Mark Pickavance analyses the direction that Microsoft is taking and if this will deliver a future for its tablet environment
With Microsoft offering a zero-dollar pricing for Windows 8 on 9" devices and smaller, many are wondering if its vision of muscling into Apple and Google's mobile platform market might just be possible. But before that can happen, Microsoft's tablet interface and apps have numerous other hurdles to overcome.
Return To Sender
After lots of initial blustering from Microsoft after the launch of Windows 8 and the departure of its chief architect, Steven Sinofsky, the general view projected by the company was that the tiled interface and full-screen apps probably went a bit too far.
In hindsight, selling an OS whose major feature is touch when 99% of the systems out there don't have that technology seems broadly bonkers now. And the fact that touch and full-screen applications aren't really suitable for typical desktop PC work, Microsoft's traditional homeland, obviously didn't register at its decision making level sufficiently.
As with Vista before, Microsoft needed to move smoothly from 'This is the best version of Windows yet' to 'We've made a horrible mistake, and we'll fix it ASAP'.
But the reality is that Windows 10 will turn up three years after Windows 8 launched, which is roughly the time it was always destined to arrive.
As with any battle lost, the losing side retrieves what resources and honour it has left and retreats to fight another day.
That's exactly what Microsoft did, deciding what parts of Windows 8 were worth hanging on to and those bits it's less keen on saving. Very early on in this process, Microsoft made the call that it wouldn't ditch the Metro (Modern, Win8, whatever...) applications and their associated interface; instead with Windows 10 it would try to make these things relevant to the desktop user.
But to truly understand how they can turn this around, it's important to appreciate why this solution hasn't chimed with tablet owners and software developers.
Why Microsoft Isn't Big In Tablets
With the Metro interface and tablet systems in the wild for more than two years, it must worry Microsoft that they've not been a huge success. Is this a brand issue or is there a deeper problem?
Here are just some of the reasons that Windows isn't punching its weight in the tablet or phone market.
The Microsoft Store
Very early on when it first appeared on the Lumia phone range, I noticed that the entire structure of the Metro application store seemed (and I'm being kind here) amateur.
Not only was it difficult to find things, it was also hard to find out what the actual apps did or really any solid information about them. It was assumed by many, me included, that when this progressed to Windows 8 it would radically improve, along with a massive expansion in available applications.
It's better on Windows 8.1, but it's not as slick as either of the main competing platforms, and it still isn't easy to find the important applications you want.
And, a bit unexpectedly, it isn't the same store for Windows 8 as it is on the Windows phones or the Xbox One, confusingly.
Microsoft has promised to fix this, but surely unification should have been a priority from the outset?
According to the latest figures available, there are currently some 585,000 apps in the combined phone and Windows 8 stores. However, that number gets rapidly whittled down when you consider the amount of overlap between the two, multiple releases of the same app (as in 'lite' and 'pro' versions), and a large number of either abandoned or never downloaded apps.
There are roughly 200,000 Windows 8 Metro apps, which compares with about 1.5 million Android apps and about 1.4 million iOS ones. That's a big deficit, but Microsoft users would probably be happy if they had a solid selection of good-quality apps. Unfortunately, they don't.
One website covering the woes of the Microsoft store in August 2014 described it as "a Cesspool of Scams", where numerous applications purported to be legitimate wares were designed purely to entrap the unwary.
What made this worse was Microsoft's very odd choice to initially ignore this proliferation and the number of critical apps that aren't on this platform that users would invariably search for.
Since then, Microsoft has made a greater effort to remove scam applications, though why it allowed it to get in such a mess it's never attempted to explain.
The Microsoft store and the vast majority of contained apps aren't going to convince anyone to ditch Android or iOS, at this time.
iOS And Android
The tablet market was created by Apple, when it convinced a huge number of people that $499-$849 was a reasonable price for a computer built from phone parts that didn't come with a keyboard.
After a few years of total domination that, along with the iPhone, propelled Apple to be on the most profitable companies on the planet, Google came along with Android and made tablets more generally affordable.
Since then, Apple's market share has dwindled somewhat, and Android is now the dominant force, since it delivered a good app selection and a much greater range of hardware choices.
The problem these competitors represent is that they very effectively throw a blanket over the tablet market, providing a solution for almost every potential customer out there. Apple is dominant in a certain affluent sector and has even made some headway into the business sector, where BYOD (bring your own device) has made the iPad a supported device on many corporate networks. Android, in its many varied brand forms covers just about everything else, from ultra-cheap almost disposable mini-tablets to 28" touch monitors. There is truly something for everyone and at whatever price they can pay.
With two such powerful companies occupying tablet space, is there really room for a third player that isn't just for niche customers?
Microsoft Surface
Traditionally, all new Windows releases are very much a partnership between those who make PCs and Microsoft, through a mutual appreciation society, because in the past new Windows meant new a PC to run it. Those that sold hardware usually made a killing on replacement systems and upgrades.
With Windows 8, things were different, because Microsoft decided with Surface to compete directly with its partners, who weren't exactly thrilled at this development. Logically, PC makers decided to look after their own and didn't promote touch devices, and they also pandered to the user instinct to stick with Windows 7.
Their concerns about Surface were generally unfounded, because selling it was into a market that was highly price sensitive. In this context, the Surface seemed both expensive and rather limited as both a tablet and a PC.
What made things worse was the curious choice to make the entry-level versions ARM-based, stripping them of their full PC status. What really confused some people who bought the original Surface and Surface 2 machines is that Windows 8 on them had a desktop, even if you couldn't install any desktop applications on them.
Microsoft resolutely refuses to talk sales numbers for Surface, but it took a $900 million write-off on stock for the first batch in its accounts. The second release didn't make things substantially better, even if the machines generally got a better reception. And since then, it canned the Surface Mini just 48 hours before launching it, has released a high-end Surface Pro 3 and officially ended the company's excursion into ARM technology on tablets.
While describing the Surface Pro 3 as a success, Microsoft still won't actually substantiate that claim with any concrete sales figures. And it's also admitted that the ARM-based hardware it's sold won't be invited to make the move to Windows 10 along with its x86 products.
Prior to the launch of Surface, analysts saw Microsoft gouging a 20% or greater stake in the tablet market in the first three years, but the reality is that in 2014, Windows tablets made by all hardware makers represented just 4.6% of the overall market. These are the sort of numbers that destroyed BlackBerry in the smartphone market, and its percentage of the phone sales is even lower.
The currently optimistic projections are that Windows tablets might reach 11.4% by 2018, a full six years after Windows 8 first launched.
Surface was meant to be the flagship product to usher in a new direction for Microsoft, and instead what it achieved was to annoy its partners and demonstrate it didn't really understand the tablet market.
Windows 8 Public Perception
Even before Windows 8 was officially launched, it was taking heavy flak from some quarters, mostly for the tiled menu and touch focus. What really annoyed many users is that Microsoft released a Public Preview ostensibly to get user feedback. Once it got that, it then entirely ignored it.
People didn't like the Charms bar, the lack of a Start menu and a whole slew of other things, but they all made it into the release version of Windows 8 regardless and almost entirely unaltered from the preview.
At the time, the company made the argument that it was a radical departure that people would learn to love, yet few did. Instead, Windows 8 mostly got the sort of bad press that is difficult to shrug off in the opinion-driven world of technology.
Under its much criticised skin, Windows 8 isn't that different from 7, which was itself a reworking of Vista. The difference is that generally people didn't like two of those operating systems, and they refused to buy into almost any aspect of Windows 8.
Once that mud stuck, however hard Microsoft scrubbed, it wouldn't come off, and eventually even it had to accept that Windows 8 wasn't popular. That failure tarnished Windows as a brand and also undermined Microsoft's ambitions for the tablet and mobile market.
Google's multi-pronged attack on Microsoft's entire model has really started to hit home in the past couple of years. Its strategy is entirely based on distributing its services as widely as possible, and it's become exceptionally good at it.
This has effectively moved the technology goalposts, because where five years ago a popular software platform needed to run on Windows, these days it can be completely platform agnostic. Microsoft's whole model was based on controlling Windows, because without that you couldn't run the apps you needed -chief among them its own Office suite.
Proof of how much these things have altered can be seen in the dramatic growth of Chromebooks, especially for educational use. It was always argued that Linux would never succeed in the desktop and laptop market, because these systems could never be 'Windows'. But that missed a critical point, because what people use computers for today is to access the internet and its services (often Google), and that function is no longer the preserve of Windows or Intel's x86 architecture.
The reality check for Microsoft is that while many people still buy Windows machines, out of habit and availability, they then use them to access Google's services. Therefore, a tablet is defined by how well it gives you access to those services, even if Microsoft has competing versions that aren't as popular.
Timing
I was one of the people who suggested that the iPad would fail, because from my perspective I couldn't envisage people paying that sort of money for a very limited device. I'd also factored in the tablets that Microsoft pushed a decade earlier, which had stotally failed.
But what Apple got so right was the timing, because the arrival of the iPad coincided with a massive expansion of internet consumption, for which these devices were ideal.
Having Apple create the market. Android tablet makers have been able to access those people who wanted similar functionality but who wouldn't pay the Apple premium.
Had Microsoft entered the market earlier, possibly about the time that Android did, it might command a bigger slice. But by the time Surface arrived, the growth in tablet sales was already flattening out, and last year Apple iPad sales actually declined.
When any market is undergoing massive expansion, there are niches for many different products, like the 8-bit computer market of the 80s. The tablet market has now matured, so breaking into it was always going to be more difficult, since buyers are now on their second, third or more devices.
The mistake Microsoft made was actually in respect of its smartphones. Had it developed the Windows Phone 7 technology a couple of years earlier, it would have migrated it to the tablet quicker, and it might not have missed the critical part of the tablet growth curve.
Being late to this party and dropping the mobile ball entirely is what it's paying for now.
Not Done Yet
Given the very modest market penetration that Microsoft has achieved, one would reasonably think that it would reconsider its overall tablet strategy.
Yet you only have to look at Bing and how that's entirely failed to usurp the search engine market, despite the money thrown at it, to realise that Microsoft doesn't do retreat well.
With Windows 10, it's doubling down, not only in releasing another touch-based OS, but also with its plans to unify its app store and deliver a common core across all its devices - PC and mobile.
That makes Microsoft seem very single minded, but it's also hedged some of those bets by supporting both iOS and Android with its mobile Office suite.
At stake here is the continued relevance of Microsoft in the future, and at this point it looks very much like the company is willing to sacrifice Windows or at least the profit it makes to achieve that.
It's a massive gamble, though clearly some at the company must believe it has a chance to turn around the company's fortunes if it only sticks at it.
Why It Might Succeed
Actually, at this point it has failed, so really what we're talking about is the likelihood of a Lazarus-like return from the dead. There are some positive signs, but do these actually constitute the start of a turnaround?
Since Microsoft stopped charging hardware makers for Windows 8 on smaller devices, the number available has skyrocketed. Today, it is possible to get a 10" tablet with 32GB of storage running Windows 8.1 on an Intel x86 Atom processor for £150 or less.
When you factor in that these come with a single-user, year-long subscription to Microsoft Office 365 Personal and 1TB of OneDrive storage, then that is one hell of a deal. Incidentally, there's a trick where you can buy a one-month subscription to Office Home (five user), and it will stack on Office Personal for just £7.99, making this an even more amazing offer.
When you combine that sort of aggressive marketing with Windows 10 being free for all home Windows 7 and 8.x users (not corporations, though), then suddenly the picture looks much healthier. Or at least it does in terms of the number of potential systems that Microsoft might exploit with its tablet ecosystem.
With more systems out there and some significant effort going into its software development tools, Microsoft should be well placed to encourage the quality of Metro apps that users might reasonably embrace.
Where Surface was aimed at matching Apple, these new cheap devices are toe to toe with Android, except they also can run x86 applications, which might be critical for some users.
However, as Microsoft pushed heavily with the ARM-based Windows RT machines, surely the point of these devices is that they don't need the crutch of Windows desktop apps, as the touch tablet environment is what they're really built to support.
If lots of these devices get sold but very few people use the x86 capabilities because the screens are too small and they're not touch friendly, then that's not the victory Microsoft is looking for. Delivering even more devices for people to access Google services isn't a positive result for the company or its app ecosystem.
Why It Might Fail
The worst scenarios for any person or company are those where the destiny is in the hands of others, and the future success of Microsoft's tablet strategy probably falls into that category.
For it to succeed from here, probably both Apple and Google need to make a disastrous mistake that would actually dwarf the one Microsoft made with Windows 8.
As the minor share holder in the tablet market, it's not well placed to make headway, as the two other parties aren't going to make it easy for them.
Apple, with the possible exception of a few apps like iTunes and Safari on the PC, doesn't support any platforms other than its own, so many of their homegrown tools are unlikely to appear on either Android or the Windows tablet platform any time soon.
Google isn't quite as isolationist, but it doesn't offer its apps on Microsoft's mobile platform, and it seems unlikely to ever embrace Metro.
It can make that choice, because it succeeds on the Windows platform without needing Metro apps and takes the view that if people want its services, they always have web options.
Microsoft, however, can't be so choosy, and the touch version of Office arrived first on Apple iOS and then on Android, but it has yet to appear on its own tablet platform, oddly enough.
The Office division is therefore being very business orientated in supporting the competing platforms ahead of Microsoft's own. That hints, perhaps, that it's not 100% confident that much of a market for the Metro version exists at this time.
That lack of confidence also extends into the other parts of Microsoft, if rumours suggesting that it's done a deal with Samsung to put its apps onto the next Galaxy phone are true. If Microsoft software is available on Android and iOS, then what is the compelling reason to go to its own mobile platform?
In a desperate attempt to get its products in front of people, it might be undermining its own endeavours elsewhere. If it doesn't believe wholeheartedly in its future plans, why would anyone else buy into it?
Final Thoughts
As we progress towards Windows 10, there is clearly some nervousness about the whole Metro side of the Microsoft equation and if it will ever fly.
At this time the majority of users of Windows 8 on the desktop don't use these features at all, and the indications are that they wouldn't even if the quality and selection available were improved.
Windows 10 will introduce Metro-style apps to the Windows interface, allowing them to be rescaled like a desktop app, but will that make them any more popular? I doubt it, because desktop users inherently don't need them and have both web-based and proper x86 apps to use instead.
Therefore the only potential salvation must come from tablet and phone users, as they're more likely to use them. For this to gain any momentum, the quality of the apps available needs to radically rise, and the support of the most popular titles on Android and iOS is critical.
This could make the upcoming Microsoft Build conference and the story it tells developers the pivot point around which the fortunes of this technology will rotate.
Microsoft has a reputation among developers that stems from the many years when the company called the shots on API and SDK releases, ignoring entirely the wishes of those in the development community adversely impacted by constant changes.
With Windows' entirely dominant ecosystem, it could afford to be cavalier with its developers' wishes, but the boot is most certainly on the other foot now.
Without the support of developers its previously annoyed, customers its irritated and, ironically, competitors its previously tried to crush, it's almost certainly stuffed.
On the balance of probability, that would make its Metro model nothing more than another technical curiosity in the history of personal computing, rather than the foundations of another Microsoft dynasty,