Microsoft and Tablets

From Matt Rosoff - SCOBLE: Microsoft Can't Win In Tablets (MSFT):

Robert Scoble offers a pretty solid argument against Microsoft succeeding in the tablet space.

In a recording posted to FlipZu, he offers two main reasons why Microsoft will fail.

First, he says that upcoming tablets running Windows 8 are being squeezed between low-cost tablets from Amazon and the $500 iPad with its well-established ecosystem.

On the low end, Amazon and Barnes & Noble can sell tablets as a loss-leader that get users to buy more digital content. Microsoft can't compete there because it simply sells the operating system and its hardware partners won't be willing to match Amazon's price because they have no services on which to make money.

On the high end, by the time Windows 8 tablets come out in late 2012, the iPad will have been on the market for more than 2 years, and will have an enormous head start in terms of apps and hardware peripherals.

Worse yet, he argues, Microsoft and its partners won't have time to redesign Office and other applications to work with the new Windows 8 interface. So customers will see tablets with a great touch interface on top and garbage underneath.

"It really looks beautiful on top, but you start touching it and go deeper and it looks crap inside," he said.

He also thinks that having Office won't help: "Microsoft had tablets for many, many years. And Microsoft Office had always run on them. That was not a selling case for these things. And if you think it is, you're stupid."