The decline of Microsoft Windows (8)
So the latest Microsoft Windows PC and Nokia phone sales do not look particularly well.
My too cent?
After decades of Microsoft quality (dysfunctional at best, often crashing at worst – yes it got better with NT, …) and surrounding consumer (dis-) satisfaction - customers are more than happy to finally have the possibility to choose something else! With pleasure! Apple iOS, Android for smartphones and tables that can do a lot what previously was done on a PC, and even turning to the exclusive Mac OS, and associated Macintosh hardware. Of course many will not get a Mac, nor the more experimental (and limited) Google Chromebooks. But investing in an not-too-cheap smartphone, whether it is an iOS or Android, draws away enough money, that in the end a few year old PC is just kept to do the heavier content creation and such. It is plenty fast for that anyway.
Is that bad? For Microsoft, Nokia, and classic PC vendors certainly. Maybe using old PCs even saves the environment a bit, even more so the less energy hungry phones and tablets for email, surfing and video.
For Nokia it certainly was not the smartest move. Even by improving Symbian they may have been more successful. It at least was selling well and had plenty of fans, … They already had their own Linux phones going they could have further build upon.
And for the rest of us? I think the current trend to more diversity (although currently mostly limited to iOS and Android, but thru Android at least also several different manufactures) will be good for all of us. In the future a more diverse landscape will make it easier for entirely new systems, whether based on Linux, BSD, QNX, or entirely new -from scratch- to gain some attention and market share. I personally remember how hard it was to convince someone to switch from Windows to Linux in the beginning of this millennium when Microsoft had a quasi monopoly with somewhere around 90% market share, …
