Life Between 0 and 1

Lenovo Takes a Stand Against Microsoft’s Surface

This is an interesting one this week and highlights how cut throat the PC industry is starting to become.  It’s always been cut throat, but lately these companies are out for blood in my opinion.  Microsoft has always had the ability to manufacture their own hardware, but chose not to as there were plenty of hardware suppliers more than willing to work with them.  The software giant, not so much just software anymore, is branching out into areas that were solely reserved for their partners.

I can understand Microsoft’s point of view here.  Why negotiate with a third party on how you want your hardware to look since you’re putting your own name on it?  Design the thing internally, contract with a company in China and then just sell it on your own.  This way you don’t need to split profits with anyone.  Most OEM’s are in a struggle with Microsoft producing products that compete directly with their space.  They need the OS software to run their own devices, but on the same coin hate the fact that they are now competing with a software company in the hardware arena.  The surface is a beautiful piece of hardware and is making it painfully clear to other OEM’s that they’ve failed to innovate in this space for over two years now.

I’m convinced that PC sales are slumping because nothing new has come out to make a brand new machine look different than the 3-5 year old one already in someones house.  Most people don’t know GHz CPU speeds, generations, DDR2 vs. DDR3 vs. DDR4, etc.  Do something creative and maybe people will decide to buy a new PC or laptop.