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If you are headed to the beach, pick up Microsoft’s 10-K filing with the SEC for some light reading.  It’s filled with characters you know and love and their almost comic book struggle to restore peace in the galaxy bring profitability to Microsoft.  If you follow the report carefully, you’ll learn Microsoft is, in fact, a software company.  And what software company doesn’t want to get their applications on the hottest mobile computing device going?

Maybe that is a stretch, but a valid concept just the same.  But what you will learn is that Microsoft sees the vertically-integrated business model of one company (ahem, Apple) controlling both hardware and software as a threat.  And Microsoft’s proposed response (or threat?) is to battle it with marketing and dump the margin. 

...efforts to compete with the vertically integrated model may increase our cost of sales and reduce operating margins

Microsoft goes on to tell its shareholders to expect “lite” versions of its software at discounted price to compete with open-source and/or freeware.

In response to competition, we are developing versions of our products with basic functionality that are sold at lower prices than the standard versions.

With the Mojave experiment, talk of a Windows replacement, and some “new” thoughts on an internal direction maybe there is life left yet for Microsoft (despite what those posting their thoughts at AppleInsider believe).

Anyone think we’ll see MS office in the App Store before Hades freezes over?

Read [Microsoft] via [AppleInsider]

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