Microsoft Board Member Helmut Panke

Absolutely fascinating view "from the top", as it were. Definitely worth watching.

I don't know. Microsoft sounds over confident to me. The BOD has to challenge management to explain why, for example, windows mobile never went anywhere, why Apple and Google are cleaning Microsoft's clock in seemingly all the areas where the companies compete head to head.

@SteveRichter: I noticed his mention of "the consumer" and consumer awareness; it sounds logical and obvious but below the obviousness there may be increased attention to the consumer satisfaction that a company like Apple enjoys. People like the consumer and user experience of their products. So I don't see him as over-confident, more as enthusiastic and conscious. Apple products are not without challenges either, as anyone who's used iTunes will confess. On the Google side Wave was cancelled, promising as it was and Buzz didn't pan out so well. Bing probably has a better user experience but is still trumped by the quality of Google search as well as the new real-time search. Sometimes an insiders view affords more optimism. There are still closed worlds that we can't see and that's probably best; sometimes, we are just kids that have to wait till christmas eve before we get to open the presents.

Quotes: "Microsoft is a brand", "the brand is a promise". I wonder what Microsoft sees as it's "promise" and how it weighs promises vs deadlines?

19 hours ago,exoteric wrote

Sometimes an insiders view affords more optimism. There are still closed worlds that we can't see and that's probably best; sometimes, we are just kids that have to wait till christmas eve before we get to open the presents.

Quotes: "Microsoft is a brand", "the brand is a promise". I wonder what Microsoft sees as it's "promise" and how it weighs promises vs deadlines?

OK, but if the brand is personal computing, how did they allow themselves to fall so far behind in the hand held computing field?  Windows phone is shaping up to be a failure because the vast majority of hand helds can't run the OS.

@SteveRichter:  I wouldn't say windows mobile never went anywhere, it did quite well for a while then totally lost the plot, why that happened is the real question, what happened to cause such a major loss of focus on where the market was going.