Technology Industry Archive

Initial demand for Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system is higher than expected, but that good news is tempered by the fact that the unexpected traffic jolt brought down the company’s e-commerce servers. Bad timing, as Microsoft has just announced availability of its Azure infrastructure in the cloud service. Indeed, the Microsoft online store servicing the EMEA (Europe,...

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According to the latest forecast from iSuppli, 2009 will be the first year since 2001 that PC unit shipments will drop. The market analyst suggests that the unit decline will be 8.1 percent as the economy is still rough and uncertain. And that is a pretty grim prediction. Here’s the firm’s numbers for the last few years: Note the obvious: the rate of growth in PC sales has slowed...

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Michael Hickins and I were talking about Microsoft earlier today and the easily confusing question of whether free online Office at this point would be stupid or brilliant. My take is that it’s probably the result of some clever strategy; I won’t speak for Michael on this (as if I’d need to). However, that also got us discussing how various divisions of the company were doing,...

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The marketing tactic of spreading FUD — fear, uncertainty, and doubt — is nothing new in the computer industry. Many companies point to questionable studies as their tools of dissemination, like a PR agency study for Credant Technologies that I recently deconstructed. Well, there appears to be another bogus study, only this time the effective target is Microsoft Windows 7, as the...

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Microsoft can try to replace the failed Vista brand with lucky 7, but apparently it can’t sell anyone on Windows anymore. And at this point, it doesn’t even matter if Windows 7 turns out to be a huge improvement on Vista — desktop operating systems are like the cavalry. There will always be a use for the cavalry at military parades and crowd control, but there’s this new...

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The news on Microsoft Office 2010 is coming hot and heavy now that the company is releasing details on the new version. And one of the big notes is that people will have access to web versions of the Office suite for free. It sounds like a counter to Google, Zoho, and others who want to end the company’s dominance. My question is whether this is a sad late-in-the-game, me-too offering...

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According to projections from DisplaySearch, part of NDP Group, netbook penetration is going to rocket ahead at the expense of the traditional notebook market. But given that user dissatisfaction for netbooks has been enormous, does this mean that success will ultimately mean higher returns, disappointed buyers, and damaged customer relations for hardware companies? The DisplaySearch...

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No one can deny that Google is financial successful. The company makes huge amounts of money and their main line of business — selling advertising — is something that needs virtually no marketing to its customers. That is an impressive feat. But it is also one that masks deep confusions and lack of focus at the company. Early on, the company’s cofounders indicated that their...

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Developers hoping to hitch a ride on Google’s Wave have discovered that Microsoft may have unwittingly helped them resolve the single greatest problem they needed to overcome in order to challenge the dominance of Office. When Microsoft set out to create Office 2007 using a brand new code base XML format — Office Open XML (OOXML) — it needed to accomplish two goals: make it...

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The race is on to see who can best capitalize on the Twitter phenomenon, and the betting’s not on Twitter itself. Twitter has already proven that it serves a purpose well beyond “what are you doing now,” which early adopters (and maybe its founders) took literally, and is being used by everyone from professional athletes to politicians to communicate directly with their fans...

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