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Consumers, rejoice: Microsoft cares about you again. May be. It depends on whether the head of the new group Modern Life & Devices from Microsoft has substantive plans behind his statements.
In recent years, Microsoft's attention has been fixed on the company. While the company has integrated products like Azure and related services into thriving businesses, consumer-focused products like the Groove Music service, Microsoft Band, and Windows Phone have fallen to the water.
Microsoft has essentially acknowledged its neglect of the mainstream market at the company's Inspire Partner Conference this week. Yusuf Mehdi, currently Vice President of Modern Life & Devices at Microsoft, led an in-camera session on "Modern Life Services," according to Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet. A tweet from that Mehdi posted from the event includes the words, "We are starting the journey to win back consumers with our vision," presumably this year.
(In April, Mehdi was vice president of enterprise In his new role, Mehdi now reports to Chris Capossela, Microsoft marketing director, Microsoft, who also introduced a team Experiences and Devices, led by Rajesh Jha , which reports to CEO Satya Nadella, 19659002] The question of whether Microsoft can win back consumers depends to a large extent on the redefinition of the problem or its intention to back up its promise with real products.
The Rise of the "Professional Consumer"
To be honest, Microsoft maintains a huge consumer activity around the Xbox gaming console, bringing in more than $ 2.2 billion in revenue for the last quarter. Most of Microsoft's "consumer activities" rely heavily on the demarcation line between the professional and the consumer, and the ease with which individuals can to move between the two worlds.
own services. On the one hand, it offers businesses services to restrict the flow of confidential business information outside of the company's firewall. On the other hand, a series of smart "nudges" in Outlook are designed to remind workaholics that their coworkers want to enjoy a personal life away from the office. However, no one would confuse Outlook with a "consumer" product.
Peripherals such as Surface, and especially Surface Go, are a little more difficult to categorize because they are designed to be used at home and in the interior. an office environment. Is a surface a professional PC? A consumer device? Most customers probably do not care. But it's here that Microsoft can simply wave and say "Here we are serving the consumer now!" Without really changing anything.
Mark Hachman / IDG The Surface Go represents the intersection of the professional user and the consumer, without explicitly serving the needs of each other.
Modern Life Services: Cortana and Your Phone?
Microsoft will have to dig deep to reposition its existing services as user-friendly. Foley reported that Mehdi has identified two services, the "Your Phone" app and Cortana, as ways that Microsoft would begin to re-address consumers. Your Phone, an application that connects a phone to a PC to share photos and other information, appears to be a weak attempt to replicate a feature that virtually all manufacturers already offer, whether Android or apps specific to the manufacturer. Comes with laptops and tablets. There is an easier argument to make that mobile apps for Android and iOS, such as Microsoft Launcher, more explicitly serve the consumer. But they represent a small fraction of the users on one or the other platform.
Cortana, on the other hand, is a true consumer service. The problem is that there is little evidence that the majority of Microsoft users have adopted it. In 2016, Microsoft revealed that Cortana had responded to 6 billion queries since the deployment of Windows 10 – but the number of users represented or the frequency with which they were using it was certainly not clear. . When I met Cortana's leader, Javier Soltero, at the beginning of the year, he stated that Cortana's role went well beyond Windows, like Office and other services, to provide advice, context and more.
The problem with this particular strategy is the line that Microsoft must follow closely. If it's too subtle, Microsoft users might not notice Cortana's assistance. But a vocal element of the Windows base reacted indignantly to the "ads" pop-up in Windows that suggest that users are taking advantage of OneDrive, Edge, or other services. All it takes is a mistimed "Can I help?" notification, and some users will be in place.
Michael Homnick There is an argument to argue that Cortana on Windows Phone embodies what should be the digital assistant of Microsoft – an assistant who stayed by your side go. Today, it is a bit harder to find in Android and iOS devices.
Somewhere in the middle, however, are the Microsoft applications and services that explicitly address the consumer – and have been the first on the line of fire in recent years. For some reason, Microsoft killed the Zune music player, and later the Groove Music music service, but then set up an ebook store in the bowels of Microsoft Edge. The Microsoft group came and went, and we've all been witnessing the prolonged demise of Windows Phone – though its heart is still beating weakly with a sporadic update. Does "Modern Life Services" foreshadow the rebirth of another Windows phone, or even the rumored dual-screen device, Andromeda? Who knows …
How Microsoft has to convince the consumer
It is thus that Mehdi's commitment boils down to: the substance as opposed to the semantics. Microsoft still retains a one-shot consumer offering, with movies, television, and books living in the Microsoft App Store. Players can debate which console is winning, but the Xbox is clearly in the mix. Heck, even Solitaire is still buried in Windows – and yes, always with an optional subscription.
Mark Hachman / IDG To be fair, killing Solitaire would be the death knell for the hopes of Microsoft consumers. But is it a subscription for Solitaire that is consumer-friendly?
However, we do not know who in Microsoft defends the cause of the consumer. There is no comprehensive public strategy. You can point to different parts of the business – the Xbox here, movies out there – to support an argument that Microsoft has maintained a consumer presence. But as Microsoft has abandoned these individual consumer apps and services, this argument will crumble.
Any Modern Life Services initiative must not only refocus existing products and services, but also rebuild those applications, one at a time. A Cortana smarter and more ubiquitous? It's too vague to make sense. (To Soltero's credit, he agreed that Cortana must be experienced, not described.)
Mark Hachman / IDG Groove Music may have been replaced by Spotify, but finished to be music service, with recommendations and other useful features. But developing them took too much time and, in the end, competing services won out.
Mehdi needs a series of applications and services explicitly consumer oriented, and then knock them out regularly, with iterations improvements and features and comments, and works. Put a public face on the effort, get the consumer equipment manufacturers behind it, actually run an advertisement or two to promote it. Sell it
Otherwise, they are all words without meaning.
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