Microsoft’s Future With the Consumer Is in Jeopardy (Premium)

For the past few years, Microsoft has been evolving in several different ways. On the positive side, the company has found its position in the cloud market and will be around for decades to come with its massive infrastructure but on the consumer side, the evolution has been telling a much different story.

After watching Microsoft's keynote today at IFA and looking back at how they have been pushing new products to consumers, I'm growing more concerned each week that the company's consumer-based future is dwindling to a point that the company may not ever be able to recover.

Let me point out that I do not think that Microsoft is doomed in any capacity. They will continue to make boatloads of cash from their enterprise channels and to some extent Windows, but what I fear is that they will have significant trouble competing in the consumer space with new products.

To start off with what the company has done well, that would be Xbox and Surface. The Xbox brand, despite being in second place to Sony, is a powerful asset and the gaming console will help keep Microsoft relevant with the console and gaming crowds. The Surface brand, despite getting off to a rough start, is now a premium PC brand and I expect it to continue to do well going forward.

But, the Surface brand is for PCs and we all know that fewer computers are being sold each year and that mobile devices are the future. Still, the Surface brand stands a good chance of sticking around for a very long time but the problem is that as consumers move to other devices, Microsoft is no longer relevant.

We all know the story of Windows Phone and if you think a Surface Mobile is going to grab a billion users like Android and iOS, you are delusional. Hell, even Windows 10 is not there yet with the company still saying that there are 500 million devices which is the same figure shared back in the spring. Although the company may be holding off to announce a larger number at Ignite, you would think that if they passed a significant milestone, they would share that figure as soon as possible.

Aside from phone, the company tried and failed to make a dent in the fitness market with Band and now they are likely to do the same with digital assistants.

The Invoke, which was announced in late 2016, got no mention in the company's post announcing the Fall Creators update release (many other upcoming devices did) and we have yet to see other vendors jump on the Cortana speaker train too. Further, Google and Amazon are getting all the love for new speakers that were announced at IFA for including those digital assistants; Microsoft is once again behind in a segment where it once had a clear advantage.

You could argue that the new Cortana and Alexa cross-talk announcement gives life back into Microsoft's strategy but I'm not so sure that I agree. This arrangement was made out of necessity, if Microsoft had the ability to compete by itself, I don't think they would be looking for th...