Microsoft hits Apple on their own turf
The gauntlet has been thrown down and Microsoft is making it pretty clear that they’re not going to be bullied around by Apple’s advertising tactics. In England at least. Apparently, these booths aren’t just advertisements, but they’re also interactive booths. From AppleInsider:
“It’s a friggin booth where you can record your own I’m a PC video,” he said. “This is outside the Apple Store, Bullring, Birmingham, England.” He added that a trio of Microsoft staffers will be on hand to turn patrons off from the Mac for the next three days.
Microsoft staffers will be there goal-tending! Wow, this is a pretty gutsy move. One would think this is just asking for it – how can things not get intense or even hostile? Of course, it’s perfectly legal for Microsoft to put these booths right in front of Apple stores, but talk about taking it to their house and just invading their turf – ballsy! Steve Ballmer and all his buddies aren’t holding back and are pulling all the stops. What do you guys think? Good idea, bad idea? Let us know!
Little correction:
MS revenue/profit for last year: $15 Billion/4.37 billion
Apple revenue/profit for last year: $7.9 billion/2.44 billion
Pretty astonishing when you consider that MS has 90% of the market and Apple only about 8%.
Also Apple now has more cash on hand ($24 billion) than MS ($20 billion)
Apple also outsold RIM and MS last quarter in cell phones.
@ Synthmeister…
BIGGER CORRECTION:
MS revenue/profit for the past year: 61+ billion/17.5 billion
Apple revenue/profit for the past year: 24 billion/3.5 billion
MS also has a market cap that is 100 billion more than Apple.
Apple outsold RIM alone by only 800k last quarter, not including any MS devices. Check out the quote from Steve Jobs himself. LOL…
Where the hell did you get your numbers from? Do your due diligence.
I’m an Apple fan, but let’s not get sloppy.
…and PS…MS doesn’t sell computers or phones. How astonishing is it now?
Looks like it has walls.
If a fair amount of your product line runs like shit, does a come-back/revamped announcement mean the shit has hit the fan?
This is hilarious but I don’t think it will be effective at all. It’s the equivalent of having a booth to convince people to own a cat outside of a dog training school. These people have already made up their mind. Microsoft will look dumb here.
Remember, the purpose of this really has little to do with actually convincing anyone approaching the store to consider Windows instead. The primary purpose is to generate internet “buzz” and get free press coverage… including being able to reference “ballsy” commentary. It is a PR stunt.
Kudos to Microsoft for realizing that their PR sucks. But ten demerits for having to use “stunts” to compete.
The idea that this is low and cheap on Microsoft’s part is well beyond me. How long have the ridiculous Apple ads been running on TV and no one has condemned them for it? And ever since Microsoft actually started spending money on Ads the Apple ones got even dumber and more low-brow. The idea of these kiosks is just do diver attention and make people think of Microsoft when they are next to the Apple store of whatever. I think it is great on their part simply because they’re tired of Apple thinking they can attack them all the time for no apparent reason.
Someone please riddle me this: If Apple is so great why can’t they sell their products without mentioning Microsoft? When was the last time a Microsoft ad mentioned Apple? Every single Apple ad for their computers mention Microsoft…don’t you find that kind of disturbing? You Apple fanboys love turning a blind eye when it’s in favor of your everlasting love, with your endless supply of kneepads. Yet you are quick to call other companies pathetic when they make the iPhone killer comparisons and commercials. You are all on that “Don’t you dare even compare any touchscreen product to the iPhone because it’s the best and there’s nothing to it…that’s why it’s number one and that is why everyone is making cheap attempts at overthrowing it.” Isn’t that the same logic here? Apple attacks the champ because they are making cheap attempts at overthrowing it and yet that is perfectly fine. As soon as Microsoft starts fighting back it is a problem. Get over it and be more rational…you can’t have your cake and eat it too.
And another thing people seem to forget that Mirosoft still owns a part of Apple…so you can’t expect them to ignore such brazen insults from a company they did a favor for. They could’ve just let Apple crumble and die when it was on the brink rather than investing $500M in that ungrateful company. From a great blogger who articulated this point wonderfully:
I see a bunch of vultures thinking they are picking over MS’s carcus, but actually they are just fussing over some of MS’s old clothes. They cannot tell the difference because they are so blinkered about feeding per se rather than whether it is the real thing. Lack of descrimination really.
MS kept ahead because they didn’t drop the ball whereas a lot of their ‘competition’ (like Apple, IBM, Digital Research, Xerox) did. Dropping the ball is different from fumbling the ball.
Apple has deliberately and arrogantly ditched loyal customers with virtually no notice – such as via the swift demise of the Newton and eMagic’s PC version of Logic. If MS was as ruthless as many make out, it could easily have presided over Apple’s demise rather than bolster it with a $500M investment when it was down and almost out. However, Apple has no compulsion about publically deriding MS OS bloat while sabotaging Windows with iTunes bloat. How hypocritical! Apple pisses in people’s pockets and the recipients believe them when told it is raining!
Ms has many hands in many areas with enough of them turning a profit that it can survive. Everyone seems to be focussing on the few products with a public profile as if that was all MS made. Up till MS made cheaper mice available to OEMs en masse, they were expensive and relatively rare. Strategically important for computing, but not really a money-spinner for them, but it did give rise to a lot of add-on merchants.
MS will face real competition when someone comes out with MANY things that really are a quantum leap beyond what MS (and all the wannabees) already do. Neither Apple nor Linux are that quantum leap, but just a variation on a theme.
It also seems that many are under the illusion that a Google or Apple monopoly would be benign. Just look at how they are trying to build very closed shops. They both have a vision of them being THE enviroment, not just a part of it. One thing is clear is that while MS has tried set itself up as an ESSENTIAL PART of the environment, it has never been under the delusion that it will be the WHOLE environment. There is that fundamental difference that allows others (all the developers from ‘gurus’ to weekend hacks) to be a part of the creative evolution of the environment.
When MS added IE to the OS, it did not just add an application – it added a whole bunch of web components that every developer could utilise in their programs. It also embedded the technology deep into the OS, not just as a skin. The embedding was so pervasive that many OS updates were done as part of IE updates rather than as the OS per se. WMP is another ‘application’ that is just a functional shell for a whole lot of OS multimedia components. The EU focussing on the whole lot rather than the actual issue of being able to ‘easily’ use anybody’s media player (even the one I can knock together out of some the same components in an afternoon) as the default. As a developer, I would want the components I am utilising on as many computers with the OS as possible so that I can be assured that what I develop will be able to run on them, and not be excluded by legislature.
As for Sun and Java, why didn’t they just improve and universalise C? No, they had to make their own proprietory language so they had control. It is very popular despite being severly bloated, though no one seems to be having a go at them. Ah, but hey, they are MS’s competition, so they are exempt from criticism. What a load of crock! Let’s call a spade a spade. Most companies want to make you dependent upon them in some way and spin a lot of self-congratulatory yarns, because it is part of self-survival, but we really have to watch out for companies that are not really interested in helping us to expand and grow, but would rather we just towed the line, accepted their suppression of criticism from the loyal as being for the common good and accept their ruthlessness in perpetuating their world view as THE world view as if they were more important to us than God!
Contrary to what some seem to paint MS as a company, one person didn’t die for each copy of Windows (vis rubber production in South America in past centuries), they didn’t poison the drinking water, spill oil over the wilderness nor gas people in toxic clouds. However, they did get more people feeling they could get into, and actually do, programming (via an imperfect VB) than all the other computer languages combined. That is participation, not exclusion. At the same time it opened up cottage industries for developer’s who up till then were rather stifled by languages with restrictive and expensive royalty fees.
I know that many don’t want to hear this because they think that MS is evil but no one else can be even if they do things in a more draconian and exclusive way. Evil has many forms and it does not always appear to be ‘bad’ but the result is that one becomes really dependent as one’s will becomes susumed into the so-called ‘benfactor’s world view. Double-think and 1984 are still relevent. The liberators become the jail-keepers. Vis Robert Mugabe. Nelson Mandela was a terrorist who becam a stateman, with a world view that stretched far beyond the confines of his prison.
Posted by: Patanjali Posted on: 10/31/08
likeabite,
I believe M$ only invested $150M in Microsoft back in 1995 when they were bleeding $45-50M per quarter. AAPL was trading at $15 back then when I bought in and there was a merger rumor with Sun going around the Valley.
The reason M$ invested in AAPL at the time was an imminent antitrust suit to be filed against M$. It was in M$’s best interest to keep AAPL alive so they could point at an alternate host platform for their biggest non-OS revenue generator — M$ Office. M$ couldn’t afford to let AAPL go under. That Nov. @ COMDEX, AAPL unveiled the iMac and the rest as they say, is history
@ russd – Whatever Microsoft’s reasoning was I’m sure it was purely self-motivated. However, I doubt the Antitrust would’ve killed the company that is Microsoft and thus in saving Apple they saved themselves. Even if that was the case you still have to look at it in terms of loaning someone money when they desperately needed it and could’ve died and the ungrateful person turns around and insults you. How would that make you feel? I know that’s an extreme scenario but if I help someone out in any sort of way and the gratitute I receive is a bunch of insults I have every right to attack back. And why when I attack back I’m the one being juvenile? It’s like then I shouldn’t have helped them out to begin with.