7 Mistakes Microsoft Made In 2013
This was a pretty good year for Microsoft with some big customer wins. But these seven missteps were just dumb.
![](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt69509c9116440be8/blt35655dc018dfa2d8/64cb573fc94a7bfd78fdeb28/Ballmer.jpg?width=700&auto=webp&quality=80&disable=upscale)
Hey, Nobody's Perfect
If you're looking in Microsoft's rear mirror, you could describe what you see in a whole bunch of ways. One adjective you probably won't use for the company's 2013 is "quiet."
It was a busy year even by Microsoft's standards. From Windows 8.1 to Xbox One to the Nokia device business acquisition to Office 365's continued growth to Steve Ballmer's (somewhat) surprising retirement announcement -- not to mention that whole NSA spying thing -- it seemed each week brought a new wave of headlines out of Redmond.
There was good news. Office 365 had some big customer wins and seemed to solidify the future of the Office franchise. Xbox One appears to be a hit. The Azure cloud is expanding globally. The Surface 2 and Surface 2 Pro are sold out, and even if there's some inventory management magic behind the demand, it still makes a good headline for the Monday morning PR roundup. So 2013 wasn't a lousy year for Microsoft.
But, hey, let's face it. It's more fun to pick apart a company's shakier decisions and flat-out mistakes. So that's what we're here to do.
"Frustration" might be a more apt term than "mistake" in some cases here -- as in frustration with Microsoft's apparent belief that a Microsoft customer can't also be a Google or Apple customer. Google doesn't mind acknowledging that the competition exists. "In the next couple of weeks, you'll be able to download a new version of the Google Search app on iPhone and iPad," the company wrote in a recent blog post touting the company's Hummingbird update. "So if you tell your Nexus 7, 'OK, Google. Remind me to buy olive oil at Safeway,' when you walk into the store with your iPhone, you'll get a reminder." See that? Dogs and cats, living together. (No human sacrifice or mass hysteria, either.)
A related frustration is the 2013 marketing push that insists the world craves "one experience" for everything we do, as if we were living in a dystopian novel. And while we're on the topic of frustrations, Microsoft needs to stop communicating with consumers and businesses as if they were investors and board members. "Devices and services" might perfectly describe Microsoft's vision of its future self, but when was the last time anyone said, "I think I'm going to go buy some devices and services today"? Apple, by comparison, doesn't sell devices and services. It sells iPhones and music (and other stuff).
Sometimes frustrations morph into tangible mistakes -- pretending, for example, that Office devotees don't use iPads, a head-in-sand strategy if there ever was one. As our own Michael Endler reported in April:
Forrester analyst Dave Johnson told InformationWeek in February that Microsoft could reap greater returns if it stops protecting Windows and starts treating Office as a multi-OS platform. In an interview conducted just before the Outlook RT rumors hit, Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi offered similar sentiments, saying that because Office for iOS represents such a massive opportunity, it is 'only a question of time' until Redmond finally makes its move.
The time for that move was 2013. Alas, it didn't happen, so it's on our list.
Not on our list: There's a whole lot of wait-and-see stuff happening in the Microsoft universe at the moment, from the ongoing search for Ballmer's successor to the Nokia acquisition to the next evolutions of Windows 8.x. It's too early to pass sound judgment with so much to be determined on those fronts -- the CEO seat perhaps most of all. We'll have to revisit those at the end of 2014.
In the meantime, click the image above to dive into a slideshow on last year's mistakes. Got your own bones to pick with Microsoft's moves in 2013? Let's hear them in the comments.
Kevin Casey is a writer based in North Carolina who covers technology affecting small and midsized businesses.
Microsoft finally released an iOS version of Office in 2013. Well, sort of, except not really. It released Office Mobile for iPhone, with a catch: You must be an Office 365 subscriber. The Office 365 requirement shouldn't be too surprising; Microsoft's not a nonprofit. But a bona fide Office version for iPad is long overdue. Microsoft might have its reasons, but pretending the iPad doesn't exist is a misguided solution to its late start in the tablet game, especially when it could provide a significant new revenue stream. Why give iPad devotees another reason to try Google Apps?
We can't fault a Microsoft exec for shilling Microsoft products. But if you still pretend in 2013 that people don't mix and match hardware and applications from multiple vendors, you're living in the past. (See also: Office for iPad.) A recent Windows blog post plugging Windows 8.1's wide release, for example, said: "From SkyDrive to Bing to Internet Explorer to Skype and more, devices running Windows and Windows Phone make it easy to arrange it all around you -- be all work, all play, or both at the same time."
In the real world, that would more likely read: "From Dropbox to Google to Firefox to (hey we'll give Microsoft this one) Skype and more..."
Do people use Explorer? Of course. And SkyDrive is a good option in the cloud file sharing and storage space. Bing? No comment. The mistake is that Microsoft's public posturing insists there's no alternative, that mobility didn't explode long before Windows 8 arrived, and that consumers (the market Microsoft investors now crave) are loyal to a single technology company.
It's tough to fault Microsoft for the publicity it has put behind Windows XP's so-called end-of-life date in April 2014.(Microsoft probably would get raked over the coals if it didn't do enough to get the word out.) But this? Yikes. File it under "the downside of infographics." Seriously, what are those silhouette figures doing? As Paul Thurrott of WinSuperSite.com wrote: "This is terrible."
There's some real upside in Microsoft consolidating its platforms for development efficiency and agility. But who wrote this "one experience for everything in your life" mantra, George Orwell? It seems like we're buying a dystopian nightmare, not computers and software.
Moreover, where's the clamor for this single experience? Do users really want their Xbox experience and their work PC experience to look and feel the same? This seems more like misinterpretation of consumerization than a solution to an actual consumer problem.
Steve Ballmer has earned the right to write a legacy story. He's helmed the tech company since 2000 and is the only person to hold its CEO title other than Bill Gates. He has been with the company (which made him a billionaire, by the way) since 1980. So a little blend of chest beating and nostalgia on the way out the door is part of the retirement package.
Then again, it sure seems as if Ballmer and company have already decided the company's future path for the next CEO. Does it want a leader or a caretaker? Take a look at Ballmer's parting letter to shareholders, or the strategic rationale behind the Nokia device business acquisition, as examples. It seems like Microsoft has its plan and is sticking to it, leaving little room for new strategic perspective and innovation from its next CEO. If that's the case, what's the point of a leadership change?
Surface RT wasn't a bad idea -- just a bad branding decision. There's certainly a market for lower-priced tablets (see also: Android) than the $499 iPad and the $899 Surface Pro. Microsoft dumped the RT name, not the OS itself, when it launched the second generation of Surface devices this year -- an overdue move. (Yes, we're getting on Microsoft's case for righting a wrong.) In general, it seems high time to say goodbye to the days of selling software versions as brands. Surface was a step in the right direction. Surface RT was at best meaningless and at worst downright confusing.
Wearable technology might be the next best thing, but this might be taking it too far. As one PR person said on Twitter: "There's no way a fancy bra is going to stop me from bingeing on chocolate when I'm an emotional wreck. Or any time for that matter."
Wearable technology might be the next best thing, but this might be taking it too far. As one PR person said on Twitter: "There's no way a fancy bra is going to stop me from bingeing on chocolate when I'm an emotional wreck. Or any time for that matter."
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