Microsoft Is ‘Flatlined.’ Does It Mean They’re Dead?

I was checking Apple’s recent stock price rise on Yahoo and did a comparison with Microsoft. It’s graphic. It’s a picture worth more than a thousand words.

Apple is heading toward heaven and Microsoft has flatlined. Are they dead? Are we watching the end of an era? Is it Koolaid time in Cupertino?

I have two basic points from my observation about Microsoft’s obvious stock price flatline. The first concerns Microsoft and the end of the Windows era. Or, rather, the beginning of the end of the Windows era.

The second point has to do with Koolaid; not the kind your kids love to drink, not the kind Jim Jones’ followers blindly gulped down, but The Koolaid Point.

First, is Microsoft’s dominance beginning to end? This is a company with about 90-percent market share, $38-billion in the bank, and hundreds of millions of customers. What could go wrong?

Right now, a little of everything. Market share is eroding to more nimble competitors; Linux distributors, Apple, IBM, and others. Microsoft is missing revenue and profit forecasts quarter after quarter.

To be fair, they’re making money hand over fist, but customers are considering other choices and that slows down the money train.

The next generation of Windows is a year away and three years late. Outside of MS Office and Windows, Microsoft doesn’t make much revenue or profit (comparitively speaking), so they’re being exposed as a two trick pony.

The fact that Microsoft has hundreds of millions of customers is being overshadowed by the hundred million customers who hate Microsoft because of the spyware, viruses, malware, and blue screen of death episodes.

Even whole countries hate Microsoft and enjoy bringing them to court for past sins. Again and again. Microsoft’s name has become so muddied that they’ve resorted to settling cases out of court rather than letting them linger in court.

They can’t win.

If a single picture is worth a thousand words, it’s this one. Microsoft has flatlined.

I’m convinced that the ‘red line’ in the graphic is the beginning of the end of an era for Microsoft, for computer users, and, surprisingly, for Apple the beginning of a new era.

Why for Apple, you ask? Because of The Koolaid Point. Mac users are sufficiently zealous about the ‘Mac experience’ that we’ve been accused of ‘drinking the Koolaid’ (a horrible reference to the Jim Jones’ experience a few decades ago).

If The Politics of Passion is accurate, then Mac users are passionate, and Mac detractors nearly so.

Though accused of ‘drinking Koolaid’ for a decade, we’ve really just reached the true ‘Koolaid Point’ where the rest of the world begins to understand what Mac users have known all along.

Macs are better. I was drawn to the distinct difference between Apple’s stock price over the past few years, and Microsoft’s flatline performance. Then I saw The Koolaid Point and it all came together.

Microsoft will need more than their $38-billion in the bank to fix their problems. Meanwhile, life goes on for those willing to drink the ‘right’ Koolaid.