The Slow Death of Microsoft : Can AI Save the Tech Giant?

Microsoft’s Market Value and Decline of Windows OS

First of all, take a look at a headline. “Microsoft, which is known for its Windows OS in the world, has become the world’s most valuable company by following Apple. Microsoft’s market capitalization has become 2.887 trillion dollars”. Which is so much that if Microsoft were a country, it would not be the 7th largest economy in the world. But the interesting thing is that in the case of market capitalization, Microsoft, which has been following Apple, Apple is killing Microsoft’s Windows OS.

In 2009, which kept a 95% share in the Microsoft PC OS market, it has come to 62%. Apple, which was nothing 15 years ago, its Mac OS has captured a 20% market today. But now the question arises, where is Microsoft finally? What is the strategy of Apple that has become the fund of Microsoft? And will Microsoft be the end of Windows in the near future? Let’s try to find out in detail.

The Impact of the iPad Launch

The story starts from 27th January 2010, when Steve Jobs launches his first iPad. This magical device, which was spreading all over the world, was not able to believe the senior leaders in the office of Microsoft. Steve Sinobsky, who was the president of Microsoft’s Windows division, had made it clear in a blog that Microsoft never expected a device like iPad to be launched. He thought that Apple was planning to launch a Mac OS based tablet, which will run on digital stylus and which is going to cost more than $1,000. But Steve Jobs launched it in just $499.

Apple also promised a battery life of 10 hours and 3G connectivity, which was considered to be impossible at that time. And this is the reason that iPad surprised 4 crore people who bought Windows Network along with Microsoft. But do you know why it was so shocking for Microsoft? Actually, this was the time when Microsoft’s Windows was at its peak and its profits were up to 70%. Every new product of Windows was earning them a lot of money. For example, after the launch of Windows 7 in 2009, if we look at the revenue of Windows in 2010, it was more than $18 billion, on which Windows had an operating income of $12.9 billion. Microsoft was earning as much money as Windows OS. At that time, Apple was not able to earn even by meeting all its products. But Microsoft was convinced that in the coming time, they can also be cleaned along with the PC market.

The reason for this was that most of the applications running on the PC were first designed on Windows OS. Now, they were being made accessible directly from the web. For example, if you are a PC user, you would not install their windows applications to use YouTube, WhatsApp and Gmail services. In fact, you would directly access them through Chrome tabs. From here, Microsoft started worrying about the future. And now, like Apple, they wanted to do something new and surprising, which made the company get a great boost. In 2010, Microsoft entered the market of smartphones. But no one liked their smartphones based on Windows OS. And these failed in a bad way. On the other hand, after the launch of the iPad, where the competition was increasing in the tablet market, Microsoft decided to sideline its device launch failed idea and focus on its core business of operating system.

Microsoft’s Failed Smartphone and Tablet Ventures

Now, Microsoft starts designing its Windows OS for tablets. But the problem here was that all the controls in the tablets were done by touch, not by mouse and keyboard. And Microsoft was not at all ready for such a big change in its strategy. The result was that Microsoft could not install its touch OS in the tablet. In fact, the changes they made in the new version of Windows 8 made their existing PC users quite upset.

Arise of Google Chrome OS a new competitor of Microsoft.

Although, for Microsoft and Windows, this series of failures was just the beginning. And now even Google was going to give them a big shock. In the year 2009, Google launched their Chrome OS, which was light weight and more secure than Windows. Considering these features, it was very popular for enterprises and educational consumer. On that time Microsoft who never bother about the security system were working to counter google. To beat Chrome OS, Microsoft introduce Windows 10S which was very advanced for security purpose on May 2, 2017. With this operating system no one can install any software without Microsoft verification which was a great move for that security side but the user didn’t appreciate this.

Here the main mistake from Microsoft was they didn’t understand the targeted customer for Chrome OS. Actually, chrome OS was designed for low end configuration device, that’s why it was designed light weight so that it can produce high performance from low end processor. But the main concern of Microsoft was to defeat the security system of Chrome OS. Windows 10S has a very heavy OS that it couldn’t perform properly in low end device.

Mixed Reality Missteps with HoloLens

After this if you are thinking that after this perhaps Microsoft had their lesson then you are wrong. After this Microsoft get into new fields, on April 2012, when Oculus launched Virtual Reality device, on that time Microsoft had seen a great future potential on Mixed Reality. In this matter without doing innovation Microsoft was working to integrating the mixed reality with windows os. They were working to integrate 3D augmented reality on every feature of windows 10, Microsoft’s aim was to give such an experience to their users that no one had ever thought of. For this Microsoft had launched HoloLens, which was working on mixed reality technology, but the price was almost $3500 which was far away from the reach of a normal windows user. For that Microsoft was failed to gain customer attention on this product, and by trying to be more innovative Microsoft spoils the user experience once again. For that reason, ultimately, they have to gradually remove all these 3D features from windows OS, even today you will see such application like: Paint 3D, 3D Builder, etc. which was a byproduct of Microsoft failed idea.

Microsoft Edge another Failed project from Microsoft.

In year 2015, after failing in all sector Microsoft launched their Microsoft Edge browser to compete with Google Chrome. But in front of Google Chrome Microsoft Edge haven’t manage to compete even today we just use Microsoft edge to download Chrome. By seeing all those we can easily state that Microsoft was working to transform windows only for last 10 years, but they had failed in every aspect of that transformation. On the other hand, Microsoft’s competitor like: Apple had focused on strengthening their basics without doing much revolutionary innovation and have focused on giving better experience to the user by making the computer chip more powerful iPhones and iPads are very good examples of this. However, the good thing here is that Microsoft had released their mistake when it was not too late.

The outcome of that was reflected on October 2021, when Windows 11 was launched without any unnecessary creativity and also, they had worked to make a clean and fast user experience, which actually serves a better windows user experience for normal users. Attaching tabs on files explorer, simplify settings app and video recording feature in snapping tools was proven to a great initiative for better user experience. Now the question arise with this can windows regain the loses of their market share? The simple answer of this question is No.

Apple’s Success with M Series Chips

Now Microsoft’s direct competitor is Apple, beat apple is currently impossible for Microsoft. On year 2020, Apple introduce “M” series chips in their device as a processing unit, which they themselves had designed that made apple computer faster and extra powerful that pushed the MacOS performance to the next level. If we speak about American PC OS market, we can see that apple is currently holding more than 30% of the market shares, where windows is currently decreasing their market share from 83% to less than 52%. Now you are thinking If apple can capture more market share by upgrading their own chip, so why can’t Microsoft as a most valuable company of the world, follow the same process for regain the market share? The main reason of this sets behind, Mac OS are only operate in Apple devices and as the hardware, software and the operating system all belongs to apple so it become much easier for apple to optimize the whole thing by their own. On the other hand, Microsoft haven’t produced any PC or Laptop, and for chips they are fully dependent on Intel and AMD for this reason it’s very difficult for Microsoft to optimize hardware and software to process the best user experience like apple.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite: A Potential Game Changer

Suddenly, an event lightens up the hope for Microsoft to come back. Actually, on October 2023, Qualcomm launched a chipset named: Snapdragon X Elite, which they claimed to be the game changer of Personal Computer with AI Super charged platform. Will Microsoft really show interest in integrating this chipset with their OS, only time will tell us that. After working hard for last 10 years apple had successfully made their eco-system and prioritize the necessity of users in their upcoming device line up it’s getting hard for Microsoft to get back to the race.

Tramp Card from Microsoft AI Advantage with OpenAI Investments

Microsoft is still haven’t utilize their tramp card yet. If they use it, they can easily destroy tech giant like: Apple, Facebook & Google. I am talking about Artificial Intelligence, which is considered to be the most powerful company “OpenAI”, some of you might not know that Microsoft is one of the leading investors of OpenAI company. OpenAI is the mother company and they have designed such popular chatbots like: ChatGPT and Dall.E3.

On 2019 Microsoft provided OpenAI Global LLC with a $1 billion investment and a $10 billion investment on 2023, with a significate portion of the investment in the form of compute resources on Microsoft Azure Cloud Service. After that investment Microsoft integrate ChatGPT with their Bing browser, which had a great impact for Google Chrome. After that Google had introduce BardAI which had eventually failed to compete with ChatGPT. Integrating OpenAI with Windows platform will it be the profitable deal for Microsoft? Only the time will tell us is it profitable or another failed innovation.