Microsoft looks to Depression for guidance
Microsoft says it has studied successful firms of the late 1930s to take inspiration for surviving and flourishing in a recession. The firm also confirmed it is still interested in an online ad partnership with Yahoo.
The comments came in a conference call with investors by company chief Steve Ballmer, financial head Chris Liddell and head of investor relations Bill Koefoed. Business Insider provided live coverage of the event.
Discussing the economy, the firm said it had looked at firms which performed well during the Great Depression and pointed to RCA as a role model. That’s because it continued to invest during the tough times, allowing it to dominate when the market recovered. Although Microsoft has recently shed staff, it will continue hiring. That apparent contradiction is explained by the way so many Microsoft employees work in specialist roles which can’t easily be transferred within the company.
Although Microsoft noted that its search and advertising division continues to be far from profitable (Windows Mobile being the only over division which isn’t turning a profit), it insisted it won’t quit the industry, reasoning that once you do that there’s little prospect of ever getting back into it. It will be concentrating on raising its market share in the US before putting efforts into overseas search markets.
According to the conference call, Microsoft is not planning an ‘acquisition’ of Yahoo but would like to ‘pool’ the two companies’ resources to compete with Google. Despite having taken on former senior Yahoo search staff such as Qi Lu, the firm appears to believe the recent appointment of Carol Bartz as Yahoo chief may increase the chances of a partnership.
Despite recent woes, Microsoft’s senior execs do at least retain a sense of humor. They joked that Windows is the number one operating system and its main rival is pirated copies of Windows: a great product with a price that’s hard to beat.
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February 24th, 2009
Unfortunately, Microsoft’s problem is that they do believe Windows is the best operating system there is. There is no doubting it has its merits in business, but the best OS is surely Mac OSX Leopard for the time being. I run Leopard on my macbook and I also run Windows 7, XP and Vista on various machines, and while Windows 7 is an improvement on Vista in that it actually works, it still has a mountain to climb to catch up with the usability and simplicity of Mac OSX. For as long as Microsoft believe that Windows is the best, they’ll not beat Apple.
Even Linux developers say Mac OSX is better: in an interview last year, I can’t remember exactly but I think it was the developers of Ubuntu, said they wanted to aim for Mac OSX. That says it all really. What WOULD be interesting is if Apple were forced through the Pystar case to make their OS legal on all systems. If manufacturers took on OSX, it would trounce windows in the consumer market, but could it stand up to viruses when it had a large market share?
Who knows. But we do know that Microsoft is deluded if they think Windows is the best OS with only itself as competition, and that them thinking their product is so good will not give them the motivation to better themselves, which they need to do not only to have the best OS, but to continue well through the recession.