My First Tech Industry Blog - Missing the bus

I had resisted blogging on this for too long but could not after a spate of recent experiences and observations.

Here walks a colleague and asks "I am still not convinced about iPad, but am amazed to see Apple shipped over 7 Million units of iPad last fiscal year" and another....

"I am in a dilemma as to should I buy a laptop/ iPad"

While in the former case, it was a long discussion on various applicable areas that iPad may be used those 7 Million buyers and seemingly finding new ways to put iPad into use, in the latter it was a clear requirement of laptop wherein the colleague was tempted to explore iPad to replace the same.

On these experiences, it just makes me feel though iPad may not replace laptops in few cases, they can in few other user specific needs.

This blog of mine is about has Microsoft missed the bus yet again? As a pioneer and visionary of thinking of tablets close to 8 years ago, it has hardly found a way to convince customers on the utility of the same. Vivid in my mind when Bill Gates, used a pen (of course a digital one) to write on the screen and was to show the world, that newer forms of input is the future of the end-user experience. The tablet was launched later by Microsoft, but never generated the pull or excitement as iPad has delivered so far. No wonder 60+ vendors are launching/ launched their tablets already. Many of these vendors are launching on Android.

It is even more interesting to see that 23 Million units is what analysts predict for iPad shipments this fiscal year. In all, close to 30 Million user-situations do not need a bulky laptop and can be met by tablets. Not to count the other tablet vendors. In a nutshell, the user experiences that are gonna be delivered by non-Microsoft is going to be far outnumbering that Microsoft will be providing.

This comes soon after Microsoft missing to get it right repeatedly on the mobile device market. Their recent sign-up with Nokia (remember the CEO of Nokia was the ex-head of the business division of Microsoft) is the only hope of lifting the sagging markets for both Nokia and Microsoft. It has taken long for Microsoft to build on top of other mobiles OSs than spend millions on their own mobile OS.

Lastly, with increasing number of user experiences being identified on tablets, and mobile devices gearing up to fill the void, Microsoft is increasingly losing relevance with end-users with the age-old PC and laptop? No wonder, fresh ideas are needed for Microsoft to stem these slides at the top lest they become irrelevant to the new-world.