and so how does Microsoft look at this mass 70% and not realise that win11 will probably have issues even getting to 50% unless there is some mass paradigm shift
MS is a typically 'mature' company, where (it seems) rigid committees whose primary interest flows from HR and not engineering, rules the roost. You can always count on the fact that MS has a 'vision' and that their vision is not necessarily tied to either consumer or corporate needs/desire.
Also, we realize that the end-user, the guy at the keyboard, is
not the MS customer. Their customer are large OEMs, mega-corporations, governments, and lately, themselves. The company is transitioning to make themselves their largest 'customer' by turning their products from a 'one and done' into an on-going service/advertising platform representing a continuous stream of income. Plus (and this is most important) total control of the desktop--both hardware and software.
History is history, and has been rehashed to no one's enjoyment, but it is interesting to look back, say, from Vista, which was a marketing flop, to 7 which was generally well received. Then at the helm, Ballmer had his own vision--everything was going to be portable and standardized --> Windows Phones, Windows Tablets, and naturally, the Windows Desktop itself. This was Win 8x. But for whatever reason, no one had the good sense (or were afraid) to interrupt Steve's monkey-boy dance by telling him that a desktop PC is neither a phone nor a tablet. And that corporate IT departments training tens of thousands of workers didn't want to have to retrain an entire workforce to accomplish rote tasks they already knew how to do.
Some say the 8x debacle was Steve's biggest end of career determinate... who knows?
Lost in all of it too was the idea that 8x was going to somehow launch a 'revolution' in the PC OEM industry by sparking incredible new hardware sales, as everyone would want a new and improved 'portable' form factor PC, with 'live tiles' on a Metro desktop. But that didn't happen.
Yet the core vision didn't depart the company after Ballmer beamed up. Nadella was smart enough to to understand that garbage user interfaces don't matter, as long as they are 'good enough' and not too different from what went before. That people will take what they are offered as long as it is not too weird. He understands that. He also realized the potential to turn Windows from something that simply runs a program, into a platform for advertising 'services'. Think about MS 365 (or whatever it's called today). Along with a sub to Office, you get some on-line storage space. So now all your stuff is stored by MS, and it's a hassle to move away from that, so you just keep on keeping on with the plan.
Yet Nadella's biggest move was a now on-going plan to boost sales of new hardware by simply making 'old' (actually, perfectly good) hardware obsolete. This was his Win 11 strategy. Due to rather arbitrary 'security requirments' he made any PC over five or six years old unable to 'upgrade'. Next, by merging what he calls 'AI' into your PC, he pushes even newer hardware--Copilot + PC (designed for AI, it says here).
So at the end of the day, Nadella might not be able to dance like Steve B., but he sure knows how to bring in the dollars. You have to give him that.
