Microsoft’s Continuum Advantage is Slowly Slipping Away (Premium)

While I feel that the PC still has important advantages, functional and otherwise, over the competition, the gap is closing. And maybe its time to think about some PC key differentiators, and how they might be eliminated by Apple, Google, or others.

I’ve written about these issues a lot over the past year or so because the competitive landscape is changing so quickly. As Microsoft pushes forward with key platform differentiators, its competitors have responded in kind by eliminating or at least softening Microsoft’s advantages. And Microsoft is losing this fight.

For example, last year I openly wondered whether Google or Apple could “pull the plug on the PC market” entirely with me-too hybrid PCs like iPad Pro and the Pixel C. More recently, Google has announced plans to bring Android apps to Chromebook—creating a new kind of 2-in-1, really—and Apple has stepped up its iPad Pro advertising ahead of second-generation devices, using Microsoft’s own “mobile first, cloud first” strategy against it.

PCs are still the preferred productivity platform, of course. They are more versatile and affordable than Macs, period. And they are far more powerful and full-featured than mobile competitors based on Android and iOS. This is indisputable. (Also, some tasks will require “real” PCs for the foreseeable future; for example, you cannot develop software on mobile platforms, yet.)

But it is also indisputable that our usage patterns, collectively, have changed a lot in the ten years since Saint Jobs ™ unleashed the Jesus Phone—sorry, the iPhone—on the unwashed masses. I have described this event as the “asteroid that killed the Windows dinosaur” on many occasions for good reason. We can have fun with it all we want, but that was a watershed moment for the industry. And, more important, for the billions of people who consume personal computing services.

By which I mean, we—collectively—do not use PCs as much as we used to. Many, in fact, no longer need PCs at all. And the truth to that assertion can be seen most clearly in PC sales, which have now fallen for 20 straight quarters, year-over-year. That is five straight years of PC sales decline.

Over here on the Microsoft side of the fence, enthusiasts are grappling—emotionally and logically—with the side-effects of this change. Microsoft, for its part, is forging ahead, and as I noted recently in HoloLens News is Just the Latest Evidence of Microsoft’s Real Focus, it has tied its future to cloud services. And to ensuring that those services work well on all popular client platforms, regardless of origin. This is why we see so many Microsoft apps on Android and iOS. Because that is where its customers are today, on mobile.

But Microsoft also has this side business, which I think of as “serving the base.” That is, it has well over one billion users on Windows PCs, still, users who wake up every morning and tune into their world via dinosaur applications like Outlook, and then get real work done. They’re the doers. And I like these people quite a bit.

This sizable audience cannot be ignored. And Microsoft has done a credible job of both improving the platforms they use—Windows, Office, and so on—while pushing them gently to a very different future. But there’s only one way to view these efforts: This is Microsoft managing decline.

Microsoft has slowed the decline of Windows, for example, by improving Windows 10 to work better with both old-school PCs and new 2-in-1 PCs and other modern form factors. And it has slowed the decline of the PC industry by building Surface devices that are as aspirational to PC makers as they are to users.

Microsoft’s competitors, of course, are working to speed these declines. To usher in the “post-PC” era that Mr. Jobs described when the iPad first launched in 2010.

And that’s where we sit today. The PC is in decline. And the speed of that decline ebbs and flows according to various conditions and product releases.

While mobile has eliminated many PC differentiators, Microsoft has worked to introduce new advantages. The most public of these is Continuum, a set of technologies that allows PCs and other devices to be more versatile. Microsoft enthusiasts cling to Continuum as if it were a magic bullet of some kind. But I’ve always seen the flaws, and in keeping with my editorial of last May, one has to wonder how easily Microsoft’s competitors could eliminate this advantage.

Continuum takes two primary forms. On PCs, Continuum is used to allow Windows 10 to seamlessly transform between its standard operating mode and a special Tablet Mode when used on a 2-in-1. The idea here is that Windows 10 will work like a traditional desktop OS when the PC is used in a laptop-like form factor. But it can also become more touch-friendly when the PC is used like a tablet.

In its lesser-used form, Continuum for phones can transform the device into a pseudo PC when it is docked—literally with hardware, or wirelessly—to a display, keyboard, and mouse. Continuum for phones has never really taken off for a variety of reasons—the failure of Windows phone as a platform, and the lack of apps on both sides of this equation—but it is a good idea conceptually.

Both Google and Apple have started aping Microsoft’s Continuum functionality on their own devices. The iPad Pro is an iOS-based 2-in-1 that transforms between laptop-like and tablet form factors. Google’s Pixel C works similarly. And this year, we will also see the release of many Chromebook 2-in-1s which can run both Chrome OS web apps and Android mobile apps.

But neither Google nor Apple have shown any interest in pursuing 2-in-1 phones. And least not yet.

Maybe they don’t have to. Google’s Android platform is open, and some of its partners are pushing ahead on Continuum-like efforts without it. For example, Samsung will release a DeX Dock alongside its coming Galaxy S8 which will alow this phone to be connected to an external display (and, one assumes, a keyboard and mouse). And Remix OS maker Jide has just announced Remix OS for Mobile, which is exactly what it sounds like: Continuum, but running on Android instead of Windows Mobile.

Now, these two efforts by themselves do not represent a watershed moment like the initial iPhone release. In fact, I will argue that Continuum-like functionality on Android or iPhone will only make sense when those companies actually build this into their own platforms. But if you were holding out hope that Microsoft was somehow going to (re)jumpstart its in-house mobile efforts on the back of Windows Mobile, you might want to calm down a bit. Because Continuum on Android, in particular, makes a lot more sense than Continuum on Windows.

The reasons are obvious, I know, but here are the basics. We live in a mobile first, cloud first world, as you know, and in such a world, most people—not you, perhaps, but most people—can get most of their work done on mobile devices. But they do need PCs—or PC-like functionality, like typing on a real keyboard, and printing—sometimes. So skewing the devices towards what people are really doing makes sense. That is, a phone that can transform into a PC sometimes makes sense.

But that phone has to make sense on its own first. And where Windows Mobile phones make zero sense—no apps, no supporting ecosystems—Android phones make plenty of sense. This, then, is a real threat.

If only Samsung—which matters—and Jide—which doesn’t—pursue this strategy, the impact will be limited for now. But you have to think that Google is paying attention to Samsung’s efforts, in particular. And let’s not forget that Google has pushed Samsung innovations, like Knox, into Android in the past as well. They are among the biggest tech partners in the world, after all.

Anyway, I feel that it is highly likely that Microsoft’s competitors will take Continuum from it, both on PC-like devices (which has already started happening) and on phones. And once that work is complete, that’s one less reason for users to choose Windows and the PC. So it’s back to the drawing board. Again.