Microsoft’s 5 biggest weaknesses

Search, mobile devices, the Web and even the desktop represent challenges for Redmond

For all its success as the world’s biggest maker of PC operating systems and office programs, Microsoft’s position as the dominant provider of software to consumers is at risk.

 

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2. Browsers

Once upon a time, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer commanded greater than 90% market share, dominating the Web browser market as much as Windows dominates PCs today. The Microsoft monopoly earned itself antitrust penalties by beating Netscape into submission, but it wasn’t until the rise of Mozilla’s Firefox (a descendant of Netscape) and Google’s Chrome that the monopoly would be broken.

Nowadays, Microsoft loses browser share almost every single month, dropping to 52.71% in total number of users, according to Net Applications, and to 42.45% in total page views, according to StatCounter. The discrepancy between numbers of users and amount of usage suggests that the Web’s heaviest users are the ones who replace the default Internet Explorer with Firefox and Chrome.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 took steps forward in speed, the user interface, and ability to display sophisticated content like HTML5, and Microsoft is moving to a faster release schedule that brings improvements to users on a more regular basis. Perhaps just as important, Microsoft has made IE9 available only on the newest versions of Windows, arguing that creating browsers that work across all types of computers drives quality down by appealing to the lowest common denominator.

In other words, Microsoft says Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox are hobbled because they run across Windows, Mac, Linux and older, less capable versions of Windows such as XP. Microsoft wants you to believe that unless you buy a new version of Windows, you won’t get the best browsing experience.

“In the future, the browser is only as good as the operating system and the device it runs on,” IE Senior Director Ryan Gavin argued several months ago. “We have to think about these things as being integrated.”

Internet Explorer itself isn’t a moneymaker for Microsoft, although it can be used to direct consumers to Microsoft’s online services. Theoretically, someone who tries out Chrome and likes it better than IE is a potential customer for other Google products, and someone who tries out Safari and likes it may become enamored with Apple.

Because of the move from locally installed applications to the Web, the browser is becoming “the portal into your world,” says IDC analyst Al Gillen. “The reason Microsoft wants to fight movement is if you can wrestle the browser away from Microsoft, the more your interface to the rest of the world becomes your browser, and you worry more about what browser you’re running than what operating system you’re running.”

Microsoft’s response: Microsoft declined to answer questions about Internet Explorer, but pointed to a blog post by executive Roger Capriotti, who notes that IE9 is gaining popularity among Windows 7 users and business customers.
3. Mobile phones and tablets

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously laughed at Apple’s iPhone in 2007, saying, “It’s the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard, which means it’s not a very good email machine. … We have great Windows Mobile devices in the market today. I look at that and say I like our strategy, I like it a lot. We’re selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year. Apple is selling zero phones a year.”