After Apple and Google, it was Microsoft’s turn this week to take the stage and show the world just how busy it has been tinkering away in its shed with circuit boards, processors and bits of polycarbonate.
That’s my understanding of the device-making process anyway.
As well as the usual suspects – a Lumia smartphone, a Lumia smartphone with a bigger screen, a cheaper Lumia, a Surface tablet, a fitness tracker, and some new Xbox features – there was a retro surprise in the form of the Surface Book: Microsoft’s first in-house laptop.
Even though Gartner expects the laptop segment to shrink 10.8% this year, Microsoft clearly believes there is still sufficient value in that market to justify the expense of producing, marketing and distributing its own device, rather than continuing to rely on Windows licensees.
"Perpetuating the use case of the laptop is paying homage to legacy rather than reinventing categories," said Radio Free Mobile founder Richard Windsor, in a research note this week.
"I would have preferred to see more done with the Surface form factor rather than a step backwards into laptops," he added.
Good point, but even though Microsoft is clinging to the pa st, it is also trying to secure its future.
By exerting greater control over the user experience across ever more form factors, the hope is Microsoft’s ecosystem will extend broadly enough to completely envelope the consumer within Windows 10’s warm, possibly clammy embrace.
It also means that Microsoft has squared up even more directly against Apple and Google in what is shaping up to be the battle of ‘penta-play’, or ‘quintuple-play’, if you prefer phrases that don’t roll easily off the tongue.
Each company now produces laptops, smartphones, tablets, and wearables. Apple and Google have both made inroads into video content with Apple TV and Chromecast respectively. Microsoft meanwhile has Xbox and its Xbox Live service, which as well as gaming offers access to video and music. Whether anyone uses it for video and music is besides this particular point.
These companies have gone to great lengths to unify the customer experience across all of these form factors, using a combination of wide and local area network technology, and cloud services to synchronise apps and content between their products.
It means that any one of Apple, Google or Microsoft can address all your smart device needs, but really, the success of all of them arguably depends on the success of just one: smartphones.
With its universal popularity and relative affordability, the smartphone is the single most important device category for Apple, Google and Microsoft. Build up a big enough smartphone customer base and everything else will fall into place.
Two of them have done that…the other just announced the Surface Book laptop.
Apps and cloud services hold the keys to smartphone success, but smartphones that lack a large addressable market fall way down the list of priorities for developers, making it even harder to shift handsets.
Microsoft is at a distinct disadvantage in smartphones. It knows this, and has sought to address it with universal apps that can work on handsets as well as PCs, where it is in a stronger position.
However, in the traditional PC market, it is challenged by Apple’s Mac products, Google’s Chromebooks, as well as smaller players like Linux, and let’s not forget that lots of people favour tablets instead of PCs.
In addition, universal apps will not magically solve Microsoft’s smartphone problems overnight. The company is in the midst of restructuring its handset division, trying to integrate it more closely by folding it into its newly-created Windows and Devices Group (WDG).
In that context, what are the Lumia 950 and 950 XL? Are they signposts pointing towards Microsoft’s smartphone future, or are they relics of the past?
Microsoft needs to hurry up and show the world it is serious about smartphones.
As Windsor warns, "Microsoft’s consumer ecosystem is crumbling and needs some serious attention if Microsoft wants to be a player in this field."
