Thursday, February 03, 2005
Great article by John Dvorak
I received my PC Magazine today and it contained a great article on the marketing problems of Microsoft. I think he hit the nail on the head on several items. I'd like to hear what you think.
Here is the article . snipped summary below
This is the problem with pen-based machines. Cut to a speech that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave at the Executives' Club in Chicago last November. Noticing the video camera there, he said:
Why is that video not being broadcast over the wireless network in this room? Why don't you all have [tablet PCs] so that my PowerPoint slides ... the video, the audio is ... captured and you can write a note that says, "Boy, it got a little bit thick here, he wasn't making any sense" and e-mail it to one of your people and they just click on it and it takes them exactly to the PowerPoint and exactly to what I was saying and talking about at the time.
Great vision. Ballmer actually managed to describe a new market. But since when does complaining about something qualify as marketing? Who is to blame for the lack of the pen machines used as Ballmer describes? Microsoft is the current torchbearer for the technology, but as far as marketing is concerned, we are seeing the "do nothing and hope for the best" approach again. I should temper this a bit, since the company is adept at PR. But PR is not marketing, either. It just draws attention to the failures.
Here is the article . snipped summary below
This is the problem with pen-based machines. Cut to a speech that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave at the Executives' Club in Chicago last November. Noticing the video camera there, he said:
Why is that video not being broadcast over the wireless network in this room? Why don't you all have [tablet PCs] so that my PowerPoint slides ... the video, the audio is ... captured and you can write a note that says, "Boy, it got a little bit thick here, he wasn't making any sense" and e-mail it to one of your people and they just click on it and it takes them exactly to the PowerPoint and exactly to what I was saying and talking about at the time.
Great vision. Ballmer actually managed to describe a new market. But since when does complaining about something qualify as marketing? Who is to blame for the lack of the pen machines used as Ballmer describes? Microsoft is the current torchbearer for the technology, but as far as marketing is concerned, we are seeing the "do nothing and hope for the best" approach again. I should temper this a bit, since the company is adept at PR. But PR is not marketing, either. It just draws attention to the failures.
