Is Microsoft 'Cool' Again?

To be fair Microsoft is trying its best to become cool in a market overrun with established brands that are much cooler than it. We begin the proceedings with the personal computing. Microsoft is offering Windows 10 as a free upgrade just like Apple’s OSX. The Redmond giant finally got tired of all the jokes related to Internet Explorer and worked on Spartan, but I doubt that it will replace Google Chrome that has become the crowd favourite overtaking Mozilla Firefox. The people who use Windows Phone smartphones will the ones who benefit from Spartan browser.

Next we arrive in the smartphone market. Microsoft managed to bag the coolest mobile phone maker by paying peanuts. Nokia was a phone maker who made not just cool phones but good ones as well. History knows that they have made the coolest handsets ever. The problem now lies in the fact that Microsoft is playing it safe with its smartphone department. Nokia lost money because they did not care what other phone makers were making and at what price. The Finnish guys just went mad with their design and made a phone as good as possible never caring what it cost, just like the now defunct Swedish car maker, Saab. If Microsoft makes some good hardware and for once pays attention to its app store it can become a brand that does not have huge numbers like Xiaomi but a loyal fan following like Apple or erstwhile Nokia.

Finally to the other gadget department, wearables. The ideas like HoloLens are cool but the products will take almost decade to achieve popularity. Microsoft’s first attempt at wearables (Microsoft Band) has bombed and there is no chance of recovery. Good things might happen to Microsoft. For example it is financing Cyanogen. The last time Cyanogen was financed by someone they provided their OS to it. Referring to the time Micromax tied up with Cyanogen.

Summary: Microsoft becoming cool, not anytime soon.

'Cool' is a subjective term and hence can have different meaning to different people.
To me, cool in technology is something with freedom of customization, that's why OpenSource softwares are cool. 😀
Another criteria for cool (as per me), is something 'new and unique' , and given the potential that MS has, it can go ahead with amazing projects, only problem is, they don't take risks which are not profit oriented, whereas on the other hand, Google does so, and hence is cool, (eg. Project Loon). Again what is cool for me could be lame for someone else, but still, as said in above post, not anytime soon 😉

Well, 'open sourcing' doesn't alway mean that it'll be popular among the developers. iOS and OSX are both closed source and yet they continue to get huge number of developers to build apps on the platform. Plus - iOS and OSX make more money to the developers than other rival operating systems.

Satya Swaroop Dash

If Microsoft makes some good hardware and for once pays attention to its app store it can become a brand that does not have huge numbers like Xiaomi but a loyal fan following like Apple or erstwhile Nokia.

Agreed. I think Microsoft's going to make strategic investments in the open source domain as well as continue to develop their Lumia range of devices. Lumia has the potential to be cool - but Microsoft will have to rethink its marketing strategy. The 'cool kids' will soon get bored of Androids and the iOS. No wonder Microsoft hopped on to making investments in custom Android ROM and has already began releasing software for Android. Outlook for Android is already being considered as the 'best app for gmail' on Android!

Satya Swaroop Dash

The ideas like HoloLens are cool but the products will take almost decade to achieve popularity.

I doubt it will take a decade. They already have a hot selling gaming platform in the form of XBOX. I won't be surprised if they get developers to build games that make some smart use of HoloLens. That could be a game changer and serious threat to Sony.

I believe things would change drastically in the next 2-3 years. For decade is a century in the technology world 😀 .

Kaustubh Katdare

Well, 'open sourcing' doesn't alway mean that it'll be popular among the developers. iOS and OSX are both closed source and yet they continue to get huge number of developers to build apps on the platform. Plus - iOS and OSX make more money to the developers than other rival operating systems.

Really ? LOL!
Linaro, XDA Developers, SUSE, Red Hat, Intel, AMD, Texas Instruments, Free Scale, Free Electrons, Renesas, Google, Samsung, IBM, Cisco, Qualcomm, Nvidia, ARM, Broadcomm, Wolfson, Valve, QT, etc. are contributing in opensource development and you're saying 'opensource' is not popular among developers ?
These company's developers are not earning more than iOS and OS X 'App developers' ? Nice claim pal! Keep it up 😀

It depend what customer you are. If you are for office solutions/PC games/XBox stuff Microsoft is already cool. Next thing is Microsoft HoloLens, which looks quite cool.

Abhishek Rawal

I do respect proprietary softwares when it comes to 'Games' genre though, as it's one hella tough shit they're doing.

So you are saying, building OS and office solutions are simple.
Their integration is amazingly seamless.
Yes, everybody loves to have control over what they are purchasing. But these two things are different one player build base modal not to open source and other does.
In current market, No matter what Microsoft does, they aren't taking the market of server side (Linux) and DB (Oracle) , and no matter other player innovate, give free stuff or open source no one seems to compete MS office solutions.

I scrapped Windows and switched to Ubuntu for development. Because it is fast, reliable and never crashes. I don't know why but Windows OS is slow like hell for dev.