No doubt the media seems to be riding Microsoft pretty hard these days, especially with the KIN situation which was a divide that should have stayed behind doors at the company. Throw in the supposedly influential, yet sketchy world, of "analysts" and you have a perfect storm of just bad media complete with regurgitation.
The latest comes from 'Gerson Lehrman Group' the "most valuable NYC company no one outside of Wall Street has ever heard of." which means of course you're suppose to take them seriously, even though like most things tied to Wall Street it has the academic research chops of a fourth grade show-n-tell project.
In an "article" (we use the term loosely here) called "Microsoft's Mobile Demise" who's main prediction is that "It is highly likely that after the KIN fiasco, Microsoft will exit the mobile OS space within the next year.", it is put forth that Microsoft blew their cred with KIN and that Windows Phone 7 just won't deliver. Full of assumptions, lack of context, splash of straw man and no data and you have yourself some headline making material that lacks any substance.
Here's a fact: even if WP7 doesn't sell well at first, Microsoft won't fold shop because they are stubborn as heck with tons of money to throw at the problem. The Xbox market is a perfect example, with them notoriously writing off $1B in repairs for the dreaded 'Red Ring of Death" hardware failures, or even just taking a loss on hardware sales for years just to gain market place strength. KIN was so unknown, distanced from WP7 and under the radar that no will be talking about it in 6-months, which is precisely why it was "killed" now.
Sure Microsoft has a huge hill to climb, but to predict their exit from the market in a year? That takes cajones. And to have such poor "analysis" passed off on such a supposed influential financial consulting site/expert network is sort of insulting.
Sound off in comments.
[Thanks, Anon tipper]
