Rob Enderle wrote an intriguing editorial for Digital Trends entitled “You can’t call ‘time out’ in Silicon Valley,” which examines the current battle between Apple, Google and Microsoft over the future of computing. In it, he draws some interesting parallels from the history of warfare, and notes that Microsoft and Google have made some of the classic blunders that have caused great armies to fail dramatically.
The “time out” that the title refers to is Microsoft’s reaction to first the big iPhone-led smartphone revolution over the past few years, and now the iPad-led advance of the tablet as a serious computing contender. In both cases, Microsoft had been laboring in those markets for years, with little traction, then faced with a successful competitor, seemingly said. “wait, wait, we need some time to adapt our technology to the new reality, but once we do, it will be awesome!” I don’t need to comment more on how this is working out, as any OSNews reader would be able to speak at it at length, but the upshot is that the history of the tech business since the beginning of time is cycle upon cycle of nimbler companies upstaging and overtaking slower-moving competitors.
But it’s not always the big companies that lose, and, as we all know, it’s not always the best technology that wins. Apple itself, as Enderle points out, when Steve Jobs returned, was in dire straits, with a lineup of mediocre products. Apple survived to become the juggernaut is is now, not by retrenching to work on its next big thing, but by focusing on making the best of the lineup it had, and using that momentum to make better products. To use a military slogan that was all too overused during the time of Apple’s renaissance, “you have to fight with the army you have.”
The second part of Enderle’s editorial is more interesting, because it’s not as obvious (Microsoft getting outmaneuvered by Apple in the mobile space is such an old story by now it’s practically bound in leather volumes). But Google’s vaunted Android program, for all its success, is showing some signs of suffering not from inattention, but resource-starvation. The big evidence from the editorial is Schmidt’s bragging that the Android initiative is profitable, while hardware vendors complain that Google is unpredictable, secretive, and unhelpful, and in particular aren’t doing enough to help their partners make money selling the Android platform.
I’m not sure whether there’s enough evidence to definitively draw this conclusion, and even if it’s true that the hardware partners are having a hard time, I’m not sure that Google bears much of the blame. In a lot of cases, the telco carriers and/or hardware makers are digging their own graves by playing the same games that caused the mobile computing marketplace to stall for a decade: not paying enough attention to the overall user experience, filling devices with bloatware, and creating artificial barriers to users enjoying the devices as they see fit, and being lackadaisical about software updates (because out-of-date phones are more likely to spur hardware sales, they figure). The harsh reality of the situation is that, Android being free, they’re all competing against each other, with not much way to differentiate, and the ways that they choose to try to differentiate (custom UIs, custom apps) are in many cases, customer-hostile.
I think it’s clear, though, that if Google’s primary goal with Android is to make money for Google every quarter, they’re going to miss out on a lot of strategic long-term benefit.
The real benefit of these case studies may not be to analyze the Microsoft/Google/Apple war for computing dominance, but rather for the future upstarts that will vie to lead computing in 2020 or 2030. Two frequently-shared pearls of wisdom in the entrepreneurial community are: 1. Don’t wait to release your product. If you wait until your product is perfect, or the market is perfect, you’ll be eating your competitors’ dust when and if you ever do get your product out the door. And 2. Frugality is a major virtue for a startup enterprise, but you can be penny wise and pound foolish. Give your developers the tools they need to be productive; spend your marketing funds wisely, but do spend them.
Large companies are always at a disadvantage against startups when it comes to agility. Agility is really the only superior weapon in the small company’s arsenal. And the ability to apply large amounts of money to a problem is the large company’s primary advantage. So if a large company like Microsoft can shake things up and show some agility, it will neutralize an upstart competitors’ sole advantage, and if a rich company like Google fails to plow resources into what’s arguably its most important non-search related initiative, then it’s making a major strategic blunder. May the college kid whose startup company is destined to give all three of these firms a major wakeup call in ten years heed this lesson well.
Thom,
I’m familiar with Rob Enderle’s opinions, in particular, his open hostility to FOSS. From the wikipedia entry on him
<quote>
Enderle’s analysis of free and open source software, Linux in particular, is disputed by the FOSS community.[19][20] Speaking publicly in 2004 in a talk announced under the title “Free Software and the Fools Who Use it”[21] and presented under the title “Free Software and the Idiots who Buy It” Enderle explained his “position on Linux as a Free software scam” claiming that “it doesn’t contribute to anything” (i.e. neither any common good nor any private good) and that “it may not even be sustainable on a large scale”. He went on to state that those who doubt SCO’s right to extract revenue from Linux users “are attacking because they disagree with the legal rights of these companies” without mention that the Linux community believes that SCO is infringing on the rights of Linux’s authors.[22][23] Enderle has consistently and repeatedly recommended against Linux and intimated its failure writing such things as: “Moving away from Red Hat is the better of the two options…”[24] (2004); “… the PC OEMs don’t, and probably never will, fully support Linux on the desktop”[25] (2006); “Linux exists in an environment where … the opportunity for traditional, old style, data breach is immeasurable.”[26] (2007).
</quote>
I don’t see how it’s more possible to be inflammatory than that quote. After reading the Google vs. Apple part I can’t help but wonder if this is not just yet another tired astroturf ploy.
Here are two articles you might find interesting concerning the relationship between Enderle and Microsoft:
<quote>
http://techrights.org/2008/12/11/rob-enderle-amazing-numbers/
</quote>
And
<quote>
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990DE1DC1F3FF933A257…
</quote>
Edited 2011-04-04 03:11 UTC
What does that have to do with anything? Linux is for a very minor sector of nerds and IT guys. If you don’t realize that, you are clueless.
Not in the server sector, it isn’t. If you don’t realize that, you are clueless.
Note the “IT” in my comment.
If you’re using a Bada, WebOS or Android phone or tablet then you’re running a consumer product on top of a Linux kernel.
Smartphones, tablets, media players, set-top boxes and cloud solutions. Linux is all there, pervasively invading the consuming industry. Only a minor sector cares as you said, but a major part of clueless consumers is using it.
It shows that Enderle is a paid shill whose opinions carries 0 credibility.
All our servers run linux at work.
That’s why I said “IT guys”.
So server management/administration is not IT work? Since when?
Edited 2011-04-05 21:08 UTC
Thom didn’t write this it was David Adams. Also HTML isn’t supported in comments try using BBCode.
While Rob Enderle may have the credibility of a Catholic Preist at a child’s birthday party, I think David’s article has abstracted some good points that are worth keeping in mind. Full credit to David for his efforts
Oh, did he? Enderle is making things up, as always.
In actual fact, it’s absolute hogwash. Apple survived by dumping everything they had: first MacOS Classic, then the PPC. Along with that (and somewhat earlier), they entered a new era of industrial design, with more colourful products like the iMac and the original iBook, which surely has been a big part of their recipe for success. But imagine selling a MacBook to run OS 9.x today? Or an updated Powerbook in the same price range, with CPU power comparable to entry level Intel laptops? Not even the RDF and a dozen new primary colours could help Apple with that.
Yeah, that’s true… Although, as I understand it, the original OS 8 based iMac was in development before the return of Jobs… So he did “Fight with the army he had”, at least to a large degree in the early days of his return.
You’re definitely correct that Apple dumped everything they had, and for good reason: MacOS was getting real creaky, and PPC was losing ground fast. But the point I was trying to draw attention to was that Apple didn’t curl up in the fetal position until OSX was ready. In fact, they pushed forward very strong with their lineup of candy-colored PPC machines running OS9, and worked overtime to make the transition from OS9 to OSX as smooth as possible, then later from PPC to x86.
Now, you can say that it’s dishonest to keep pretending that your crap OS and crap hardware are great while you’re laying the groundwork to release something better over the next few years, but considering how smoothly the transitions went, due in large part to a lot of attention to detail and hacking skillz on the part of Apple’s engineering team, I think they rewarded their userbase adequately.
Isn’t it same Rob that spread lies about how SCO owns linux and about death threats to SCO management? Hardly a trustworthy source.
I’m not even going to look into his prediction failures, I’ve seen too many of them up-close to take him seriously on any topic these days…
Reminds me of Trine…
With Microsoft as the fat warrior, Google as the thief, and Apple as the wizard (because, you know, they sell “magical products”), wouldn’t they rock in co-op?
Edited 2011-04-04 06:29 UTC
Throw in a Cleric and you’ve got a DnD party at your hands.
I nominate Red Hat.
I’d say that Apple have a Wizard/Cleric multiclass
Isn’t it them who have invented the whole concept of evangelism-based marketing?
Debian can be the Sourceror.
Apple definately has the religion based magic going for it.
Debian (or such) can be the one that derives it’s magic from inate ability (or dragon blood heritage.. whatever your mythology).
Enderle is not a newsworthy person, has nothing insightful to say, and rehashes badly what he hears around.
It is not worth to take up a news item on OSnews for Enderle.
Enderle might be what you describe. But for me, who didn’t know the guy and thus can’t cringe at reading his name, David’s article was an interesting read. So no, I don’t think he wasted an entry. In fact, before reading the comments, I clicked the “recommend this” button.
On the other hand, some user comments seem totally useless.
The fact that you do not recognize Enderle’s name is why he still has the power to misinform and misdirect. I fear that by the time you come around to this same opinion, there will be a fresh crop of people that have not heard of him.
My point was: remove his name or, if you can, forget that it’s him who wrote the article, and it would not look like misinformation or misdirection any longer.
In and of itself, what I read isn’t misinformation and it isn’t a piece of intentional deception. Even delusional liars sometimes tell the truth. It might be what happened here.
But yes, I understand your point; it’s like Nintendo having each other year a new batch of people beguiled by an umpteenth rehash of a Mario, Donkey Kong or Zelda game.
inconceivable.
I realize that Enderle has a bad reputation, and that’s one of the reasons that I made sure to attribute the original article to him explicitly in the description, which we don’t usually do. Nevertheless, I did find his analysis of the situation to be insightful, and where I doubted his claims, I pointed that out. (I’m not sure that Google is really starving the Android project for resources).
Linux is still a WIP but it’s progress is very rapid. 2.6.40 is meant to have nouveau power management on Fermi GPUs. That’ll see performance LEAP up on the current generation nvidia cards. They already reverse engineered CUDA. It’s only a matter of time before the GPL’d drivers catch up to the closed source ones. In 2 years time Linux gpu drivers will be where wifi is now. Working out of the box with no config from users with all major expected features supported. After that it’s just a matter of app support.
1. Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
2. Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
I spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder.
Thank you David for the article. Not only was your rendition of it a welcome summary, but, contrary to what other posters insinuated from their knowledge of its author, the linked article is not the debatable piece of writing I was expected.
And yes, I read the comments before reading the linked articles.
Even a blind chicken….
Is it the beginning of a saying? Not a native speaker here.
Yes and neither am i. I believe the saying is something like “even a blind hen sometimes find a grain of corn”.
Here I think we say “Even a blind dog finds a bone every once in a while.” (or squirrel/nuts(usually w/ double meaning)).
A broken clock can still be right twice a day.
That is one market Microsoft owned by default… and then they lost it… not once… but twice.
First Microsoft had both the mail server (Exchange) and a mobile device… and yet they got beaten by RIM to mobile email.
Next, they solve the email problem… and then they get beaten by Apple on the device as well as the software ecosystem.
It’s hilarious if you think about it.
My own view is Microsoft’s mobile failure was really corporate misdirection. They kept trying to have a unified OS that looked the same in mobile as it did on the desktop. Early mobile versions even had the start menu.
Now that they changed the corporate direction, they have released a decent mobile OS… but it took them a really long time… lol.
I’m going to post it here too:
Excuse me for saying this entire article reeks of card stacking manipulation who’s only purpose can be to push some form of social agenda. I say this because once again we have a writer using the “percentages to promote a lie” methodology.
There is a complete lack of saying “A percentage of what?”. The iPad took 5% of what? A market the group the article is using as the subject had little to no presence in? Shouldn’t that more be 100%? What market is that percentage even in comparison to? Overall computers? Handhelds? Are you counting phones in that, a market MS has barely had a foothold in to begin with?
… and immediately in the next paragraph it’s lather rinse, repeat with the “oh IE has gone from 90% to 50%” idiocy. WHY do I call it idiocy? Because during the timeframe where IE went from it’s 2005’s 90% to todays 50%, the number of Internet users has grown from 800 million to roughly 2 billion… 90% of 800 million is 720 million. 50% of 2 billion is 1 billion. So while they’ve “lost” 40% market share they’ve GAINED 280 million users. That means Microsoft hasn’t lost a blasted thing, and you’re using percentages to lie.
That’s one of the hardest concepts to grasp about “share” and why it’s used to perpetuate these types of outright lies. It is entirely possible in a still expanding market to lose share and STILL HAVE GROWTH!!! That’s why serious businessmen know “share” is often meaningless.
There are SO many questions you have to ask when these types of percentages are listed. How many people are being counted twice? It’s like counting Droid users — I’ve got a droid tablet, a Symbian Phone running Opera mobile, Opera on my home desktop and Firefox at work — how often am I counted. Does my using Chrome on droid mean I’m not using Opera? Take a buddy of mine with his iPhone, but still uses IE8 on the desktop… How is he figured into this?
ALWAYS ask “a percentage of what?” — and if the pool size has changed, the groups sampled are different, or if unrelated items are for some reason lumped together, every conclusion the source is trying to push is called into question.
Basically people, don’t allow percentages be used to LIE TO YOU!
Edited 2011-04-04 17:16 UTC
Google’s committed to ads, not apps. Android is only important as part of the no fly zone surrounding Google that it continuously firebombs with freebees. To neutralize competition. And to indenture partners.
This was a really interesting article, and also a nice write-up, so I’m glad it made it onto OSnews.
However, I kind of feel the whole premise of the argument is somewhat flawed. Microsoft isn’t losing the browser wars. Microsoft certainly isn’t losing the PC wars. And Google isn’t losing the phone wars either.
Comparing Microsoft and Apple, they both have (and have always had) very different forms of modus operandi. Apple produces a very particular type of focussed, well-designed product that perfects the user-experience of already existing technologies. Microsoft on the other hand produces very general products that perfect the developer process, and then fights a war of attrition against the existing technologies. Microsoft fought this war and won against Mozilla, Borland, Palm, Lotus Notes, Wordperfect, Java, IM, OpenGl, Real Networks, OS/2, Classic Mac OS, etc. It’s currently using the same tactics against Flash, Apache, phones, tablets, advertising, OS X, games consoles and everything Google does.
Personally I fear this stifles innovation and diminishes the whole experience of using computers. But I have to admit there’s a good chance Microsoft will win these latter wars as well. For example, for a long time I thought Nokia had ‘won’ against Microsoft. It turns out, attrition was probably the right tactic.
Apple is an amazing company that’s experiencing incredible growth right now, but whenever I see an article that suggests there’s a company with better business sense than Microsoft, it always seems to ring somewhat hollow. Empires will crumble though, and I’d be very happy to be proven wrong.
This is the first thing posted on OS News that I would not read. It has been my observation that Rob Enderle has no integrity whatsoever. I assume by default that he is spreading disinformation and I do not wish to be infected by it.