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On The Kudlow Report on CNBC, Jon Fortt discusses whether the tech rally still has legs.
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On The Kudlow Report on CNBC, Jon Fortt discusses whether the tech rally still has legs.
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| The last version of Office didn’t include a free online version. The next one will. Image: Microsoft |
It’s too early to say Microsoft has checkmated Google in online documents – the latest version of Office hasn’t shipped yet. But the sleeping giant in Redmond has clearly woken up to the Internet threat.
Get this: Microsoft – the king of paid software – will announce today that it is going to give a version of Office away for free online. Both the online and desktop versions are scheduled to arrive in the first half of next year. Yes, you read that right. The latest version of its ubiquitous productivity software, dubbed Office 2010, will come as both a piece of software you can buy for your computer, and as a service you can access in your browser. [UPDATE: Microsoft says it will support the Firefox and Safari browsers as well as IE.]
For free. From Microsoft.
One could argue that the software giant is late to the giveaway party. Folks like Google, Zoho and SlideShare have been offering free equivalents to Word, Excel and PowerPoint for years. Unlike those companies however, Microsoft already has a very profitable $20 billion business selling desktop versions of its Office software. It would have been foolish to jump into the free game too hastily and watch that business evaporate overnight.
And that’s what makes this bold move to the web either the dumbest thing the company has ever done, or a stroke of genius. If Microsoft gets this wrong, it will cannibalize its own Office business, and investors will howl. If it gets this right, Microsoft will crush Google, Zoho, and all the other rivals who are nibbling away at Office’s dominance.My hunch is that this is a stroke of genius from Microsoft. Why? Earlier this year when I talked to Chris Capossela, the executive who manages Office, he had clearly thought hard about how to do this right.
Capossela told me that Microsoft has studied it closely, and Office Web Applications, the free, ad-supported version of Word, Excel and PowerPoint, will probably appeal to tightwads who weren’t going to buy a copy of Office anyway. This way, rather than force those folks into Google’s arms, Microsoft can hook them into its online world and tempt them with its latest technology.
And Microsoft can also tempt them to upgrade. Office Web Applications will work better if you actually purchase Office 2010. Users with the latest Office software will be able to more easily share documents and keep each other’s changes in sync. Add in the fact that the paid version of Office will come with a brilliant feature that lets Office buyers broadcast their PowerPoint presentations over the web (like Cisco’s WebEx), and the Microsoft’s online giveaway looks less like an oops, and more like an upsell.
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]]>A year ago this week Apple opened the floodgates and began letting software developers sell software for the iPhone, and geeks everywhere caught iPhone fever.
Since then Apple’s iTunes App Store has swelled to more than 50,000 titles, logged more than 1 billion downloads, and inspired an entrepreneurial surge that’s reminiscent of the dot-com gold rush — only without the illusion that everyone is making tons of money.
In fact, aside from Apple and AT&T, it’s hard to point to many folks that are raking in a pile of iPhone cash quite yet. Matt Murphy, a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, guesses that as many as 95% of the developers building iPhone apps “aren’t trying to build a company on the iPhone” — they’re just hobbyists making a little money on the side, or companies using fun iPhone apps as marketing vehicles.
The world is still waiting for the equivalents of eBay, Amazon, or Yahoo — the groundbreaking new companies that will redefine and inspire the mobile ecosystem.
Not that people like Murphy are discouraged.
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On NBC’s Press: Here, a discussion with Leander Kahney about the future of Apple. (AAPL) (PALM) (GOOG) (MSFT) (INTC) (RIMM)
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| Apple’s iPhone will face slimmer margins in the near future. |
Now that the dust has settled from Apple’s iPhone 3GS announcement — video camera! compass! better battery life! — it’s time to face facts. Though Apple (AAPL) still leads rivals in style and technology, it’s not the breakaway frontrunner it once was. The new phone is cool and all, but now Apple is looking over its shoulder — and it will have to make some adjustments.
That’s a big change from just a few weeks ago. Back then, the only credible competitors the iPhone faced were a sleek but boring BlackBerry line from Research in Motion (RIMM) and an exciting but chunky G1 from Google (GOOG).
Since then, however, the landscape has changed dramatically. Suddenly Palm (PALM) appears to have a potential hit with its new Pre, and Google is showing off slimmer second-generation (G2) Android phones. (I’ve used both the Pre and the G2, and they’re pretty darn nice.) All of this new competition is good for consumers, but probably not for Apple’s profit margins.
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]]>This is Jon Fortt’s segment of a review done with Michael Copeland. For the full review including Copeland’s take, click here.
The Palm Pre is the second-best smartphone I’ve used. Its black plastic physical casing is attractive and feels well crafted. Its screen is bright and sharp. Its keyboard, though too cramped for comfortable one-handed typing, feels good and works well when attacked with two thumbs. And the software — the true test of any modern phone — is smooth and intuitive enough to challenge Apple’s iPhone.
Before I share details of my take on the Palm Pre, a little context: I was an avid Palm Treo user (and Sprint customer) for four years. It was a tough decision to leave the Treo, because we’d become friends. I knew its keyboard and its quirks. But after months of frustration with Sprint’s coverage and customer service, I got an iPhone three months ago.
After spending a few hours with the Pre, I wasn’t tempted to give up my iPhone. While the Pre is a very good device that matches the iPhone in many ways and even surpasses it in a few, the iPhone is still a better handset in the ways that matter to me — and in ways that I think will matter to a lot of potential buyers. Here’s how the two phones stacked up against each other:
Design. iPhone has the advantage. When it’s closed, the Pre looks like a smooth stone, fits easily into a pocket, and does so without extraneous buttons — there’s an on/off switch on top and a navigation button in front, and that’s it. Open it and there’s a small keyboard. Compared to the iPhone, the Pre feels lighter, more plastic and less luxurious. But it also feels durable enough that you might throw it into a pocket or purse without worrying about it getting scratched up. The Pre’s camera is better than the iPhone’s too, through many expect Apple to address that with new hardware and a software upgrade.
The Pre gets points for having a removable battery (which the iPhone lacks), and for its keyboard (a must for some heavy e-mailers). It falls short, though, in usability. The Pre is a little too slim and small to use comfortably with one hand, and the keyboard is so small and squat that one-handed typing is a painful affair. And the battery, while accessible, doesn’t last long — with WiFi on it seemed to drain more quickly than the iPhone.
Interface. It’s a tie. Palm deserves huge credit for giving the iPhone a run for its money in the usability department. It’s pretty easy to find what you’re looking for on the Pre, whether it’s e-mail, instant messaging, the web browser or the camera. The touch screen navigation is smooth, including a method of managing tasks that’s like working through a deck of cards – flick to the side to show a new window, flick up to discard it.
There are a couple of areas where the Pre outshines the iPhone. Its ability to run multiple programs at once — a talent the iPhone lacks — is probably the most hyped, but there are others. The way the Pre’s address book pulls down contacts from online sources like Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) and Facebook is nifty, though it can cause duplicate entries for the same person; it similarly pulls info from online calendars. And its universal search function is a nice one-stop way to find information both on the device and the web.
But there are other aspects of the Pre’s interface that aren’t so great. The screen is too small to easily navigate through calendar information. And the screen size also becomes a problem on the web, where text is often too small to read without first zooming in.
Applications. Here the iPhone has the advantage. Apple has a store with tens of thousands of applications that iPhone and iPod users can download. Palm doesn’t. The availability of so many applications makes the iPhone a more useful tool. Whether you’re looking for a game, a database, or a Twitter client, you’ll have a better chance of getting a great one that works on the iPhone rather than the Pre.
It’s a bit early to criticize Palm too much for this, since the Pre is brand new. But the disparity in applications isn’t likely to even out anytime soon.
Why? Third-party software developers want to make back the money it costs to create their product, and to do that they need volume. When they’re deciding whether to make an app for the Pre versus. the iPhone, the BlackBerry or Android, they’ll want to see which is most likely to pay off. The iPhone and BlackBerry have sold millions of units already, so they’re in the lead. Android, which is backed by Google, hasn’t done nearly as well — but word is that more than a dozen Android phones will be out by the end of the year, expanding the potential market.
One ambitious mobile developer I spoke with last week said that even if developing for the Pre is easy, he’s focusing on the iPhone and Android for the foreseeable future — the Pre just isn’t worth it yet.
That means even if you’re one of the folks who likes the Pre’s features a bit better than the iPhone’s, you might have to do without some of the cooler mobile apps for a while. If that’s OK with you, the Pre is a very good choice. (AAPL) (RIMM) (MSFT) (GOOG) (S) (T) (VZ) (MOT) (PALM)
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