Mother of mercy, is this the end of Microsoft?

No, of course not, but Vista could be the first major crack in the company’s business plan, the one which shows that the emperor may not have any clothes on.

Did I mention in an earlier blog entry that Microsoft might be in trouble? Well, I may be wrong, but I’m certainly not the only one who sees evidence that there is big trouble in paradise.

The company is widely believed to be looking to Vista to keep the money flowing for the next several years and recently-denounced delays have shaken investors and insiders alike.

Now Jupiter research says that the software giant’s new Vista OS,

won’t be the big financial boost the company has been projecting, not even when it does eventually ship.

Why? Simple, about half of companies surveyed by the

consulting firm say they will wait at least a full year after Vista hits the

market before taking the leap.

Even worse for Microsoft is the 13 percent of surveyed companies
which never even heard of the new operating system!

It seems that many businesses (19% still use NT and more

than half still run W2K) agree with me that there simply isn’t much need for a

new and improved OS.

More MS problems?

In yesterday’s demo before financial analysts the company’s voice
recognition failed miserably.

I just don’t get the way people treat Microsoft as if it were a
permanent force of nature.

Sure, Windows is in wide-spread use, but this is a tech company and

Windows has personally made me a LOT of money (writing about it, not investing in the company’s stock), but technology is notorious for being fast moving. Lots of big flyers have come and gone. Anybody besides me remember Lotus?

Just because it is big now doesn’t mean MS will be around forever. After all, Windows 95 was the


first really useful version of Windows and we are ONLY coming up on the 11th birthday of that earth-shaking GUI OS.

And Microsoft probably knows it is in trouble, at least if they listen to the newly appointed chief software architect who was quoted in last weekend’s Financial Times as seeing the (financial) death of the PC. Ray Ozzie, Mr. Gate’s replacement as chief company sooth sayer, says that the Internet and game consoles, along with other portable devices such as music players, are the wave of the future and where the big money is to be made.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/e381965a-1dbe-11db-bf06-0000779e2340.html

Do I really need to point out how MS is loosing money on the Xbox, doesn’t compete with the iPOD, and can’t seem to get a handle on the Internet?