Monday Note

Let’s start with the Wintel Empire

Intel. The company just re-organized its mobile activities, merging four pre-existing groups into a single business unit. In a world where mobile devices are taking off while PC sales flag, Intel has effectively lost the new market to ARM. Even if, after years of broken promises, Intel finally produces a low-power x86 chip that meets the requirements of smartphones and tablets, it won’t be enough to take the market back from ARM.

Here’s why: The Cambridge company made two smart decisions. First, it didn’t fight Intel on its sacred PC ground; and, second, it licensed its designs rather than manufacture microprocessors. Now, ARM licensees are in the hundreds and a rich ecosystem of customizing extensions, design houses and silicon foundries has given the architecture a dominant and probably unassailable position in the Post-PC world.

We’ll see if Intel recognizes the futility of trying to dominate the new theatre of operations with its old weapons and tactics, or if it goes back and reacquires an ARM license. This alone won’t solve its problems: customers of ARM-based Systems On a Chip (SOC) are used to flexibility (customization) and low prices. The first ingredient isn’t in evidence in the culture of a company used to dictate terms to PC makers. The second, low prices, is trouble for the kind of healthy margins Intel derives from its Wintel quasi-monopoly. Speaking of which…

Microsoft. The company also reorged its mobile business: Andy Lees, formerly President of its Windows Phone division just got benched. The sugar-coating is Andy keeps his President title, in “a new role working for me [Ballmer] on a time-critical opportunity focused on driving maximum impact in 2012 with Windows Phone and Windows 8”. Right.

Ballmer once predicted Windows Mobile would achieve 40% market share by 2012, Andy Lee pays the price for failing to achieve traction with Windows Phone: according to Gartner, Microsoft’s new mobile OS got 1.6% market share in Q2 2011.

Microsoft will have to buy Nokia in order to fully control its destiny in this huge new market currently dominated by Android-based handset makers (with Samsung in the lead) and by Apple. In spite of efforts to ‘‘tax” Android licensees, the old Windows PC licensing model won’t work for Microsoft. The vertical, integrated, not to say “Apple” approach works well for Microsoft in its flourishing Xbox/Kinect business, it could also work for MicroNokia phones. Moreover, what will Microsoft do once Googorola integrates Moto hardware + Android system software + Google applications and Cloud services?
In the good old PC business Microsoft’s situation is very different, it’s still on top of the world. But the high-growth years are in the past. In the US, for Q2 2011, PC sales declined by 4.2%; in Europe, for Q3 this time, PC sales went down by 11.4% (both numbers are year-to-year comparisons).

At the same time, according to IDC the tablet market grew 264.5% in Q3 (admire the idiotic .5% precision, and consider tablets started from a small 2010 base). Worldwide, including the newly launched Kindle Fire, 2011 tablets shipments will be around 100 million units. Of which Microsoft will have nothing, or close to nothing if we include a small number of the confidential Tablet PC devices. The rise of tablets causes clone makers such as Dell, Samsung and Asus (but not Acer) to give up on netbooks.

In 2012, Microsoft is expected to launch a Windows 8 version suited for tablets. That version will be different from the desktop product: in a break with its monogamous Wintel relationship, Windows 8 will support ARM-based tablets. This “forks” Windows and many applications in two different flavors. Here again, the once dominant Microsoft lost its footing and is forced to play catch-up with a “best of both world” (or not optimized for either) product.

In the meantime, Redmond clings to a PC-centric party line, calling interloping smartphones and tablets “companion products’’. One can guess how different the chant would be if Microsoft dominated smartphones or tablets.

Still, like Intel, Microsoft is a growing, profitable and cash-rich company. Even if one is skeptical of their chances to re-assert themselves in the Post-PC world, these companies have the financial means to do so. The same cannot be said of the fallen smartphone leaders.

RIM: ‘Amateur hour is over.’ This is what the company imprudently claimed when introducing its PlayBook tablet. It is an expensive failure ($485M written off last quarter) but RIM co-CEOs remain eerily bullish: ‘Just you wait…’ For next quarter’s new phones, for the new BlackBerry 10 OS (based on QNX), for a software update for the PlayBook…

I remember being in New York City early January 2007 (right before the iPhone introduction). Jet-lagged after flying in from Paris, I got up very early and walked to Avenue of The Americas. Looking left, looking right, I saw Starbucks signs. I got to the closest coffee shop and saw everyone in the line ahead of me holding a BlackBerry, a.k.a. CrackBerry for its addictive nature. Mid-december 2011, RIM shares were down 80% from February this year:

Sammy the Walrus IV provides a detailed timeline for RIM’s fall on his blog, it’s painful.

On Horace Dediu’s Asymco site, you’ll find a piece titled “Does the phone market forgive failure?”. Horace’s answer is a clear and analytical No. Which raises the question: What’s next for RIM? The company has relatively low cash reserves ($1.5B) and few friends, now, on financial markets. It is attacked at the low end by Chinese Android licensees and, above, by everyone from Samsung to Nokia and Apple. Not a pretty picture. Vocal shareholders demand a change in management to turn the company around. But to do what? Does anyone want the job? And, if you do, doesn’t it disqualify you?

Nokia: The company has more cash, about 10B€ ($13B) and a big partner in Microsoft. The latest Nokia financials are here and show the company’s business decelerates on all fronts, this in a booming market. Even if initial reactions to the newest Windows Phone handsets aren’t said to be wildly enthusiastic, it is a bit early to draw conclusions. But Wall Street (whose wisdom is less than infinite) has already passed judgment:

Let’s put it plainly: No one but RIM needs RIM; but Microsoft’s future in the smartphone (and, perhaps, tablet) market requires a strong Nokia. Other Windows Phone “partners” such as Samsung are happily pushing Android handsets, they don’t need Microsoft the way PC OEMs still need Windows. Why struggle with a two-headed hydra when you can acquire Nokia and have only one CEO fully in charge? Would this be Andy Lees’ mission?

All this stumbling takes place in the midst of the biggest wave of growth, innovation and disruption the high-tech industry has ever seen: the mobile devices + Cloud + social graph combination is destroying (most) incumbents on its path. Google, Apple, Facebook, Samsung and others such as Amazon are taking over. 2012 should be an interesting year for bankers and attorneys.

—JLG@mondaynote.com