on Ballmer's mantra of "devices and services."
Microsoft's quarterly financials are out, and they paint a startlingly clear picture of why new CEO Satya Nadella is in such a hurry to scuttle away from the "devices and services" mantra rolled out by former honcho Steve Ballmer just last year: Microsoft's hardware efforts just aren't making much money. In fact, they're actually losing money hand over fist.
I'm decidedly NOT a proponent of Microsoft and their historically locked down approach to software, but I'm still thrilled to see they're going to move back toward making productivity tools for people in offices. It's the only real area they've been able to truly dominate any and all competition, and frankly, when Linux takes over in cubicle land, I'd like to know it was due to certain hurdles being cleared, rather than that that big competitor completely imploded after hemmorhaging money left and right trying to compete with Apple in the toy industry.
While far too much of the popular media has begun looking at anything that sits plugged into a wall as a legacy system, Microsoft has been utterly foolish to eat it up. Just because housewives can do whatever they do on a computer on their tablet or smartphone doesn't mean the engineer in the cubicle can, and even if they CAN doesn't in any way mean it's remotely as efficient (hell, even laptops have enough drawbacks to ensure that we'll have desktops with us for some time coming).
I guess my point is, I like this guy. I'll like him even more if he steers Microsoft a bit more towards free software and open source in the future (and think that now more than ever would be a great time for it...and they ARE on github now). Even if not though, it's nice to see the enemy getting back on its feet. An epic battle for supremacy just wouldn't be any fun otherwise.