>Thanks for posting, Ken.
>
>I don't think Steve read the script a single time before recording this video.
>
>"Microsoft is committing..(shit, what are we committing to?)....... to improve Visual Foxpro."
>
>"We value the bet you are making on it. The time and energy you put into building great Visual Foxpro applications for Windows and we won't let you down."
>
>Anyone feel let down by Microsoft?
>
>
>Since Balmer took over, Apple has kicked MS's ass in mp3 players, smartphones, tablets, and they've captured the "next" generation of computer users. Just look at any college classroom and calculate the Macintosh to MS ratio.
>
>Now that tablets are invading business, Apple and Android are really going to start putting a hurting on Office sales as applications start integrating with Google Docs instead of MS office. Every tablet used in business is a lost MS OS sale. SAAS means just another opening for Macintosh corporate machines and another lost MS OS sale.
>
>The old strategy of copy the competitor and then crush them isn't working any more. MS has no vision and there's nobody to blame but Balmer.

In the video, the "we value the bet you're making on us" is one of the few sentences Ballmer added from the script I wrote for the video. 90% of it is what I wrote and provided. He also added the "we won't let you down". It's half funny and half ironic when you look back on it a decade later now.

I agree with your summary here. The Zune marketshare never broke 3% for media devices. Windows Phone is down to 1.5% marketshare and decreasing in the smartphone market, as iPhone and Android is far outselling it. I don't see any demand for a tablet with Metro only UI based apps (like an ARM tablet with no desktop mode of apps). Microsoft continues to do well and grow in the enterprise, but is declining in the consumer space (other than the Xbox).

IBM is a bigger competitor to Microsoft than Apple, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc. are, the tech journalists and media don't get that. Most of what Microsoft does is for businesses, not consumers. The rest of this decade is on cloud, virtualization, and mobile. I think Azure has only 6% marketshare in the cloud space, with Amazon and Rackspace dominating.

The other thing Microsoft can do that they did a decade+ ago is market a product to sales. Now, people rely on who they know and trust say about a product, and no longer from print, banner, or TV advertisements. I'd like to see Microsoft be more innovative and competitive, but it just seems so rare lately. And the loyalty and enthusiasm among .NET developers has decreased significantly in the last year. Less community efforts, less transparency, changing strategy, breaking backward compatibility, etc.