You're totally right. When the smartphone market was 1/100th the size it is today, Microsoft was in second place. Never mind that it was a de facto second place because nobody else was competing in the market and that Microsoft never made any money from the venture, that second place is really worth talking up their successful mobile ventures. I owned two of those phones. They were terrible. People bought them because it was the only option outside of RIM.

As for OS X, I said Apple was selling about 12% of computers, not that they had 12% of the market. There is a big difference there. Market share factors in past sales and overall market, current sales show where the future market is headed. The PC market is saturated, OS X/Linux are making incremental growth, and it took MS almost ten years to create an operating system that could get people to upgrade from XP. Yeah, let's rave about how well Redmond has been doing in that arena as well.

Bing has brought MS a little more market but only after they spend a MASSIVE amount of money on the system. You're ignoring that MSN had a similar market share to Bing so it's not as if the new system is stealing a bunch of market from Google. Bing picked up a few points and took MSN's market, that's all.

Jesus, I didn't say it would take ten years for them to be a "where are they now" victim. I said 20 or 30. IBM didn't disappear in a decade. No company that large will fade away in ten years. And it's not as if IBM is out of business, they're doing pretty well. They're simply much smaller than they should be and they're completely out of the public's eye at this point. And Microsoft could be heading down that road unless they right this circling ship.

As for Google and Android fragmentation, that's the best thing Microsoft has going for it right now. If Google doesn't watch themselves, they could collapse the ecosystem as developers get frustrated and bail and customers leaves in droves for more stable platforms.

I forgot about MS's cloud services. They're intriguing. I think that's another place they might succeed moving forward. But Exchange? Really? A system that has been around for at least ten years (from what I can remember) and another system that Google is vigorously attacking with a free alternative. Exchange will stick around for years because it's a great enterprise solution but it's also not a growth market. The same goes for Office. It's a dwindling ecosystem at best as it continues to face threats from free alternatives from Sun and Google.

You seem to think that I feel as if MS is going to fail. I don't think that at all but I DO think it's a possibility. Outside of Xbox, they are late to every new market, have a tendency to throw out half-assed solutions to problems, and generally seem to lack real direction. These problems can be fixed but right now, it doesn't look great for the company. They're four years late to the mobile party, Win 8 looks full of promise but so has every other Microsoft operating system of the past 15 years, and almost all their successful markets are stagnant at best. That's a recipe for a slow burn into obscurity.

It's hard to compare Apple to Nintendo anymore. Seven years ago? Maybe. But now they have profitable divisions in their Mac line, iPhone, iPad, iPod, iTunes Store, and now they're going after school textbooks. Within the year, they're going to start pursuing the smart television market. That is beginning to turn into a pretty well-rounded set of offerings.

Microsoft is definitely more diverse but much of that diversity struggles to earn them any money and a few divisions are giant moneypits. Their "real" money comes from Windows and Office with the Xbox line starting to come around. They're in more danger over the next ten years than Apple. Microsoft's main money makers (outside of Xbox) aren't only saturated, they're in decline. And they will face real competition from iOS/Android over the next few years. In short, if people stop buying computers and start replacing them with tablets (which Microsoft has ZERO stake in at this point), Microsoft could be royally and utterly fucked.

Not that I think they will, but it is a real possibility. Best case scenario is that Microsoft's core businesses will remain stable in the next decade. There is almost zero space for growth.

I have a feeling we could go back and forth on this for months. I will only address your last statement to avoid this.

Microsoft has always been a company that is late to the party. Their whole strategy is based on seeing which market is successful and enter it late, refine the product and outmuscle the competition over a longer period of time by using their resources. Their mobile strategy used to be a mess but for the first time i see them being on a right path there despite lack of marketshare at the moment. Down the road they will have one ecosystem for all platforms opposed to multiple ones that everyone else is doing. Even apple will have a hell of a time trying to merge osx and iOS once that bbecomes thes standard with windows 8 and beyond.

I think microsoft was in much bigger danger of fading away as you said 4 years ago as vista, xbox, phone, zune were massive failures at that time. Ttoday i see this turnaround well on the way and microsoft as a much more focused beast than they ever were.

If you ever bought an Android phone, then you have paid Apple $9 in royalties; and potentially more depending on how court cases go for patent infrindgement.

I never understood this nerd hatred for Apple. I think it has to do with a combination of childish immaturity and that the product is different from their own preference.  "Hey, you play with different toys than I do, well I think your toys suck and mine are better!"

I find it hard to understand too. I think a part of it is humankind's contrary nature. Lets say you find bananas to be ok, but not great. You ask me what I feel about them, and I say that I fucking love them! You believe that that is a overly positive view, and in order to balance that, you take a more negative view than you naturally would. After a little while of saying that you hate bananas, you will eventually come to believe it.