Five reasons why the sun is setting on Windows dominance

February 10, 2011 By Jeffrey Van Camp

The world is changing, and the clumsy Redmond behemoth just can't seem to keep up. Here's why the sun is setting on Microsoft's once-invincible Windows empire.

Today, HP announced that it will begin loading its PCs with its own webOS sometime next year. The Motorola Atrix 4G is a smartphone capable of docking and becoming an Android laptop. Windows Phone 7 is losing momentum. These are only the first trickles from the Windows dam, but it is cracking. Windows has ruled the PC world for more than 20 years, but times may be changing. Here are five reasons why the Windows PC empire may be ready to burst.

PCs are no longer dominant

For the last thirty years, personal computers have been the heart of the computing experience. For a long time there was nothing else, and when connected gadgets started popping up, they all needed a PC to sync with and show them love. This is changing. While there are still plenty of devices that require a PC, the list is shrinking fast. A whole host of digital devices have begun becoming Internet aware without the PC. When’s the last time you needed to connect your Kindle to a computer? How about your smart TV? Manufacturers are finding ways to further untether their products every day. PCs are becoming a single unit in a large, networked, connected system of Internet-capable devices like tablets, smartphones, and smart TVs.

The smartphone and tablet are the two biggest examples of this trend. In many ways, they are becoming more important than PCs, because they are on your person at all times. As we have continued to demand more out of smartphones, their app ecosystems have soared to unprecedented levels, offering hundreds of thousands of apps in one easy-to-find place.

The iPhone spawned a new breed of competitive, capable OSs

The iPhone hit shelves a little less than four years ago and it has bred change. Apple redefined the mobile computing experience with a full touch experience that let users easily browse the Web and perform a multitude of tasks that just weren’t as simple before it came out. When it launched the App Store, the iPhone solidified its place at the top of the smartphone heap. Since then, Apple has continually added new capabilities to its bottom-up OS, which was based on some core ideas from Mac OS X.

It took two years for Android, iOS’s first viable competitor, to spring up, but it has grown astronomically (888 percent) in the last year and a half. Tablets and touch devices of all sizes have sprung from Android. It and iOS have collectively kicked the rest of the industry into high gear. RIM has shown off a new BlackBerry Tablet OS based on new architecture, while HP has continued to refine and expand the role of its own webOS. Nokia is set to release MeeGo, it’s own custom new-generation OS, and even Microsoft released a completely redesigned OS called Windows Phone 7. This is likely only the start. Unlike the PC industry for most of my life, the smartphone and tablet industries have bred real, capable, competitive operating systems that are proving to be more useful than many of us ever thought they would be.

Windows 7: Unfriendly to touch

Unfortunately, Windows is not a part of this growing smartphone ecosystem. While Microsoft continues to tinker and perfect Windows 7, it is largely the same operating system as it was when it was first released as Windows 95. The graphics have improved dramatically, as has its functionality, but there is little innovation coming out of Redmond in the PC realm.

For the longest time, its familiarity was one of Windows’ strongest traits, but the tide of the market has turned against it. As touch-based tablets continue to rise in popularity, users and manufacturers are demanding new types of touch interaction on all their devices, and Windows 7 just isn’t up to the task. Microsoft tried to popularize tablet PCs a decade ago, but it hasn’t spent much time optimizing its OS for them. Windows 7 remains an unintuitive, clunky mess on touch devices. There are a host of relatively simple modifications that could improve the experience, but Microsoft doesn’t seem to be making them.

Microsoft split its platform with Windows Phone 7

Worse, the company is sending mixed messages at a time when the market doesn’t know what to do. Windows Phone 7 is supposed to be Microsoft’s answer to modern touch interfaces. It was developed by Microsoft’s underrated Zune team from the ground up, and has a unique and imaginative new interface, but Microsoft is holding it back. We have yet to see a Windows Phone 7 tablet or any new WP7 devices since its launch in November. Instead, at CES and since, Microsoft has been touting Windows 7 as the platform for touch PCs, tablets, and devices of all kinds. While CEO Steve Ballmer says MS is behind WP7 on one hand, his actions are undermining it on the other. WP7 is a beautiful OS that could run tablets and other devices wonderfully. It would be nice if Microsoft would tap its full potential instead of trying to shove Windows 7 into most touch devices.

Really, it’s all Apple

Call it a comeback or call it a long-standing diabolical plot by Steve Jobs to eventually destroy Microsoft and take back the computer throne by reinventing computers themselves, but like it did in the late 1970s to mid 1980s, Apple has completely changed the game. Unlike Microsoft, which has long been content to sit on its pile of money, Apple has been on a quest to change computing for the better. It began with the iPod a decade ago, which bred the iPhone, which gave way to the iPad last year. Apple is completely leading the consumer electronics world right now, from a sales and mental standpoint. Though HP was the first to announce that it is bringing its webOS to the desktop, Apple even foreshadowed that idea, as it began bringing some of the lessons its learned from the iPhone and iPad back to the Mac. The Mac App Store is the first small example of iOS infiltrating Apple PCs, but a big change is coming to Macs as well.

Get moving, Microsoft

The world is shifting under Microsoft’s feet. In just a year, its dominant Windows 7 OS has gone from looking like a mammoth success to appearing as yesterday’s news. Sales don’t reflect it yet, but if Microsoft wants to hold onto its place in the market, Steve Ballmer may want to re-read the departing memo of Ray Ozzie, his former chief software architect. In it, he talked about how complexity kills, and the ever connected future ahead of us. He foresaw a post-PC world and explained what Microsoft will have to do to stay relevant. Unfortunately, we don’t yet know if the company is heeding his wisdom. Hopefully, a connected, forward-thinking Microsoft is still ahead of us.

Showing 19 comments

parsi at 9:54am 21st February 2012 I disagree. Apple is not as intuitive to work with as some believe. In fact I find it very frustrating to work with at times.I bought an IMAC last year and that would pretty much be the last time I buy an expensive toy. Granted the IMAC is much faster and has great graphics but PC's running on Windows 7 are just as good and much cheaper.
Phil Winkel at 2:51pm 24th May 2011 LOL @ this article. I'm not even going to bother.
1. John Salverda at 3:58pm 16th January 2012 Our company is retiring 11 year old hardware used to monitor smog by computer. OS? Windows NT. Hardware? Desktops, each one. NT keeps going; the hardware is dying. New OS? Windows 2008. Hardware? Desktops. This data is required by law, both federal and state. The old hardware ran 24/7/365 since late 1998. Can't do that with a laptop or portable computer. Apple? They got out of the business of seriously good computer hardware and software by their own choice early in the game. The computers being lauded as the latest and greatest could be nothing more than terminals. Off course, we use some serious hardware. RAID, triple-redundant power supplies, fail-over clusters, etc. It was interesting when one of our customers had a disk fail; he expected us to show up with CDs and such to reload everything. All we had to do is unplug the offending disk (while the system was still running and collecting data), plug in a new one, and watch it rebuild as the system continued to collect data. Believe me, with such performance Microsoft has nothing to worry about save the press from those who want mainframe performance from a handheld device. Phones? Yeah, right.
Kpkeller at 8:11am 18th March 2011 The problem I have with articles like this is that while Apple has done a good job with tablets and phones, the author overlooks things such as the multi-billion dollar gaming industry. Face it, hard core gamers won't give up their PC Windows rigs for an Apple device. Many of us have multiple monitors and quad core over clocked processors running Windows. We play Crysis and Rainbow Six, etc. I like Apple products just fine, but these articles make it seem as if nothing else matters. When people speak of Cloud, I assure you that most if not all of those servers are not running OSX. They run Linux and Windows. Imagine what would happen if Windows vanished tomorrow. Mobile devices have their place, however they won't unseat Windows or the Mac OS for that matter.
Frank Butty at 4:35am 10th March 2011 If everything Apple makes evaporated overnight, the world would have fewer toys, but everyone would wake-up in the morning and still go to work.. Apple makes toys, Microsoft makes tools: always been that way, and it appears it always will.
jw915 at 4:30pm 8th March 2011 Android was in development long before the iPhone was released. Furthermore, the first mobile app store was on the Danger Hiptop. Most of the iPhone features were directly copied from Palm, an already very successful product. Sorry, but Apple doesn't deserve much credit for this. In fact, Apple basically took lots of other people's ideas and turned them into the iPhone.
1. Pila Adur at 10:43pm 10th April 2011 Show some facts backing up your claims. Otherwise it's just fanboy propaganda...
Jesse Patrick Kerrigan at 1:37pm 23rd February 2011 I must say, there is quite a bit of fanboyism in this article. I do agree that the iPhone has changed computers (whether mobile or not) significantly, as much as I hate to admit it, but the decline of Desktop has not necessarily been in Apple's favor either. Their market for desktops has largely been the same for a number of years, and I don't see this "back to the mac" campaign bringing them any closer to dominance in that arena. I love my desktop PC, but much like arcades died to home consoles and home consoles are dying to handhelds and handhelds are dying to mobile phones, the portable market is where everything is going. I don't think it will ever get to the point where a computer is embedded into your body, but when the hardware is ready for it, I do see wearable computers being eventually where everything goes. Right now, the biggest thing holding Windows together is legacy software. Games, office suites, server infrastructure. OnLive may very well be the greatest metaphor to where everything will eventually end up. Gladly, the world isn't ready for it yet, and I hope that I'll always be able to have a local copy of my information on me, but that may not be the case.
Ben Joynes at 12:24pm 16th February 2011 Wow, apple fanboy much?
knight21024 at 7:29am 14th February 2011 I can Azure you Microsoft is heading in the right direction and will Kinect with success.
nredning at 4:45pm 12th February 2011 Yet another blogger who makes assumptions of an entire industry based on a small part of the market. Microsoft is far from irrelevant, and far from going away. Because consumers like a phone OS to browse the web, check out twitter and post their stuff on Facebook is a long ways from the reality. In this article you show just how little you know about the entire industry. I recall the "death of Microsoft" when Linux came out. I recall the same with the surge in popularity in OSX. I recall the same with Google Docs. Sure, I like my iPhone, but I am not doing any IP work with it. If I went into a hospital and saw they were running BMV on an iPad I would run away. If my bank started using an Android device to manage my financial portfolio, I would head elsewhere. I know for a fact you don't see a single Apple on the floor of a stock exchange unless it is used as a web browser. Despite cries to the contrary from glorified bloggers who have 0 experience in the real world, there is a reason why Microsoft is relevant, and that is because from the back to the front, they provide a fully integrated ecosystem that the majority of the world relies on to get real business and real work done. The consumer market is big, sure, but it is not a sign of the sun setting on Microsoft.
vger at 6:03pm 10th February 2011 you do know that you're an idiot, right? NOBODY is running any business on iPads or iOS devices. as far as Chrome as an OS. are you kidding me? they took the weakest part of any system environment, the internet, as based an OS on that. you get your browser hijacked, your system is worthless. Hello port 80 trojan. No Information Security Specialist in the world is going to trust their confidential, business critical information to reside on an apple or Google OS. Microsoft is industry standard for a reason. Take a look in a cop car, a UPS driver, any hospital, and restaurant POS, any drive through window menu, any government office it's all Microsoft windows driven. There is simply no reason to change what already has proven to work.
1. ioman at 10:00pm 10th February 2011 Did you read the article? He didn't say that everything is ending for Microsoft, but that they are heading the wrong direction - and he pointed out why. You can't discount that. By your reasoning, Microsoft will be a business-only OS and nothing more.
2. Pila Adur at 10:39pm 10th April 2011 First off... Calling someone an idiot means you THINK you know better than everyone else and unless you have a PHD or Masters degree (of which I highly doubt) you should limit your comments to just the subject matter and not try to show such ignorance. Now the second thing is,the article did not say Microsoft would disappear. It said they will be relegated to being a niche player if they don't come up with an answer to the tablet/ smart-phone paradigm shift currently being lead by Apple and Google. I hope you understand what a paradigm shift is if not you may want to take a few college classes. And in case you were curious... I do have both a Bachelors and a Masters degree in computer science.
w0000992 at 4:10pm 10th February 2011 I don't see it happening any time soon. In the PC world, there has been a *lot* of investment in windows. Billions of .net lines of code will still be running decades from now. If Microsoft could make windows work well on phones and tablets they'd rule the world. btw I'm a google fanboi, but I need my phone, tablet, laptop and pc to talk to each other (eg excel, not just media), and I need stuff to work. I use chrome, I use gmail and they are fast, but full of bugs. I still need IE when chrome can't do what I need, and I attach word docs when gmail fails. I have hope, but it's a long term hope.
1. Jeffrey Van Camp at 5:19pm 10th February 2011 Really? Unless it's a badly coded site, I almost never encounter anything that Chrome can't handle. And if Chrome doesn't work, usually Firefox does. You're right though. If Microsoft could deliver a streamlined, consistent experience across all devices, it would be set.
2. Justin Sanchez at 6:16pm 17th February 2011 You said there has been a lot of investment in windows. You're right, there HAS been. You also said Microsoft could make windows work well on phones and tablets and they'd rule the world. I would agree with you...except they're not doing it. Apple has finally taken the center stage, and if anyone ever wants to defeat it, they are going to have to do something BIG. And soon.
Jeffrey Van Camp at 6:09pm 10th February 2011 True. A lot of Microsoft's corporate and cloud offerings are great and forward thinking. In that respect, the company is moving ahead aggressively. If only it would defend its OS turf in the same way.
Chris Johnson at 4:48pm 10th February 2011 think this article is accurate on a consumer level but when you expand into the corporate world, MSFT is as strong as ever.Microsoft is leading the charge with Office 365, Dynamics CRM 2011 and other Cloud-based services, all items that are going to revolutionize how many companies do business. Perhaps it would be beneficial for MSFT to move away from markets it can’t get into (mobile phones, tablets, etc.) and focus more on redefining the world of servers and virtualization.MSFT (as we all know) is a company that takes a concept and simply improves on it. Microsoft was DOS, then we saw Apple's OS and BAM, Windows was born. The Wii gave us "motion play" that we could actually use, the Kinnect made it completely hands free. The mobile/tablet market is something that Apple is going to continue to lead the charge in and even companies like Google and RIM aren't quite up to par with Apple because Apple has made it almost impossible to improve on. EVen the big items that can be improved on (i.e. multitasking) doesn't get addressed - Microsoft should have sold the Windows 7 phone via the platform.