Is Microsoft losing their edge to competitors?

[Reasonable]

noslodecoy said:

ssj12 said:

xman said:
You make some valid points, but IE is still the dominate browser, Windows still is on 95% of he PC's, Apple owns MP3s but MAc is only on 5% of machines. Google owns search engines. But Sony vs MS at the moment MS has sold more Xbox 360 than Sony PS3.

I use a windows based PS and a Mac, browse with firefox and have an Ipod but I also own a 360. I will give them some credit the 360 is a fantastic gaming machine with a great library of games.

 

according to W3schools its at about 92% for OS

2008	WinXP	W2000	Win98	Vista	W2003	Linux	Mac
August	73.9%	2.4%	0.2%	12.5%	1.9%	3.9%	4.9%

 

And for browsers its even less

2008	IE7	IE6	IE5	Fx	Moz	S	O
August	26.0%	24.5%	0.1%	43.7%	0.5%	2.6%	2.1%

 

Even on hit links IE has slipped to 72%

The statistics above are extracted from W3Schools' log-files, but we are also monitoring other sources around the Internet to assure the quality of these figures

Of course the results are going to be skewed.  For someone who mods a website that does sales analysis, you should know better than to post that data.  Afterall, webdevelopers are much more likely to use Firefox for it's add-ons.

Here's a slightly better link.  That's 74% IE.

 

@Fei-Hung

I agree that MS is in a slump.  With that said, I don't think it's for the reasons you mentioned (inacuracies aside).  The Xbox 360 is a very small portion of the company, and is practically a non-factor.  As many have mentioned, their flagships are their OS and Office.  By this time next year, I'm willing to bet that most XP users will have moved on to Vista.  A lot has been fixed in the OS with SP1 and driver support has increased.

In the end I guess it depends on what you think Microsoft is.  Currently, the only things threatening the company are Apple, Linux and itself.  Google and Sony are not direct competition with their core business at this time.  That's why Microsoft created the Xbox and MSN/Live search, to beat the competition before they have the chance to compete.

 

I'd say MS  by their own actions is more worried about Google than you imply.  They don't like the fact they are building out essentially a free Office suite of programs and I suspect they're not too pleased that Google has added a Browser to the suite recently as well.  I doubt they were so fired up about nabbing Yahoo to beat Apple.  In fact their big competitors I'd say are Oracle (apps/database), IBM (apps/database), Google (apps and threat of future OS) and to a smaller extent (by marketshare) Apple (OS).

In some ways MS has surprised me with its Zune, Xbox, etc. efforts.  Clearly MS want to promote DirectX based devices and want to get into the living room in the same way they are so pervelant on PCs and the Office (be it at home or work) but these moves still surprised me.  At first I thought they'd simply try and ensure that console designers came to them for DirectX and SW but it seems they have different designs.  What I find strange is that they've put themselves in the position of being seen as super dominant in their core fields but the 'poor relation' in others and entered big frays across many diverse battlegrounds - something that is general considered a poor idea if you really feel your core business is under threat.