I couldn’t help but notice this article from the Wall Street Journal with the headline “The Apple-Microsoft Tech War Reignites for a New Era” wherein Tim Higgins and Aaron Tiley write:
On Thursday, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella launched Windows 11 with what was widely seen as a swipe at Apple and the controls it wields over its iPhone App Store, but without mentioning the rival directly. Both companies are positioning themselves for an impending battle over the augmented and virtual reality market that is seen as the next major frontier in computing.
It taps into this sentiment that Windows 11 exists solely in opposition to Apple, but that really doesn’t make any sense to me. As successful as Apple has been, they aren’t an immediate threat to Microsoft. Fundamentally, one is primarily a consumer technology company and the other is a business technology company. While each has tried to drink the other’s milkshake, neither has meaningfully succeeded. The biggest and most immediate threat to Windows is not anything made by Apple. It’s Chromebooks. Look at this Ars Technica article from February:
Despite the fact that macOS landed in third, viewing this as an example of Google beating out Apple directly might not be accurate. Rather, it’s likely that Chrome OS has been primarily pulling sales and market share away from Windows at the low end of the market. Mac market share actually grew from 6.7 percent in 2019 to 7.5 percent in 2020.
Meanwhile, Chrome OS skyrocketed from 6.4 percent in 2019 to 10.8 percent in 2020. Windows fell from 85.4 percent to 80.5 percent.
Windows’s decades long monopoly in the PC space has roughly four trenches that I can think of:
- Cheap commoditized hardware from partners who have to compete on cost
- Integration with Microsoft’s market leading Office and Outlook.
- Market share dominance, leading to a plethora of exclusive third party apps
- Preferred vendor status among IT departments
For over a decade, Google has been methodically outflanking each of these trenches. Now over half of the “basic laptops” sold by B&H run Chrome OS, Google Docs is outperforming Office 365, and Android has more market share than Windows. I am not sure how well Chrome Enterprise is doing, but seemless security updates combined with minimal on device software seems like benefits that would appeal to most IT departments.
Time was most people needed Windows. Now it’s never been easier to imagine a world without it.
Let’s take look at some of the features Microsoft is touting with Windows 11.
- A new design that just happens to trend toward the look of Chrome OS
- A deep integration with Microsoft’s market leading Teams
- Android app support
- An added emphasis on security.
These aren’t features to lure Mac or iPad users to Windows. They are to keep Windows customers, consumers and businesses alike, from switching to Google. Even letting developers use their own payment processors, which has been touted as an assault on Apple’s App Store, is just as much an assault on the Google Play Store.
I am not arguing Microsoft and Apple don’t compete. Of course they do, but framing Windows 11 as some major shot in a war against only Apple is outdated and foolish in an era when Microsoft necessarily has a much bigger adversary to defend against.