Microsoft Will Survive The WebOS PC Invasion
Hewlett-Packard’s decision to port webOS onto its PCs is unlikely to hurt Microsoft too much, says Nicholas Kolakowski
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Windows remains a dominant platform
Think of it this way: Microsoft’s Windows Vista crashed and burned. It drove any number of users to break with their years-long adherence to the Windows platform and embrace the Mac.
And yet despite that flub, and despite Apple’s rosy presence in consumers’ minds, Apple has failed to make major inroads into Microsoft’s laptop and desktop hegemony.
You can argue that Apple’s pursuing a different strategy, and that its Macs’ price points exclude the substantial majority of consumers want a cheap device for Word processing and Web cruising. In broad and basic strokes, though, the failure of an alternative operating system to gain any sort of traction, even in the midst of Microsoft’s fiasco, speaks to consumers’ ingrained tendency to pursue the familiar.
Google’s Chrome OS also has designs on a portion of the traditional OS space, embracing the new paradigm of the cloud-based model. But there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of buzz around its chances at becoming a dominant platform.
Will webOS dump Windows entirely?
HP’s position as one of the world’s largest hardware manufacturers guarantees there’ll be some adoption. And the company’s push into smartphones and tablets also running webOS means that, at least in the short term, it has a chance of becoming a viable, multi-platform “post PC” competitor to both Google and Apple.
But Microsoft’s had many years to dig in with its Windows franchise. And considering how Windows remains one of the company’s prime revenue generators, as its cloud initiatives continue to draw no revenue and its smartphones struggle for adoption among consumers, Microsoft will spare no expense in ensuring there’s not even the perception of erosion in its market-share.
As the Mexican Army learned with the Alamo, there are very serious consequences in trying to fight someone with their back to a wall.
Personally, I applaud HP’s move. I have no idea how an operating system built for a smartphone will work on a PC, but I’ve always liked webOS, and I think competition is good for everyone in a particular market. But until HP announces it’ll dump Windows entirely, I wouldn’t toll the bell for Microsoft quite yet.
Instead, Microsoft should be more concerned about how its “next version of Windows” will port onto tablets and other form-factors. Mobility is now in the driver’s seat, when it comes to dictating future products and strategy. Both HP and Microsoft would do well to remember that.
