The smartphone wars: Inauspicious exits and debuts
<p>RIM&#8217;s death rattle became audible a few days ago when its manufacturing partner announced that it would <a href="http://www.bgr.com/2012/06/18/celestica-dumps-blackberry-rim-odm/">no longer be manufacturing Blackberries</a>.  And Nokia is entering the final stages of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/nokia-implodes-taking-microsofts-mobile-dreams-down-with-it-2012-6">one of the most spectacular implosions in the history of business</a>, taking the Windows phone down with it.</p>
<p>So what&#8217;s Microsoft doing?  Announcing a brand-spankin&#8217;-new Windows 8 phone line with <em>no upgrade path for its Windows 7 customers</em>.  Riiiight.  Then, stiff-arming its PC and smartphone business partners by telling them it&#8217;s going to do an Apple and ein-Volk-ein-Reich-ein-F&uuml;hrer its new tablet &#8211; it won&#8217;t be licensing &#8220;Windows RT&#8221;, and nobody else is going to get a piece of the hardware revenue.  So let&#8217;s see &#8211; Microsoft is throwing away both its historic strengths &#8211; backward compatibility and a multi-vendor ecosystem that needs it to succeed &#8211; and replacing them with, what exactly?</p>
<p>You know, at this point Microsoft&#8217;s board ought to replace Steve Ballmer with an orangutan. Screaming a lot and flinging feces in all directions seem to be the job requirements; the orangutan would cover that for a few bunches of bananas a week, and its strategic decisions couldn&#8217;t possibly be worse.</p>
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<p>My friends who do IT consulting for businesses are telling me that the compatibility break between desktop Windows 7 and 8 is a big enough disruptor that it may actually drive a lot of their customers to move to all Linux, all the time.  Which makes sense; if you know all your old application software is going to break no matter what you do, why not bail out to where you&#8217;ll never be a victim again?  </p>
<p>Nokia is about to lay off 10,000 people, and investors are no longer pricing the stock above the company&#8217;s breakup value. According to some hints that have been leaking out of the company, Nokia thinks it has a bright future as a patent troll. Meanwhile, Microsoft is hinting that it might buy Nokia outright, which would be doubling down on stupid. Nothing about Nokias&#8217;s strategy, product or brand-deterioration issues is going to be solved that way; &#8220;more Microsoft&#8221; is the <em>problem</em>, not the solution.</p>
<p>Contemplating these antics there comes a point at which you just want to clutch your head and mutter, in the immortal words of P.J. O&#8217;Rourke, &#8220;What the fuck?  I mean, what the fucking fuck?&#8221; Nokia and RIM used to be sound, well-managed companies with earned and enviable reputations.  Microsoft was always evil, but it used to be <em>competent</em> evil &#8211; not so much at software engineering, but at least its business strategy was ruthlessly effective.  Now, what&#8217;s become of these three companies may add up to the biggest destruction of shareholder value in history. </p>
<p>UPDATE: Microsoft may not be planning to freeze out OEMs after all.  I was relaying a press rumor based on some ambiguous statements from Redmond, but now a top executive at Acer claims Microsoft only plans to be in the tablet market for a short time.  If true, this would make more strategic sense &#8211; but the real take-away here may be that Microsoft&#8217;s messaging is confused, and possibly the company&#8217;s planners don&#8217;t themselves know which way they intend to jump.</p>
