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World-Wide Smartphone Market Share for 2010

Microsoft out from under a US Department of Justice long anti-trust look that has lasted more than a decade, opened their treasure chest recently

The cash rich company with more than 60 billion to spend has offered to pay 8.5 Billion US for Skype.  Microsoft has been timid in an era of acquisitions, but now has started to move strategically with purpose

The European Union and the US Department of Justice have put strictures on Microsoft in the past for bundling their product offerings and what they considered limiting competition because of the inherently close cooperation of their operating system and their applications.  This seems laughable now when we look at the fierce competition for leadership in the new mobile world of the Cloud. (see below)

With  Apple and especially Google in the market, there is plenty of competition.  Google's Android operating system is an important player on the Cloud and Apple has changed the music industry with their mobile devices and pricing strategy.

So what does Skype give Microsoft? 

It's really branding in the Skype name and the ability to get millions of users and their advertising potential.  Skype is not a great program, but it's gained traction over any competition including Google's chat programs.  Skype has 177,000,000 users.  It's on the verge of being iconic and becoming part of the lingo. "Skype Me" is now a verb.

If you want to talk and see your grandchild in BC, you're most likely to be using Skype.  It's easy to use and easy to install.

Not well known was another Microsoft move that will make it THE player on Nokia phones.  Windows Phone will be the default operating system for Nokia.

Who is Nokia, you may ask?  They are the world's largest manufacturer of mobile devices and they are a big, big player in Europe.  They have 31 percent of the world market.  Facing very stiff competition from Android (Google's operating system) with offerings on Motorola and others, the move to get closer to Microsoft, is understandable.  For Microsoft it's a very good deal in that they can come to play seriously with industry leader Google (last quarter 2010)

Looking at the Skype deal in its broader context, it allows Microsoft to catch up with cash.   Google has been the Mad-Hatter of acquisitions, while Microsoft has been quiet.   Apple has depended upon their elegant product offerings in the mobile world.

It looks like Microsoft is going for big market share increases and most importantly a synergy of products on the Cloud that is based on Voice over Internet Protocol. (VoIP)  The Skype and Nokia deals are very clever uses of a deep pockets.

RIM with their Blackberry and lack of scope of applications has to do something dramatic soon or they will be buried.  Never a strong candidate for the Cloud because of their lack of depth and breadth of product, they are in trouble long term..

Cloud computing is a general term for anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. These services are broadly divided into three categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service , Platform-as-a-Service  and Software-as-a-Service. The name cloud computing was inspired by the cloud symbol that's often used to represent the Internet in flowcharts and diagrams.

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Thursday, May 12, 2011