August 15, 2014 at 23:17Why didn't Windows RT for tablets take off?
More than two years ago, a survey was posted on Habr. What percentage of the market can a tablet on Windows RT take in the next 2 years? . The post was published on July 1, 2012. When answering a question, the audience was divided, but more than half chose the answer - Less than 10%.
During these two years, the production of tablets on Windows RT was abandoned:
Reduced production
Now the manufacturers mentioned above either completely abandoned the release of tablets for Windows RT, or release them on Windows 8 x86 architecture.
Current market share of Windows RT tablets
According to the report on the use of mobile operating systems for the second quarter of 2014 by Strategy Analytics , the share of Microsoft OS in the world is 2.7%. The report indicates the operating systems for smartphones. Smartphones are cheaper, and buyers buy them first. Therefore, even if this figure is doubled, i.e. for every smartphone sold, there is one tablet with Windows RT, this will be 5.24% . For comparison, the share of Android devices is 84.6%.
In Russia, Surface RT tablets are sold by only two retail chains.
There are enough opinions on the network why Microsoft did not succeed with the mobile OS. Some scold the new interface. Others did not find the killer features. I will express my personal opinion, not claiming to be the Absolute of truth. 1. Microsoft itself has not figured out why it needs Windows RT, and what it is. Let 's go to the Windows RT 8.1 page : questions and answers . Question - What is the difference between Windows RT 8.1 and Windows 8.1?
Not a sophisticated user who is friends with logic, it will become clear. Windows RT 8.1 is an unfinished OS, it does not have Windows Media Player, there is no remote control via RDP, and classic programs cannot be installed. Moreover, not all equipment is compatible - “Only printers, mice, keyboards, and other devices with the“ Designed for Windows RT ”logo can be installed.
Now let's try to determine “Which computer to choose: running Windows RT 8.1 or Windows 8.1?”
And Microsoft will redirect us to the address - http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/windows-pcs.
Where it was expected to see a set of questions, answering which Microsoft would recommend choosing what we need. But no, there is no wizard, there is only a list of available models. And it is not clear Windows RT 8.1 or Windows 8.1, is installed on these devices.
Please, if Microsoft employees read this post, write when and in what cases you should choose a tablet for an ordinary user under Windows RT 8.1 or Windows 8.1, or provide a link to the answer.
2. The crisis of ideas
You can continue to continue. Microsoft's whole life is based on borrowing ideas from outside, it is either the whole purchase of companies along with intellectual property, or partnership. Now, apparently, unfortunately Microsoft does not have a new startup of a mobile OS.
3. Dishonesty
Microsoft almost always led backstage games. The first high-profile case, squeezing Navigator Netscape from the browser market. Microsoft has integrated its Internet Explorer into the OS. This led to a lawsuit against Microsoft by the US Department of Justice antitrust division.
Then there were proceedings in the European Union. Remember the Windows 7 N edition for the European Union? Without a built-in browser, player, and media center.
The structure of the MS Office formats doc, xls, ppt, Microsoft has not yet been fully published, thereby significantly restricting competition. Then came the open Microsoft Office Open XML File Format. The problem was resolved, but here Microsoft's style remained. “Although Open XML became the ECMA standard in 2006 and the ISO standard in 2008, Microsoft itself has not yet offered a full-fledged implementation of this standard in its original form. Instead, Microsoft Office applications saved documents in a format called Transitional Open XML (“Transitional Open XML”), which is a version of the ISO standard designed to “provide a transitional period when users migrate from existing binary document formats (to Open XML) could preserve the inherited functions and full-fledged work with old formats. ” Incomplete implementation of the standard was bad news for developers of competing packages, including the popular LibreOffice, who hoped that switching to XML formats would help improve compatibility with Office documents. In order to fully support the transitional version of the Transitional Open XML format, competing products had to implement all the inherited Office features, and this required almostillegal reverse engineering of Microsoft proprietary products ”- the source of Office 2013 will eventually maintain its own and competing standards The
arsenal of old tricks has ended. Compatibility with old programs, they actually are not needed. A new type of device involves a new principle of interaction, so old programs simply correspond with the new Android and iOS platforms. Although here Microsoft is crushing - Microsoft makes $ 2 billion a year on Android .
4. A tablet, a smartphone, this is not a DESKTOP COMPUTER, but consumer electronics
Microsoft is not a company, nor a corporation, it is a whole empire to make money. For comfortable and safe operation, with Windows OS the user is forced to buy a lot of third-party software. ANTI-VIRUS, really IT technology for its decades have not been able to achieve protection against viruses? For some reason, Android for its modest years got rid of this problem, but Windows does not. If you listen to the mainvirus writerdefender of the country of Eugene Kaspersky, then under Android now +100500 viruses, as well as under iOS. But strange as it may seem, to protect your Android device, it’s enough just to prohibit installing applications not from the official market, do not download files with the .apk extension, read the list of permissions for each installed application. I have been using a Chinese Android phone, stuffed with a bunch of spyware from the Chinese government, for more than 2 years, I installed many programs, but I did not catch a single virus. WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?
And you also need to call the wizard to install, configure, clean your computer from viruses, trojans, temporary files that fill the hard drive. In general, a housewife just can not figure it out. Therefore, when users saw the first iPhone, everyone blew the roof. And there was a reason. Despite my prejudiced contempt for apple products, my deepest respect to Steve Jobs, for which he showed a smartphone WITHOUT STYLUS. Without the iPhone, we would still be poked at the screen with a stylus, as in the era of Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile was the epitome of the PC in miniature, it was called Pocket PC. I hope the main idea was conveyed to the reader. Smartphone, tablet, these are NOT COMPUTERS. This is not the cornerstone device for all tasks. This is part of consumer electronics (like a TV, stove, electric kettle, etc.). If before PC was the main device for accessing information, processing, now it’s not. Now we are doing some things on the smartphone, others on the tablet. More new devices will appear, and we’ll take them the same. Now it doesn’t matter where, and with what help we work with information. A new concept of data processing, we’ll move on to it without any problems. And Microsoft, and rushes with the old idea of a PERSONAL COMPUTER installed inred corner .
Total
Gathering the first lines of this post there were ideas to correct the situation, such as - and suddenly Microsoft will make a new OS server and client ABSOLUTELY FREE with FREE CAL LICENSES. And it will also make Windows an Open Source project. And then all the other players will leave the race. By the end of the post, the absurdity of this step became clear, Microsoft will never do this. Or Microsoft will hire super brilliant programmers, and everything will be cool. But none of this will happen. The share of Android will continue to grow, the share of iOS will grow due to a decrease in other platforms and Windows Phone. Between Android and iOS, a certain percentage will be established, constant for a long time. Because it already depends not on technological advantage, but on the division of people into different social groups. And the ratio will change only in case of change,
So the PC era will end. This will not happen immediately, and not quickly.
extracurricular reading
PS The latest statistics reports on smartphones: in Russia and not only .
The request is again negative, write at least the reasons.
During these two years, the production of tablets on Windows RT was abandoned:
- Dell - Dell discontinues Windows RT tablets
- Samsung - Samsung stops selling tablets on Windows RT
- Acer - Acer does not see the point in Windows 8 RT, but is going to release Iconia A3
- ASUS - ASUS abandons Windows RT
- HP - HP refuses to release ARM devices on Windows RT
Reduced production
Now the manufacturers mentioned above either completely abandoned the release of tablets for Windows RT, or release them on Windows 8 x86 architecture.
Current market share of Windows RT tablets
According to the report on the use of mobile operating systems for the second quarter of 2014 by Strategy Analytics , the share of Microsoft OS in the world is 2.7%. The report indicates the operating systems for smartphones. Smartphones are cheaper, and buyers buy them first. Therefore, even if this figure is doubled, i.e. for every smartphone sold, there is one tablet with Windows RT, this will be 5.24% . For comparison, the share of Android devices is 84.6%.
In Russia, Surface RT tablets are sold by only two retail chains.
There are enough opinions on the network why Microsoft did not succeed with the mobile OS. Some scold the new interface. Others did not find the killer features. I will express my personal opinion, not claiming to be the Absolute of truth. 1. Microsoft itself has not figured out why it needs Windows RT, and what it is. Let 's go to the Windows RT 8.1 page : questions and answers . Question - What is the difference between Windows RT 8.1 and Windows 8.1?
What is the difference between Windows RT 8.1 and Windows 8.1?
Not a sophisticated user who is friends with logic, it will become clear. Windows RT 8.1 is an unfinished OS, it does not have Windows Media Player, there is no remote control via RDP, and classic programs cannot be installed. Moreover, not all equipment is compatible - “Only printers, mice, keyboards, and other devices with the“ Designed for Windows RT ”logo can be installed.
Now let's try to determine “Which computer to choose: running Windows RT 8.1 or Windows 8.1?”
And Microsoft will redirect us to the address - http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/windows-pcs.
Where it was expected to see a set of questions, answering which Microsoft would recommend choosing what we need. But no, there is no wizard, there is only a list of available models. And it is not clear Windows RT 8.1 or Windows 8.1, is installed on these devices.
Please, if Microsoft employees read this post, write when and in what cases you should choose a tablet for an ordinary user under Windows RT 8.1 or Windows 8.1, or provide a link to the answer.
2. The crisis of ideas
- in 1980, Microsft bought QDOS from Seattle Computer Products, followed by MS-DOS.
- The roots of the well-known Microsoft SQL Server DBMS come from Sybase.
- In 2002, Microsoft acquired Navision a / s and released Microsoft Business Solutions - Navision 3.60 - now it is a Microsoft Dynamics NAV CRM system.
- Corporate Social Network - Microsoft buys Yammer for $ 1.2 billion
- Microsoft Visio was also purchased. The first Visio was still 16-bit and worked under Windows 3.11
- For the development of Internet communications Skype was bought
- Virtualization of Microsoft Hyper-V, begins with the acquisition in 2003 of Connectix, the package - VirtualPC.
- Kinect for Microsft created by PrimeSense
You can continue to continue. Microsoft's whole life is based on borrowing ideas from outside, it is either the whole purchase of companies along with intellectual property, or partnership. Now, apparently, unfortunately Microsoft does not have a new startup of a mobile OS.
3. Dishonesty
Microsoft almost always led backstage games. The first high-profile case, squeezing Navigator Netscape from the browser market. Microsoft has integrated its Internet Explorer into the OS. This led to a lawsuit against Microsoft by the US Department of Justice antitrust division.
Then there were proceedings in the European Union. Remember the Windows 7 N edition for the European Union? Without a built-in browser, player, and media center.
The structure of the MS Office formats doc, xls, ppt, Microsoft has not yet been fully published, thereby significantly restricting competition. Then came the open Microsoft Office Open XML File Format. The problem was resolved, but here Microsoft's style remained. “Although Open XML became the ECMA standard in 2006 and the ISO standard in 2008, Microsoft itself has not yet offered a full-fledged implementation of this standard in its original form. Instead, Microsoft Office applications saved documents in a format called Transitional Open XML (“Transitional Open XML”), which is a version of the ISO standard designed to “provide a transitional period when users migrate from existing binary document formats (to Open XML) could preserve the inherited functions and full-fledged work with old formats. ” Incomplete implementation of the standard was bad news for developers of competing packages, including the popular LibreOffice, who hoped that switching to XML formats would help improve compatibility with Office documents. In order to fully support the transitional version of the Transitional Open XML format, competing products had to implement all the inherited Office features, and this required almostillegal reverse engineering of Microsoft proprietary products ”- the source of Office 2013 will eventually maintain its own and competing standards The
arsenal of old tricks has ended. Compatibility with old programs, they actually are not needed. A new type of device involves a new principle of interaction, so old programs simply correspond with the new Android and iOS platforms. Although here Microsoft is crushing - Microsoft makes $ 2 billion a year on Android .
4. A tablet, a smartphone, this is not a DESKTOP COMPUTER, but consumer electronics
Microsoft is not a company, nor a corporation, it is a whole empire to make money. For comfortable and safe operation, with Windows OS the user is forced to buy a lot of third-party software. ANTI-VIRUS, really IT technology for its decades have not been able to achieve protection against viruses? For some reason, Android for its modest years got rid of this problem, but Windows does not. If you listen to the main
And you also need to call the wizard to install, configure, clean your computer from viruses, trojans, temporary files that fill the hard drive. In general, a housewife just can not figure it out. Therefore, when users saw the first iPhone, everyone blew the roof. And there was a reason. Despite my prejudiced contempt for apple products, my deepest respect to Steve Jobs, for which he showed a smartphone WITHOUT STYLUS. Without the iPhone, we would still be poked at the screen with a stylus, as in the era of Windows Mobile. Windows Mobile was the epitome of the PC in miniature, it was called Pocket PC. I hope the main idea was conveyed to the reader. Smartphone, tablet, these are NOT COMPUTERS. This is not the cornerstone device for all tasks. This is part of consumer electronics (like a TV, stove, electric kettle, etc.). If before PC was the main device for accessing information, processing, now it’s not. Now we are doing some things on the smartphone, others on the tablet. More new devices will appear, and we’ll take them the same. Now it doesn’t matter where, and with what help we work with information. A new concept of data processing, we’ll move on to it without any problems. And Microsoft, and rushes with the old idea of a PERSONAL COMPUTER installed inred corner .
Total
Gathering the first lines of this post there were ideas to correct the situation, such as - and suddenly Microsoft will make a new OS server and client ABSOLUTELY FREE with FREE CAL LICENSES. And it will also make Windows an Open Source project. And then all the other players will leave the race. By the end of the post, the absurdity of this step became clear, Microsoft will never do this. Or Microsoft will hire super brilliant programmers, and everything will be cool. But none of this will happen. The share of Android will continue to grow, the share of iOS will grow due to a decrease in other platforms and Windows Phone. Between Android and iOS, a certain percentage will be established, constant for a long time. Because it already depends not on technological advantage, but on the division of people into different social groups. And the ratio will change only in case of change,
So the PC era will end. This will not happen immediately, and not quickly.
extracurricular reading
- Windows OneCore - Microsoft's first step toward creating a universal operating system
- Microsoft can make Windows 9 free
- Surface tablets will start making profits in the near future
- Be sure to read Ford Edsel Brand History
PS The latest statistics reports on smartphones: in Russia and not only .
The request is again negative, write at least the reasons.