How does Microsoft dominate the world? Are they that much better than everyone else?
No... The brilliance of their strategy lies in its acceptance of their own mediocrity. They succeed because they don't have to be brilliant to succeed. And they are very good, for an average company.
Smart comments from people on Slashdot:
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In fact, M$ has ALWAYS followed. Any other way is too expensive.
They let others sweat and risk, trying to develop something that survives out there in the market place.
If and when it does, they swoop in, 'integrate' it into their system and steal the market.
Their R&D is not for 'creating new products' but 'how to integrate new options' as they come up.
They are quite content to let others do the innovating and they take the cream of the crop and then produce a knock-off which takes at least three tries 'till it works.
That's how you make money. And the worst part is that is the strategy for maintaining 'world domination.'
Notice how long Longhorn has been in the paddocks?
Microsoft is waiting for a credible threat until they release Longhorn. The threat is not here yet.
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And...
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The Xbox was SUPPPOSED to be a money loser. They knew that and were planning for it going in. They figured it would take a few versions to overtake the market. PS2 and the GameCube had huge libraries of games from older models that they could also use as a draw, Xbox had none of that and they knew it wouldn't be as big of a draw as it could have been because of that.
This is only version one. The Xbox 360 is coming out now. MS hopes this one will break even. It's version 3 that they hope will eventually dominate the console market like they dominate the OS market. It's a long term game plan.
Losing money on version 1 does not make it a 'failure' when they were planning on it to lose money.
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