MS has never been an innovator, so that's nothing new. Since many years they do nothing else than screaming "we can do that too" whenever somebody else comes up with a great idea or something better than what MS has. For all of the 90s and the early new century this was in most cases enough to kill competitors and make people wait for MSs offer. This perceived safety and the resulting arrogance made them miss the Internet, made them miss peoples demand for painless and creative personal computing etc. Gates went from trade show to trade show giving "visionary speeches" (none of them were ever remotely accurate or specific, not even by Nostradamus' standards) while the cash machine in Redmond was falling apart (no internal discipline, no innovations, jumping on every bandwagon - destroying competition is more important than having profitable products and even dropping resources for the timely development of the OS and Internet software).
Today they have the least standards compliant browser in existence, the worst phone OS, a desktop OS that gets easily rivaled by Linux with KDE 4, a stagnant and frustrated developer community, a bunch of loss leaders and still no vision or direction.
And to make it even better: they are the worst managed company I can think of (and I am not even talking about not being sympathetic). The Desktop OS marketing guy announces a 300 million USD advertising campaign to prove Vista is better than OS X and within days the CEO says that they have to learn from Apple... Great stunt
No market leader ever discusses smaller competitors. That is a rule. Intel did never comment on AMD, not even when they had some growth. MS discusses Apple twice a week, even making them a kind of a "role model"? If I would be a share holder, I would freak out. Stock lost almost 30% since December and has not seen any value creation for almost 5 years in a row... and they are so afraid of a company that was almost bankrupt then, that they promise to learn from them... Is it just me, or is this unheard of?
The two biggest OEMs (HP and Dell) get most competition not from Apple, but from cheap systems (like the eee) and home-made systems - not only in developing markets, almost 50% of computers in Europe are home-made or from no-name companies. Now, here comes MS: Please make better and more expensive devices, so we can cope with Apple?! Yeah, HP and Dell have been waiting for just that!
How about putting all your Vista marketing money and all this misdirected creativity into creating a fresh, clean OS that is consistent and competitive first, then only license it to those that will provide appropriate systems? Cannot do that? Right! Whenever you have it ready (2020?), CIOs will still discuss upgrading from 2000 to XP.
The PC desktop market, which makes up most the Microsoft's monopoly, is flat-lining while Apple is outpacing the industry 3 to 1 and their iPhone, which represents the next major computing platform, has already surpassed all (including Windows Mobile smart phones that have been available for years) but RIM's established BlackBerry.
