computers | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

702 Sydney mornings – watching TV on the net

How is the Internet changing the way we watch TV?

On 702Sydney Mornings this month with Linda Mottram, we’re looking at at how the Internet is changing the way we watch TV.

How much do you use ABC’s iView? Okay it’s not every program for forever but it’s a godsend when you’re time poor – and who isn’t these days. So you can catch up with the programs on ABC TV you’ve missed or you knew you couldn’t watch it live.

We’d love to hear from you if you’re now watching TV programs – ANY TV programs – primarily on the Net, through your internet browser rather than sitting in front of a telly.

Aside from catch-up services like iView, ABC is already providing programs LIVE. If you log on to ABC News 24 website, you’ll be watching a live TV news straight away. And then of course there’re a number of avenues for pay–per-view services.”

Some of the things we’ll be discussing are;

Differences between different services and how they work and how much they cost.
Free-to-air or Pay-per-view. Just how much is available for free and how much isn’t?
Limitations of catch-up services. How long are programs kept, how comprehensive is their collection?
Limitations caused by copyright laws. Some overseas programs are either very difficult to view or impossible to view online. Will the technology advance mean these limitations will be irrelevant soon if not already?
Nobody wants to squint at smartphones to watch nature documentaries do they? Is the quality really up to scratch? Alternatively, what do YOU as a computer/smartphone/tablet user need to know that your viewing experience is as enjoyable as possible?
While catchup services are becoming more popular than ever, take up of internet based TV (IPTV) remains very low. Will this ever change? What will cause the change?
If the catchup services’ popularity continues to grow – and there’s nothing to suggest it’ll slow down – wouldn’t commercial television need to re-examine their advertising based business models seriously?
Main takeups of TV-watching on the net will be younger audiences, but it is quite often more mature and older audience who complain about the permeating advertising. What will it take older audience to flee further and significantly to Net-TV?

Some of the material we’ll be referring to in the program is the ACMA report on Online Video Content Services in Australia and Screen Australia’s What to Watch in an Online World.

Join us on 702 Sydney from shortly after 9.30am. We’ll probably take some calls on 1300 222 702 and we’d like to hear your views, comments or questions.

Windows Phone 8 launch

Can Windows Phone 8 reclaim Microsoft’s lost mobile crown?

This week’s launch of Window 8 Phone is part of Microsoft’s strategy to remain relevant in a world where personal computers and laptops are being left behind by smartphones and tablet computers.

In many ways, the tablet and mobile market is an opportunity lost by Microsoft – for a decade the market had been desperate for decent tablet computers and smartphones. The Windows tablet and PDA product in the early 2000s ran on was expensive, heavy and clunky hardware that discouraged even the most determined user.

The failure of Microsoft and their partners cost the company dearly when the iPhone and then the iPad stole the market from them. Today Apple’s iPad owns the tablet computer market while the iPhone on its own makes more money than all of Microsoft’s products put together.

Microsoft’s response to this threat to their core business has been slow and wasn’t helped by the company Windows Vista disaster, a mis-step that broke the PC upgrade cycle.

Fortunately Windows 7 put Microsoft’s core business back on an even keel as they contemplated their customers’ move away from the personal computer.

The strategy now for Microsoft with Windows 8 is the “run anywhere” philosophy where a document created on your tablet computer can be accessed just as easily on your PC or on a smartphone. This relies on a cloud computing service and the same operating system running on all devices – interestingly this “hybrid cloud” idea underpins Apple’s iCloud as well.

Being able to run documents across all Windows devices was a key part of Microsoft’s launch today with a demonstration of how Office 2013 files can be accessed.

To get the full features of Windows Phone though you’ll have to be running Windows 8 AND Microsoft 2013 on your tablet and personal computer.

Vendor lock-in isn’t surprising as this strategy lies at the heart of Microsoft’s business model – the problem is the market is moving away from the Windows platform and many of the devices, and people, Windows Phone users will be communicating with are using Android or Apple systems so many of the gee-whiz functions are lost.

One of the functions displayed is Rooms, which allows like minded people to share various features. As the Microsoft media release says;

Sometimes you want to share and chat with one group, not your entire social network. Rooms allow you to create private groups of people who have Windows Phone 8 — like your family members best friends or fantasy football league — and easily connect with just them. Chat, share calendars, shopping lists or photos in an ongoing conversation where only those invited can join in. You can share some aspects of Rooms with friends and family on other smartphones as well.

The problem is that when your family members, best friends or fantasy football league competitors aren’t using Windows 8, the Rooms function becomes little more than a glorified shared calendar – Dropbox and Google Docs provide more features.

For the family user Windows Phone 8 does have unique feature in allowing a children friendly profile called Kids Corner, where parents can quarantine the little ones from the main address books and features while allowing only certain apps to run. Unfortunately there’s only one Kids Corner so the little darlings will have to fight it out over the Angry Birds account.

That Angry Birds app is the harbinger of where Microsoft’s multiple screen strategy will either succeed or die in the ditch as it will be the available applications which will determine whether customers will buy the device over the iPhone or Android competitors.

Looking at the Samsung, HTC and Nokia phones that will be released running Windows Phone next month, all seem to be decent pieces of hardware although the Nokia 920 seems to be a hefty unit compared to the competition. Overall though all three phones seem to be decent competitors with their own strengths compared to the Android and Apple opposition.

The success of Windows Phone will define Microsoft’s place in the post-PC world, now its up to the company and its partners to sell them.

Tech’s tough days

Apple and Amazon’s quarterly reports steal the attention from Microsoft’s Windows 8 launch

Today sees another tough day for tech stocks with both Apple and Amazon missing their projected earnings which again finds Microsoft being stood up at their own party.

For Amazon, along with the costs involved with a new range of Kindles, there’s a huge write down in their Living Social investment, another indicator that the group buying bubble has passed into history alongside tulips, 19th Century Argentinian railway bonds and South Sea investments.

It’s worrying that while Amazon’s quarterly sales have increased by 23% over last year’s figures to $11.546 billion dollars, their cost of sales has also gone up 23% from $8.325 to $10.319 billion. This is a trend to watch closely over the next few quarters.

Unlike Amazon, Apple still made a fat profit with income going up to $8.2 billion for the quarter, an increase of 24%. This missed many Wall Street analysts’ estimates.

Apple’s missed earnings were put down to supply chain constraints and development costs, but what jumps out looking at the cash flow is the six billion turnaround in the company’s Accounts Receivable. One assumes this is the value of pending invoices on the new ranges of iPhones, iMacs and iPads sent out to their sales channel.

If that’s right, Apple are looking at a big boost in their cashflow next month, although there’s few companies who would like to have five billion dollars in outstanding invoices in today’s economic climate.

Once again though, Apple have managed to steal Microsoft’s thunder. Despite the glitz and glamour of the Windows 8 launch in New York, Microsoft’s announcement has been muted by the tech and business press’ reaction to the earnings reports.

What is clear from all three companies though is that hand held devices – the Apple iPad, Amazon Kindle and Microsoft Surface – are going dominate the tech and financial coverage of all three companies for the rest of the year.

Apple’s line in the sand

The refreshed Apple range will add pressure to Google and Microsoft.

The comprehensive refresh of Apple’s product lines announced by CEO Tim Cook this morning is a clear warning to Google and Microsoft that the market leader in the post-PC computer marketplace is not going away.

With both Google and Microsoft having a major product releases over the next week, the pressure is now on both companies to match Apple’s announcements and product range.

For Microsoft, the stakes are now substantially higher for their Windows Surface tablets. The Fourth Generation iPad and iPad Mini (or is that iPod Maxi?) are going to be the benchmarks the Redmond tablet PCs will be measured against.

An interesting part of the Apple presentation was marketing chief Phil Schiller trash talking the Android competitors with a side-by-side comparison between the iPad and the Nexus.

These comparisons are becoming a hallmark of Schiller’s marketing in the post Steve Jobs Apple, whether this is good or bad remains to be seen, but it is a difference compared to the old boss’ way of doing things. Although Jobs wasn’t adverse to poking fun at some of Microsoft’s confusing habits.

For geeks, and those who like shiny things that go “beep”, it’s an exciting week and Apple have shown why they are masters at controlling the tech media.

It’s now up to Google and Microsoft to see if they can match Cook’s announcements and meet Apple’s price points.

Can Microsoft beat the PC marketplace’s structural decline?

Windows 8 faces big challenges in replacing Microsoft’s cash cows

In New York on Thursday Microsoft will have a marathon launch of their Windows 8 system and the futures of many of their hardware partners lie on the success of the new system.

For Microsoft, Windows 8 could be the last throw of the dice for the desktop operating system that has sustained the company for thirty years.

The figures aren’t good for Windows as Microsoft’s 2012 profit and loss shows, here are the figures broken out by operating unit segment from the company’s annual report.

Year Ended June 30,	2012	2011	2010
Revenue	bn $	bn $	bn $
Windows & Windows Live Division	18,818	18,787	18,789
Operating Income (Loss)
Windows & Windows Live Division	11,908	11,971	12,193

The core Windows & Windows Live Division has stagnant revenues and a slowly declining profit margin. We’ll leave the huge losses in the online division for a future post.

Since the days of the first MS-DOS deal with IBM, Microsoft’s core business has been the licensing of operating systems to PC manufacturers and now that model is in trouble.

For instance Dell had an 8% drop in revenue resulting in a worrying 22% drop in operating profit, their PC dominated consumer division suffered a fat 22% drop in sales and recorded a miniscule .5% profit margin. Similarly Asus had 25% drop in sales to record a 2011 loss.

The pain being suffered by PC manufacturers’ sales and margins will almost certainly be shared by Microsoft as companies like Dell, HP and Asus simply can’t afford to pay the licensing fees which have sustained the Redmond business model for so long.

Microsoft and their partners hope – or pray – that the PC decline is a temporary hiccup in computer sales similar to the traditional lull seen before the release of a new system.

History’s not on their side with research company Asymco expecting sales of tablet computers to overtake PCs sometime in late 2013.

This is not a cyclical trend – the PC industry is in structural decline; the traditional Windows upgrade cycle is dead and Google are running interference with their Chromebook networked laptops.

Moving onto tablets and smartphones in this light makes sense for Microsoft and given the PC manufacturers have failed dismally to deliver decent tablet computers or phones over the last 15 years so it’s understandable the software giant wanted to develop their own hardware or team up with a struggling company like Nokia.

The declining margins in personal computers means we’re seeing the end of the Windows desktop ecosystem. With the rise of the web and cloud computing the type of operating system we use is like arguing between Toyota and BMW drivers; one might be more prestigious but both will get you where you want to go.

For Microsoft the challenge is to replace those Windows licensing rivers of gold with similar revenue streams through their phone and tablet products but with Apple and Google already dominating those fields, is it too late for the company that dominated personal computing? The next six months will tell us.

Unprotected computing practices

The news that many medical computing systems are infected with malware doesn’t suprise those working in the field

A US study finding malware is rampant on medical equipment shouldn’t come as a surprise to those running industrial computer systems in their businesses.

It’s notoriously difficult to update medical equipment or other sensitive systems as a security patch could have unintended consequences. Unlike a home or business computer, these patches have to be thoroughly tested beyond the precautions vendors take.

So it isn’t surprising that these systems aren’t kept up to date although some equipment suppliers are more tardy than they should be in updating the servers they supply.

A few years ago I came across CCTV systems running on the original version of Windows 2000 which were hopelessly compromised. This is an unacceptable situation for the customer and was more the result of vendor carelessness than any concern that customers could be affected by these unsecured machines.

Not having the latest software patches creates a weakness in any computer device as most common way viruses find their way onto networks is through systems not being updated – Australia’s Defense Signals Directorate rates unpatched systems as being the number one cause of corporate security breaches.

This is what caught out the Iranian nuclear program with the Stuxnet worm as the Siemens SCADA devices used by the Iranians were running older, unpatched versions of Windows. The designers of Stuxnet took advantage of a number of known weaknesses in the software and were able to damage the equipment being controlled by the systems.

Obviously systems should be patched wherever they can be and there’s no excuse for not patching most office and home computers. It’s also worthwhile carrying out a number of other security steps to ensure an infected computer can’t damage your network or catch a virus through your Internet connection.

The survey looking at these medical systems is a good wake up call to all of us that we need to take computer security seriously in our businesses.

Meeting the solid state Woz

The fast talking Steve Wozniak surfs into town on a wave of enthusiasm.

When the opportunity comes to meet co-founder of Apple computer Steve Wozniak you jump at it, despite being jet lagged from the previous day’s flight.

One of the tough things when writing about Steve Wozniak is that he is a fast talker. You have to be quick to keep up with his ideas and words.

Steve was in town to show off the range of solid state computer memory cards manufactured by Fusion-iO, a company based in Salt Lake City.

Wozniak liked the idea so much he became Fusion-iO’s chief scientist in 2009. “When I first saw the iO drive, it was so beautiful I had to buy one from the company and put it in a frame just to frame it at home.”

What enthused Woz were Fusion-iO‘s range of NAND flash memory cards that speed up servers while reducing their power and cooling requirements.

Those power savings are important for data centres when hundreds of thousands of servers might be in one building, Fusion-iO’s CEO and co-founder David Flynn estimates this could save up the industry a $250 billion a year in operating costs.

Probably the biggest benefits though are in the corporate space, one Flynn’s boasts is how one movie studio used Fusion-iO’s products to reduce transcoding between formats from two hours to 39 seconds.

Another case study they show off is how grocery chain Woolworths were able to reduce the 17 hours to run their weekly trading reports to three hours meaning they were able to capture weekend figures for their weekly Monday morning board meetings.

For smaller businesses, the biggest benefit is these products can turn fairly basic desktop computers into workstations with the $2,500 ioFX card promising some serious post production capabilities for a system although one would expect an entry level box wouldn’t have the data connection, hard drive or – most importantly – power supply to cope with the demands of such a device would put on the typical cheap components in a basic desktop system.

All of these changes though are heralding some pretty big changes for big and small businesses.

Where Steve Wozniak sees the greatest application of moving data faster is in Artificial Intelligence applications like voice recognition. Apple’s Siri is a good example of this.

The barrier to effective voice recognition is the sheer amount of data processing required to effectively understand voice commands. Doing this on cloud services is a far more efficient and effective way of doing this.

As we saw at Dreamforce last week, the sheer amount of data pouring into companies is changing how they manage information. Getting access quickly to relevant information is an important part of managing it.

“I’ve never gotten so excited about or fell in love with a technology like this since Apple.” Says Wozniak.

Having a chance to speak to Steve Wozniak up close shows that fast talking enthusiasm is for real. The Woz is a real geek.

Like all true geeks Wozniak is passionate about what he believes in – whether it’s about NAND flash cards or becoming an Australian resident he bubbles with enthusiasm. Just don’t try writing notes down while he’s in full flight.

The risks of tablet pricing

Are Windows tablet manufacturers repeating last decade’s mistakes?

We often forget that tablet computers weren’t invented by Steve Jobs. For a decade before Microsoft and their partners like Toshiba or Dell had been selling ‘slate-like’ devices.

The market wanted tablet computers, particularly business users in sectors like logistics and health care, but the Windows products on offer were heavy, clunky and expensive.

It took the iPad to deliver what the market wanted — a lightweight, easy to use and reasonably priced tablet computer. This was the reason Apple were so successful.

With Asus’ pricing announcement of their new range of Windows 8 tablets it appears the mistakes made by the PC industry with tablet computers ten years ago are going to be repeated.

The fundamental thing that will kill Windows tablets is cost and these tablets are too expensive compared to the Apple and Android competitors.

While having Windows compatibility and the opportunity to save to USB drives or corporate networks is handy in a tablet, there seems to be little reason for customers not to buy a mid-priced laptop.

It appears though these price points are part of Microsoft’s strategy. Steve Ballmer hinted at this in his Seattle Times interview last weekend.

Q: The iPad has the largest share of the tablet market, but its soft spot, it seems to me, is the price.With the Surface, are you planning to compete with the iPad on price or on features?

A: We haven’t announced pricing. I think we have a very competitive product from the features perspective. …

I think most people would tell you that the iPad is not a superexpensive device. … (When) people offer cheaper, they do less. They look less good, they’re chintzier, they’re cheaper.

If you say to somebody, would you use one of the 7-inch tablets, would somebody ever use a Kindle (Kindle Fire, $199) to do their homework? The answer is no; you never would. It’s just not a good enough product. It doesn’t mean you might not read a book on it….

If you look at the bulk of the PC market, it would run between, say, probably $300 to about $700 or $800. That’s the sweet spot.

The problem is the tablet computer market isn’t the PC market and those price points have changed.

What’s more, the features that attract users to tablet devices or smartphones are different to that of PCs.

Basically PCs, tablets and smartphones are different products.

Applying PC pricing structures, or marketing models, to the tablet market is a risky strategy.

Steve Jobs didn’t do this and Apple succeeded with the iPhone and iPad without damaging their Mac sales, whether Microsoft can pull of a similar achievement with the opposite strategy remains to be seen.

Hands on with Microsoft Office 365 and a Windows 8 tablet

Giving the new version of Office a run on a Windows tablet

One of the key planks of Microsoft meeting the challenge presented by online services like Google Docs is their cloud based Office365.

The success of Office365 is important as Microsoft Office makes up a large chunk of the 24 billion dollars in sales, and $15 billion dollar profit, the company books from its Business Division.

Coupled to this threat is also the move from personal computers to smartphones and tablet devices which Microsoft hope to meet with their Window 8 operating system, Surface tablet computer and Windows Phone.

As part of the Australian TechEd 2012 Conference, Microsoft gave a hands on preview of the Office 365 running on a Windows 8 tablet which was a good opportunity to see how both software packages worked.

Office 365

Office365 is very similar in layout and function to Office 2010 – if you’re using earlier versions of Office, particularly Office 2003, then you may find the ribbon bar and changed menus hard to navigate at first.

Integration with Microsoft’s Skydrive is good and seamless. A nice feature in this is how a user can setup multiple Skydrive accounts as separate drives. How well this works while on the road will have to be tested away from a controlled environment like the one at the TechEd meeting rooms.

The touch screen functions are fairly hard to get used to and they don’t work particularly well with fat fingers which Microsoft attempts to overcome with providing a stylus.

Another complexity is that the menus and touch screen functions aren’t consistent across applications. The handy ‘pinch’ gesture to zoom on Windows 8 doesn’t work on the Office applications on the tablet which is a shame and is also a bit irritating for power users.

Office365 adds a range of other features like web publishing, video editing and IT management tools but the hands on demo didn’t give enough time to properly evaluate these aspects.

Window 8

The first thing that jumps out with Windows 8 is the basic interface isn’t intuitive. The tile based system is difficult to use if you’re used to a keyboard and mouse or mobile systems like Apple iOS and Android.

Another worry is the Windows 8 interface – or “Metro” as it was known – uses different applications to the desktop version. The problem with this was illustrated when trying to run a video on the device as the Internet Explorer in the Windows 8 interface was a different version to that on the desktop so videos would run in one mode, but not on the other.

This confusion between software versions is a recipe for user confusion, lost data and possibly even a security weakness. It’s surprising that having effectively two operating systems running on the device was considered to be a good idea.

Looking under the hood at the Control Panel, the Windows NT heritage of Window 8 becomes apparent. Anybody used to tinkering with the settings on Windows XP, Vista or 7 systems will have no trouble finding their way around the new version.

Overall the performance of Windows 8 was impressive. It’s quite fast and responsive and this is something that Microsoft’s demonstrators are proud of.

Tablet blues

The surprising thing was the Windows 8 system was running on a Samsung tablet with still no ship date for the Windows hardware.

With Christmas approaching, Microsoft are running out of time to compete in the tablet market and it seriously raises questions on whether the Surface tablets were prematurely announced.

The experience with Office365 on the Windows Tablet was satisfactory although the demonstration showed there’s some barriers to adopting tablets as the main work computers.

Office 365 shows the strengths Microsoft have in the market, if Microsoft can get their tablet strategy right then they have a good product to compete with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

Time will tell if they or their hardware partners can get products that customers want onto the market.

Paul travelled to TechEd and stayed at the Gold Coast as a guest of Microsoft Australia.

Microsoft TechEd Australia 2012

Microsoft’s Australian TechEd in 2012 comes at an important time for the software giant.

2012 is the year that will define Microsoft as the market place they have dominated moves to tablet computers and smart phones.

The challenge for Microsoft is how they migrate their desktop and server products to the platforms dominated by Amazon, Google and Apple.

At this year’s TechEd Australian conference the pressure is on Microsoft to present how they will deal with this challenge from tablet computers, mobile phones and cloud computing.

The big ticket item is the Windows phone. After the disastrous launch of the Nokia Lumia 920, Microsoft has to convince the market place they have a viable competitor to the iPhone and the plethora of Google Android devices.

Microsoft have taken the opposite strategy to Apple in trying to offer the same operating system on all their devices. If Windows 8 can run on all systems then they have a chance of locking high margin corporate users onto their platforms.

Windows 8 itself has to have a compelling story to tell. Much of Microsoft’s future relies upon a successful rollout of the new operating system that meets the demands of both consumers and businesses. Users increasingly expect social media and cloud computing services to be integrating into their systems.

Cloud computing is an important part of Microsoft’s corporate strategy and how the new version of Windows Server delivers on the business requirements of using cloud services will be an important factor in the product’s success.

One of Microsoft’s most profitable product lines has been their Office suite of applications. Margins on Office have been under pressure since the release of the free Google Docs suite and the corporate Google Apps product.

The advantage Microsoft have in the office productivity market is their products have the full range of feature business users need and Google, and Apple, have struggled to include these tools in their products.

With new versions of Office, Server, Phone and Windows all being released Microsoft have a lot of stories to tell and the stakes for the software giant are huge. It’s going to be an interesting few days at the Gold Coast Convention Centre.

How much server space do Internet companies need to run their sites?

How much server space do companies like Google, Amazon, YouTube, Hotmail and Facebook need to run their sites?

“How much server space do companies like Google, Amazon, or YouTube, or for that matter Hotmail and Facebook need to run their sites?” is the question I’ve been asked to answer on ABC Radio National Drive this evening.

This isn’t a simple question to answer as the details of data storage are kept secret by most online services.

Figuring out how much data is saved in computer systems is a daunting task in itself and in 2011 scientists estimated there were 295 exabytes stored on the Internet, desktop hard drives, tape backup and other systems in 2007.

An exabyte is the equivalent of 50,000 years worth of DVD video, a typical new computer comes with a terabyte hard drive so one exabyte is the equivalent of a million new computers.

The numbers when looking at this topic are so great that petabytes are probably the best way of measuring data, a thousand of these make up an exabyte. A petabyte is the equivalent to filling up the hard drives of a thousand new computers.

Given cloud computing and data centres have grown exponentially since 2007, it’s possible that number has doubled in the last five years.

In 2009 it was reported Google was planning to have ten million servers and an exabyte of information. It’s almost certain that point has been passed, particularly given the volume of data being uploaded to YouTube which alone has 72 hours worth of video uploaded every minute.

Facebook is struggling with similar growth and it’s reported that the social media service is having to rewrite its database. Last year it was reported Facebook users were uploading six billion photos a month and at the time of the float on the US stock market the company claimed to have over a 100 petabytes of photos and video.

According to one of Microsoft’s blogs, Hotmail has over a billion mailboxes and “hundreds of petabytes of data”.

For Amazon details are harder to find, in June 2012 Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos announced their S3 cloud storage service was now hosting a billion ‘objects’. If we assume the ‘objects’ – which could be anything from a picture to a database running on Amazon’s service – have an average size of a megabyte then that’s a exabyte of storage.

The amount of storage is only one part of the equation, we have to be able to do something with the data we’ve collected so we also have to look at processing power. This comes down to the number of computer chips or CPUs – Central Processing Units – being used to crunch the information.

Probably the most impressive data cruncher of all is the Google search engine that processes phenomenal amounts of data every time somebody does a search on the web. Google have put together an infographic that illustrates how they manage to answer over a billion queries a day in an average time of less than quarter of a second.

Google is reported to own 2% of the world’s servers and they are very secretive about the numbers, estimates based on power usage in 2011 put the number of servers the company uses at around 900,000. Given Google invests about 2.5 billion US dollars a year on new data centres, it’s safe to say they have probably passed the one million mark.

How much electricity all of this equipment uses is a valid question. According to Jonathan Koomey of Stanford University, US data centres use around 2% of the nation’s power supply and globally these facilities use around 1.5%.

The numbers involved in answering the question of how much data is stored by web services are mind boggling and they are growing exponentially. One of the problems with researching a topic like this is how quickly the source data becomes outdated.

It’s easy to overlook the complexity and size of the technologies that run social media, cloud computing or web searches. Asking questions on how these services work is essential to understanding the things we now take for granted.

Windows 8 to launch on October 26

The next version of Windows gets a release date.

It’s official, Windows 8 has an October 6, 2012 release date.

For Microsoft, the pressure is now on. Not only does the desktop version have to be shipped but also the smartphone and tablet versions. Their cloud services are going to have to be flawless on the day Windows 8 goes live.

The tablet version is doubly important as Microsoft has to convince cynics like me that the Microsoft Surface is not vapourware. With the Surface RT scheduled for release with Windows 8, Microsoft are going to have to announcing pricing and final specifications very soon. Reports are that the Surface is beginning to appear on Amazon sites so release may not be far away.

Nokia too will now be under a lot of pressure as releasing credible Windows 8 are the only hope for the company’s future. As it is, the current range of Lumia phones are now dead in the water despite massive discounts.

As we’ve previously discussed, Windows 8 is essential to Microsoft’s market position and will define their future – a failure will almost certainly lock the once dominant software giant to a another lost decade.

We’ll see a lot advertising and PR hype around Windows over the next few months, the real test will come at the end of October and with the Christmas buying season.

By the middle of next year we’ll have a good idea of just how successful Windows 8 will be. Steve Ballmer’s future depends upon it.