I spent a few minutes reading Gruber’s piece from yesterday on the decline of Microsoft. As usual, John shares a bunch of great insights. But the one topic that I felt was missing was the current holding pattern of corporations who are still using older Microsoft products like Windows XP, IE6 and Office 2000/2003. I’m familiar with this mentality because I’ve lived in it for the past 6 years.
For IT managers, there has been little incentive to switch to products like Vista, which would only drive up support costs due to its many issues. Even switching to Office 2007 is too costly due the (much needed) UI changes and the user eduction that it would require. And so a lot of corporate users are still using XP and getting their work done.
Of course, switching to using Mac would be even more costly.
Gruber addresses this point today with a quote from Ian Betteridge:
And, more importantly from Microsoft’s perspective, something that will persuade the legions of their most important customers - IT managers - that it’s time to move on from Windows XP.
But if Windows 7 actually proves that it won’t bring an executive’s organization to a grinding halt, there will be a lot of upgrades taking place. And those upgrades come in the form of exorbitantly priced licensing packages.
I agree with Gruber that M$ is on the decline. But if corporate America starts updating its inventory, I think those year-over-year numbers will still be looking okay for a couple more years.
