Bill Gates recent statement about tablets proves how little Microsoft understands the market.

Last week, I was more than amused to read the statement from Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on CNBC about iPad users. While trying to promote Microsoft Surface tablets, Gates’ reportedly told the cable news station: ” A lot of those [iPad] users are frustrated. They can’t type, they can’t create documents, they don’t have Office there.”

Sorry, Bill, but that’s just a completely twisted and confused view of tablet usage in general and iPads in particular. The fact is, if we wanted a laptop running Windows and Office, we would buy one. A tablet is a touch device and as such it’s a totally different animal. While we are still learning how to use it as a content creation device, what we need is a little more imagination about how to take take advantage of the new computing approach, not a return to Windows and Office.

But this statement was revealing in itself because it brings to the surface, if you’ll pardon the expression, the whole problem with Microsoft’s tablet strategy.

They say all the right the things (most of the time) and they sound like they really get tablets, but the fact is they don’t, not even a little bit and the statement from Gates illustrated this better than any discussion of their corporate strategy ever could.

I’ve used Windows 8 and Office 365 on a tablet for instance, and Microsoft has not tuned it to the tablet experience at all. The Windows 8 front-end tiles make sense, but once you get past that into Office 365, it’s the same Office as you’ve always known on the desktop  with all its complexity and no attempt whatsoever to exploit the fact you’re on a touch device.

I found myself frustrated trying to use it with my finger as a touch application until I connected a bluetooth keyboard and mouse.  So to that extent Gates is right. It really is frustrating using Office on a tablet. But that’s because it’s still essentially a desktop computing application moved part and parcel to another device. There has been no attempt on Microsoft’s part to push itself to redefine Office for the touch experience — and frankly it’s exasperating and baffling. Why wouldn’t you do this unless of course, you don’t understand the new computing model.

As John Blossom wrote on Google + about the update to Windows 8 called Windows Blue, “Microsoft remains attached to the notion of installed software, period. Yet, at the same time, it’s trying to move its customers into cloud-based apps. It has an inherent conflict of interest in this mix,” Blossom wrote. Blossom’s right and what he writes is applicable to Microsoft’s tablet approach. It can’t let go of the old model, even as it tries to move its customers to a new one.

All of this tends to dent their credibility when Gates starts talking about what iPad users might want, and it’s just embarrassing to have your Chairman sounding like a 90s has-been on TV grumbling about iPads, and how what users really want is a return to the days when his company controlled the computing experience, all installed on the hard drive or server.

I’m sure he wishes that’s what most users still want, but so far, there is absolutely no evidence that people want Surface tablets or even that tablet users want a keyboard and a copy of Office on their tablets. That’s may be what Bill Gates wants and what the company he helped found hopes happens — but that’s very different.

The fact is the market has shifted in a dramatic way and Gates moaning on TV about it, only makes Microsoft appear desperate and out of touch.

Photo Credit:  batmoo on Flickr. Used under CC 2.0 Share Alike/Attribution license.

Tablets have passed PC sales by a large number and the age of the tablet is here. Photo Credit: (c) Can Stock Photo

The age of the tablet is upon us. The Guardian reports that Tim Cook, speaking at the Goldman Sachs Conference yesterday shared one piece of data that summed it up best. Last quarter Apple sold 23 million iPads, while HP — the world’s largest PC maker — sold 15m PCs.

What’s more, Cook told the audience he didn’t care if the iPad sales were eating into his desktop and laptop computer sales because the future market potential for tablets was so huge, it didn’t matter.

“The projection is that this is going to triple in four years – that’s 375 million, more than the number of PCs being sold around the world. The tablet is attracting people who have never owned a PC, and people who have owned [PCs] but it wasn’t great in the experience,” The Guardian quoted him as saying.

If you doubted the ascendancy of the tablet, these numbers illustrate that it’s happening right now probably faster than anyone believed it would. When I write about these types of changes, I get comments from old-school IT pros who scoff at the idea that a tablet could replace a PC. ‘You won’t someone using an iPad to design a car,’ they tell me.

And they’re probably right. Just because the tablet is overtaking the PC, it doesn’t mean that they are full out replacing every one. If HP sold 15 million PCs last quarter, surely that’s still a big number. But tablets have proven to be able to do a lot of tasks, we used to use PCs for or schlepped our laptops along.

And Apple isn’t alone in the market of course. Microsoft is trying its hand at the market, the same one where BlackBerry, HP and others have tried before and failed. Many believe Microsoft’s hybrid approach may be attractive to corporate workers, but the jury is still very much out on that one in spite of reports of selling out the Surface Pro upon release last week. Amazon is selling a fair number and there are a number of other Android tablet makers such as Samsung that appear to be doing doing quite well — to the extent we can know of course.

Cook was skeptical of projected market share numbers that get bandied about by various firms, and which supposedly show his company’s market share dropping under 50 percent. That’s because as he points out, his is the only company that’s actually announcing the number of units sold. But if you’re selling the kind of volume Apple is selling of these devices, you have to feel pretty good about your market position, regardless of what IDC, Gartner or Forrester has to say about it.

If Microsoft does sell 200 million units as a Forrester report projected recently, it could be at the expense of Apple, Google or Amazon or could be part of what appears to be an expanding tablet market where there is certainly room for more than one dominant player.  I’ll go on record as saying I’m skeptical about the 200 million number — and I’ll believe it when I see it.

For now, whatever brand you prefer — and it’s entirely possible you have different tablets for different roles — it’s clear that the age of the tablet is here, and while the PC is not going extinct any time soon, its days of dominance might be behind us.

Cloud storage has gotten so ridiculously cheap, it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t be using it.

We are in a golden age of cloud storage. We can buy unlimited backup on BitCasa for $99 a year or 10 GB for free. There’s also Dropbox and Sky Drive and Box and Google Drive  and iCloud and Amazon — all offer a varying amount of free space and attractive pricing packages if you want more.  There are so many options for such low prices, it boggles the mind.

You want local storage, you say? We can get a 2TB portable drive for around $100. .

Like everything else in technology this march to cheap storage has been steady. My first PC had a 20 MB (that’s megabytes, folks) hard drive.  Today, I have a 4GB thumb drive on my key chain — one of those that’s just the USB connector and a rubber cover. I recently bought a light-weight 1 tb portable drive that fits in the palm of my hand for $99. It still blows my mind that this little thing holds a terabyte.

Yet even with the low cost of local storage, we never seem to have enough do we? Whether we are an individual or an enterprise, we always seem to fill whatever capacity we have.

I have been buying computers for a long time and each time I’ve bought one, the hard drive had ever  more capacity, and I would think — I’ll never fill up that much hard drive space — only to find I did. I’m sure many IT pros have thought the same thing with their storage arrays. There must be some kind of law like Moore’s Law around chip capacity that we will always fill whatever hard drive capacity we have.

That’s the beauty of the cloud. It’s like that old Jay Leno Dorito’s ad — “Don’t worry. We’ll make more. ” It will always scale for you. You don’t have to worry about it because the cloud provider does. I know personally I have at least half a dozen cloud storage accounts. My stuff is spread across the digital heavens because it’s so darn cheap.

Just this week, Bitcasa came out of Beta with a new storage product that provides unlimited storage for $99 a year. I find it hard to believe they can continue to offer unlimited storage for so little, but for now, that’s the price. What’s more, it has client-side encryption, so they have no idea what’s on there and claim there’s no way for them to know — even under threat of subpoena.

Even the most paranoid among us has to like that.

So sure at 2TB for $100 you could back up some stuff and have it locally where it can never be at the mercy of ‘The Man’ –whether the government or the service provider — but when you can get unlimited encrypted storage for $99 a year, that’s gotten to the point where it’s pretty darn hard to resist. And you can get your files anywhere from any device , as well as  mark files for offline access if you know you’re not going to have a WiFi connection.

It’s the golden age of cloud storage. You would foolish not take advantage.

Photo Credit: (c) Can Stock Photo

As mobile devices usage continues to rise, we see PC sales decline.

We’ve seen all the signs lately that the PCs days are numbered and mobile and cloud, well they’re the cat’s meow, the BMOC, the big dog.

Oh , you’ll still see PC skulking around, showing up at parties and being annoying, but in 2012, we seemed to make a clear transition from desktop to mobile. Even Microsoft has seen this coming. Hence the rush to the cloud, the emphasis on mobile and the even the release of a Microsoft branded tablet with more coming.

We’ve all heard that Windows 8 PC sales have been slow. NPD reported at the end of November that Windows 8 sales were sluggish as were PCs and laptops in general with notebooks down 24 percent and desktop sales down 9 percent.

Granted it was early days, but Preston Gralla writing on his Computerworld blog after the holidays found that Windows 8 sales were still in the doldrums, and Gralla referenced a variety of sources reporting essentially the same bad news with lagging sales — and some computer manufacturing executives were beginning to express frustration at the lack of Windows 8 PC and laptop sales.

I trust that it has nothing to do with the quality of Windows 8. Whether you love it or not doesn’t have much to do with the lack of sales. It’s because the sales have shifted to mobile devices. In Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report this year, one telling slide was # 25, which showed in the fourth quarter of 2010, smartphones and tablet shipments surpassed PC and notebook shipments for the first time — and are expected to skyrocket in the coming years, while PC and notebook shipments will remain flat. Go have a look, it’s pretty telling. I’ll wait.

What’s even more telling is the next slide which predicts that sometime this year, the installed base of mobile device users will surpass the installed base of PC and Netbook user for the first time. Those two slides tell the tale of the changing demographics in technology usage (in case you needed a picture of what’s become obvious to just about everyone).

That not enough for you? How about this little data point then? Apple reported recently that it surpassed 40 billion total downloads in the App Store  since inception with almost half of those coming in 2012 and 2 billion in December alone. The App Store now has an astonishing 775,000 apps now. There are simply a lot of idevices out there and people appear to love to download apps.

And it’s not just Apple. ReadWriteWeb reports that Google, the other mobile behemoth, and its Google Play Android store is growing even faster and could pass a million apps before Apple does.

All this data seems to agree that mobile is ascending and PC is waning. This doesn’t mean we’ll stop using PCs or that the PC will go the way of the dinosaur, at least for the near term, but it does mean the PC will have less and less use in our lives, and as that is going to have an impact on traditional PC software like Windows and Office for the desktop. It’s a mobile world and the traditional PC is just going to have to get used to it.

Photo Credit:

(c) Can Stock Photo

Microsoft Surface Pro pricing defies any kind of market savvy on Microsoft’s part

When I heard Microsoft’s pricing for the upcoming Surface Pro on Thursday, my jaw literally dropped. Ed Bott reported on ZDNet that the pricing would be as follows:

The new Surface will debut in two editions in the United States and Canada: one with 64 GB of storage, priced at $899, a second with 128 GB for $999. Each model comes with a Surface pen but does not include Touch Cover or Type Cover add-ons ($120 and $130, respectively).

Excuse but as one friend put it when he heard the news, “Steve Ballmer must be huffing kerosene.” Even folks who were lusting for the Pro tablet have to pause when the cheapest option with cover and keyboard — and let’s face it they are selling the keyboard as a key feature — is $1149. Add on sales tax and you’re getting close to $1200. That’s not tablet pricing — that’s a pretty nice laptop and if you’re going to buy a laptop, buy a laptop. Why buy a hybrid device for that kind of money?

As though that’s not bad enough, Mary Jo Foley reports that the Surface Pro is going to have half the battery life of the Surface RT. That means 4-5 hours maximum so the Surface Pro is going to have the battery life a typical Ultrabook, which what I suspect people will buy if they want to spend this kind of money.

Microsoft has been blitzing the airwaves with Surface RT ads and word is they still aren’t selling. Last week even Ballmer himself admitted sales were off to what he called a “modest start.” That’s CEO code for we’re tanking. But the implication has always been that we really need to wait for Surface Pro to see where this is going to go.

Analyst Gene Munster claimed based on his onsite Black Friday research at Mall of America that Apple was moving 11 iPads an hour at the Apple store, while Microsoft was selling a big fat zero Surface RTs at the Microsoft Store. When I was at the SharePoint Conference earlier this month, I saw a couple of Surface RTs, but not as many as you would expect at a Microsoft-centric event. I think it’s fair to say that they aren’t selling very well.

And with these prices, it seems highly unlikely to me that Microsoft is going to move many of the Surface Pros. I can’t imagine someone paying $1200 for a tablet with 4 or 5 hours of battery life. I mean this kind of pricing makes iPads look positively affordable.

I’ve heard the arguments that this is a laptop replacement, and it’s a new kind of device, but I’m really not buying it. Let’s be honest here, the Surface is first and foremost a tablet. Microsoft created it to be a player in the tablet market and to compete with the iPad. Their strategy to is to have an operating system that has the same look and feel from desktop and laptop to tablet to phone. And the Surface family is the tablet part of the equation.

So let’s compare Surface Pro and iPad pricing. I’m going to put the iPad 2 and iPad mini aside here for comparing purposes and just use the 64 GB iPad WiFi with Retina Display. Apple doesn’t sell a 128 GB version of the iPad and the Surface Pro doesn’t support mobile broadband. Apple charges $699 for the latest iPad compared with $899 for the Surface Pro. That’s a pretty significant gap.

If you want a bluetooth keyboard and case you can get one like this iHome keyboard and case unit at Radio Shack for around $50 (and there are tons of  other options at a range of prices). That’s $749 plus tax.

Microsoft would have been far smarter to cut the prices and lose money to be cheaper or at least equal to the iPad than making the Surface Pro significantly more expensive. And I haven’t even mentioned the cheaper Android tablets at the other end of the market because this device clearly isn’t competing with those. But I’m still left wondering what Microsoft could possibly have been thinking with these prices.

I’m predicting right now that the Surface Pro will be the biggest dud since the RIM Playbook or the HP TouchPad and I’m fully expecting a similar level of success — which is to say none at all. Look for these to go on clearance by the end of Q1.

Photo by methodshop.com on Flickr.

Microsoft’s new look Windows 8 and Office integration is designed to do what it always has: lock users in to an all-Microsoft product approach.

Microsoft  has certainly has an exciting few days. Last Thursday it was Windows 8, Friday it was the Surface with Windows RT and this week, it was the Windows 8 phone. It’s actually a bit overwhelming to have all these product announcements on top of each other like this, but it reveals Microsoft’s mobile and cloud strategy quite clearly — and surprisingly it looks quite familiar.

On the surface (if you’ll pardon the expression), it appears, this is a company that has seen the light. They have bought into Ray Ozzie’s whole Dawn of a New Day post-PC rhetoric, and they are all in on the cloud and mobile. They have designed a hybrid operating system to work on mobile or the desktop. They’ve created their own tablets along with those from partners, and they have a new line of phones coming from OEMs in time for the holidays. They also have the cloud services in place.

Everything looks right. They seem to understand the cloud-mobile connection they have been missing for so long, but there’s one slight problem. They can’t seem to let go of the past. For all these years, Microsoft has been mostly a software company that made lots of money locking in customers on high margin items like Windows and Office and it was great — until it wasn’t anymore.

Then Microsoft had an identity crisis, and it took some time and decided it wanted to be a cloud and mobile vendor — but it wanted to operate the way it always has by locking people into a Microsoft system where you use Microsoft products all the time — still making Windows and Office the center of everyone’s world. Brilliant, right? It combines the old with the new, but it fails to take into account a couple of key changes to the world.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer put it this way in a Wall Street Journal interview this week when he was asked to define the Microsoft vision today: “We talk internally about enabling people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential. Whether that’s sexy or not, putting you in control of your world, and letting you do things you weren’t able to do before, that’s what we’re about for people and for businesses.”

Essentially Ballmer’s company view comes down to this: Tablets and phones and desktop computers all integrate in an all-Microsoft vision where you can access Office on the desktop or in the cloud and it’s all held together by Windows 8 across devices. You see, it’s the same old all-Microsoft strategy in a cloud and mobile package and this time they even can sell their own hardware. Sounds pretty great — for them.

Sure, Microsoft saw the cloud and mobile trends, probably before it was too late, but the world wasn’t standing still while they came to their senses. People have been choosing their own devices for some time now, and just maybe people don’t love Microsoft all that much to want a Windows phone and a Window tablet to go with their Windows desktop/laptop. Maybe they want variety. Perhaps they want and a Samsung Galaxy S3 or an iPhone. Maybe they want Nexus 7 or an iPad mini. They may very well want a Window device too, but all Windows? That’s just not likely, not when there are so many other options out there.

And while the whole software strategy of going to the cloud with Azure and Office 365 and so forth all plays into this,  it’s not realistic to believe that everyone is going to choose the Microsoft cloud product — not when there are so many enterprise-friendly consumer-like alternatives out there now.

The thing is, if this were three years ago and companies were still handing out Blackberries and an IBM ThinkPad, and everyone had a beige box under their desk running Office and Windows, the strategy might have worked just fine, but the world shifted under Microsoft’s feet even while it was trying so hard to adjust.

Microsoft did get part of the story right, and they deserve a great deal of credit for it, but maybe they just couldn’t or didn’t want to see the BYOD piece. The fact is that when you peel back all the hardware and software, and get to the core of it, this strategy is the same one they have been delivering for the last 20 years. It’s  just baked into the company DNA to design their offerings this way and they don’t seem to know how to do it any other way.

The problem isn’t what Microsoft has delivered, it’s that it took so long, and there are just so many alternatives out there now. Microsoft doesn’t have the field to itself anymore and no matter how well designed the phones and the tablets and the operating system and the cloud services may be; there are others that are just as good and maybe better — and everyone gets to choose now.

Photo Credit: Microsoft 

With so many tablets, consumers could be faced with too many choices.

We’ve got big tablets and small ones. We’ve got iOS, Android and Windows. We’ve got so many choices from so many manufacturers, it’s hard to keep up with the bevy of announcements. I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a bit confused by the choices and I’m sure I’m not alone.

And it looks like by the end of this week, we are going to have a couple of more tablet entries to think about. It appears we will finally see the long-rumored 7 inch iPad announced tomorrow and Microsoft is having its Microsoft Surface with Windows RT coming out party on Friday. Meanwhile, there are rumors of a 10 inch Google Nexus tablet by the end of the month.

It’s enough to make your head spin, and I’m a journalist paid to keep up with all of this. I can only imagine how consumers must feel right about now.

Let’s start with Apple. We aren’t even sure that there is going to be an iPad Mini (or whatever Apple calls it) tomorrow, but it sure looks like it. And if it happens, it will finally put an end to months of speculation that Apple has been working on a smaller iPad or a larger iPod Touch (depending on how you look at it).

The irony of Apple making a 7 inch tablet is clear. As Charles Arthur points out in the Guardian, Steve Jobs trashed the idea of smaller tablets during a 2010 earnings call. That Apple is making one now could mean it recognizes a market opportunity when it sees it, or without Jobs’ council or browbeating, it is listening to the marketing department instead of engineering.

Then we have Google’s march into the hardware market.  I’ve made it clear in this space in the past that I don’t think highly of this approach. That’s because I believe Google succeeds when it spreads its software to as many devices as possible, and when it sells hardware it undercuts its resellers. That said, I’ve looked at the Nexus 7 tablet and I enjoyed using it for the short time I played with it at my local Staples, but I’m not convinced that Google should be pushing the Android brand with its own Google-branded hardware.

Which brings us to Microsoft, which takes its long awaited stab at the tablet market starting later this week. Of course, we’ve been hearing about this thing for months too, and this week, Microsoft finally becomes a player in this space for better or worse. Much like Google, I don’t think Microsoft necessarily should be selling Microsoft-branded tablets and undercutting their resellers, but they are and they are yet another choice on the shelf.

For the record, Microsoft Surface with Windows RT doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, and I can’t be the only one confounded by this Windows RT branding. Why have a pro and consumer version? The confusion only grows because apparently you can’t use Office on Windows RT tablets. While Microsoft may want emulate Apple by selling hardware, it hasn’t followed Apple’s lead when it comes to keeping the product line streamlined and clear.

I haven’t even mentioned Amazon, but mostly because I don’t truly see consumers bringing Amazon devices into the enterprise for work.

Regardless, the tablets are coming and there is little we can do, but sit back and wait for the dust to settle. Before you get too excited though, think back a year or so to when RIM released the PlayBook and HP released the TouchPad, both to a similar level of hype and fanfare we are seeing now. Then think about what happened to them. Which company will join them?  Time to place your bets and mine sticks firmly with the market leader until somebody proves otherwise.

Photo Credit: morrissey on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.

The iPhone announcement was just one of many recent smartphone launches. Photo courtesy of Apple

Over the last several weeks, we have had our share of major smartphone announcements from Samsung, Nokia, Google and Apple. What we’ve learned I think is that the smartphone market is sufficiently mature, that these announcements have lost their ability to dazzle us.

Part of the problem is that most of these phones are so similar at this point that what we are left with is minor design differences, specification lists and operating system religious battles.  If you doubt this, have a look at this picture on Mashable with the 4 phones side by side. You can also scroll down to see the specifications lined up side by side, for whatever that’s worth.

The thing is, I think the buying public and especially those of us in the tech press want to be blown away. We want to believe that these announcements matter, but as much as we want that, they have lost their luster because there’s not much these phones can do to differentiate themselves from one another.

We’ve seen this summer Apple fighting Samsung in court over basic smartphone design issues and winning. Regardless of which side you supported in this battle — whether you believe that we should agree on some basic smartphone design principles or you are convinced that someone can patent those elements — if you’re honest, what we’ve learned from these announcements is that these phones lack sufficient differences to excite us, especially when they come tumbling along one after the other, as these have.

When Apple first announced the iPhone in 2007, it was special because it represented a revolutionary shift in phone design from the shape to the touch screen to the lack of a hard phone number pad; this was something different. A year later, Apple announced the App Store and suddenly we had an internet device in our pockets with mini software packages we could download to our phones.

Today’s announcements can’t possibly compete with the excitement we felt in the early days of smartphones, whether it was the early iPhones or the first Androids. They were distinctive because they were different, but as markets develop, it becomes much more difficult to generate that kind of thrill because there simply aren’t any major changes to these devices at this point.

My colleague Wayne Rash writing on eWeek called the iPhone announcement incremental. I disagreed with this description at first, but after thinking about it, what else could this announcement be? What could any of these announcements be — but exercises in highlighting the minor changes to the basic design we all know all too well?

Word came out this morning that HTC and Samsung were planning to sue Apple over the iPhone 5 design. This is funny on a certain level, but it also illustrates beautifully where we are in the smartphone market evolution. We have a bunch of similar phones with different labels fighting tooth and nail in court and in the marketplace to get our attention.

We can all sit back and watch this drama continue to play out, but don’t expect to be dazzled anymore by smartphone announcements, because in the words of BB King, “The thrill is gone.”

The new colorful line of Nokia Lumia phones. Photo courtesy of Nokia.

By now, you’ve probably heard about the shiny new phones that Nokia trotted out this morning. Leaving aside we weren’t given a price or availability of these phones or that the next generation iPhone will be released next week, on their face, these look great and have lots of nifty features. The trouble is that Nokia needed more than it could ever offer to get Microsoft and Nokia where they want to go.

I know I keep beating the same drum in this blog, but it’s not as though I relish the thought of Microsoft and Nokia failing. It’s quite the opposite. I’ve acknowledged many times, the market needs someone to take on Google and Apple, but these two platforms have become so powerful, it’s going to be almost impossible to stop them on pure momentum alone.

That said, not everyone feels that way. In fact, my colleague Wayne Rash, writing in eWeek saw this announcement as a real opportunity for the Microsoft platform due to the copyright litigation dance going on with Apple, Google and Samsung, which he believes could leave Microsoft with an opening. It’s possible, but as I’ve written I don’t think most consumers pay the least bit of attention to patent litigation.

As usual, you have your share of tech journalists gushing over the phone, and yes, it’s a nice phone, but as I wrote in a recent post, when you start as low on the marketshare totem pole as Microsoft, it’s going to take some serious traction to move up the ladder — even a little bit.

And, let’s face it, the first generation of Lumia phones were pretty nice too, but they didn’t do much. According to the latest comScore numbers for July, 2012, Microsoft dipped from 4.0 percent in the April report to 3.6 percent for July. If you trust these numbers (and I don’t see any reason not to trust comScore), in spite of the huge push from AT&T, Microsoft and Nokia; the Microsoft platform actually lost ground.

What’s different this time?

Don’t get me wrong, there is some cool technology here, and the phones have interesting colors, a big screen, a powerful camera and intriguing wireless recharging. (I’m curious to find out how and how well that works.) But you can’t escape the fact, no matter how fancy these phones may be that Apple’s market share increased 2 percent according to that same comScore report topping off at 33.4 percent for July.

And it’s not as though Apple is standing still. In a week, when the next generation iPhones come out, what do you suppose everyone will be talking about and the marketshare numbers will likely rise accordingly.

I don’t mean to leave out Google here because Android marketshare was up 1.4 percent to 52.2 percent of the US market in July. Look for yourselves. As the saying goes, read ‘em and weep.

The latest comScore marketshare numbers don’t paint a pretty picture for the Microsoft platform.

Chart courtesy of comScore.

As Preston Gralla wrote on Computerworld today, it’s a nice enough phone, but it’s not a game changer. And that’s the problem because it’s not about the phone or the features. When people walk into the store to buy a new phone, they aren’t choosing Microsoft. They are going with Android or Apple, and with a new iPhone coming, chances are the story is not going to change unless Nokia and Microsoft come up with Star Trek-like transporter technology for the phone.

That might turn some heads. Otherwise, as the headlines fade, look for the same old story: Microsoft mobile platform struggles to gain traction. Story at 11.

Microsoft has started so far back in the smartphone marketshare pack, that it’s going to be to be long road trying to make gains from Google and Apple.

Some have suggested that last week’s ruling against Samsung might have created an opening for Microsoft as phone manufacturers seek a safer haven than Android might appear to be at the moment. Regardless of what happens, Microsoft still faces a long, slow climb from oblivion to relevance.

Whether Android is any more or less safe than it was last Friday when the verdict was handed down against Samsung, is debatable, I suppose, but it certainly gives fuel for the FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) generators out there — and perhaps that was Apple’s goal all along. For now though at least, rest assured that Android isn’t going anywhere.

Consumers won’t give a hoot about lawsuits and as long as the manufacturers create nice phones, consumers will still push Android marketshare to its lofty heights at the top of the smarphone market, where it continues to control more than 50 percent of US smartphone sales (according to the May comScore figures) — and I doubt very much manufacturers will be cowed in the short term. All indicators point to Samsung fighting this verdict. Don’t expect anyone to roll over for Apple here.

That same comScore report showed Microsoft with just 4 percent of overall US smartphone marketshare in May. When you start that low, it’s like the old Richard Farina book, “Been down so long, it looks like up to me.” How do you climb out of a hole like that? It’s very difficult to move the needle when you are fighting two such dominant players.

Even with the launch of Windows 8 phones, looming on the horizon, it’s tough to gain marketshare under current market conditions. Google and Apple account for for more than 80 percent of US smartphone marketshare. Lowly RIM accounts for another 13.4 percent, and although that goes down with each passing report, the majority of the lost share seems to be going to Apple and Google — not to Microsoft.

In what might not be a coincidence, just this morning, Samsung announced its first Windows 8 phone, beating Nokia to the punch. Nokia is expected to make a big push with Windows 8 phones later this year, presumably in time for the holiday shopping season. If there is a moment for Microsoft to make some gains, it would seem to be right now.

The market has been screaming for a third option, even before the court rulings muddied the waters a bit. RIM hopes that it next generation phones will stop the bleeding. While Microsoft is clearly appears to be a better option, it’s not as simple as  just showing up.

Microsoft still  faces huge hurdles as it attempts to make the steep climb up from the smartphone marketshare abyss — and there are no guarantees, no matter how well they play, that they will succeed, because when you started at the bottom, it’s a long climb to get out.

Photo by  katsrcool on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons License.