Microsoft accepts that one of its biggest miscalculations was thinking that the personal computer will always be the hub of all digital activity. But then the smartphone came along and the Redmond-based company was left scampering to offer a viable platform for this new generation of devices and users, some of whom had never seen a PC.
With Windows 10, Microsoft is trying not to repeat that mistake. Even with smartphones being where they are in 2015, they don’t want to plan for a future that will maintain this status quo. “To make the same assumption about the mobile phone is not a construct that we want to go into now, as we believe we are setting ourselves up for the future.
We look at mobility very differently. We believe there will be a cloud fabric that will intertwine devices of all kinds, even outside our ecosystem,” Vineet Durani, director, Windows Business Group at Microsoft India, told me before the Windows 10 launch. Durani said the team that worked on the new operating system “looked at how they could engineer for an operating system that could last for the multitude of devices that are existing today and a multitude that will come into existence in the future.” They know there are new technologies on the way, ones that could change the way we interact with devices forever. Microsoft is working on the HoloLens, “the first fully untethered, see-through holographic computer.”
But then other large corporations such as Google and scores of innovative startups around the world are working on devices and technologies that have the potential to change the world. We never know when one of these might click. In the past decade or so, we have seen how disruptors such as the iPod, the iPhone or the iPad can end up taking consumer preferences into unchartered territories. Many big names have fallen by the wayside because they could not anticipate the change that was about to happen. And this could be why others are becoming increasingly cautious. They no longer want to bet on a certain type of device or technology. The punts are now being broad-based.
Last week, Asus CEO Jerry Shen, in India to launch the company’s new set of affordable smartphones, said the Taiwanese tech giant—among the largest PC vendors in the world—was now focusing on “mobility”. With so many stakes still in the PC business, it might have been hard for him to stress that the company was shifting its resources and energies to conquering the smartphone market. But he went on to add that there were four things the company was devoting its time to these days—PC, mobile, Internet of Things and robotics. And the last item on the list is the most interesting. “We want to take robotics to the consumers and that has never been done before,” he told me.
While he did not elaborate on how Asus wanted to do this and what sort of products this will end up in, the statement was eerily similar to that of another Taiwanese tech honcho’s. HTC chairperson Cher Wang has been talking how she wanted to make virtual reality more accessible to common people. Earlier this year, the company was confident that it would have the first mass-use version of a virtuality device, the HTC Vive. But with a couple of bad quarters in between, during which the company was forced to announce large-scale staff cuts, this dream might not become reality soon. Wang said she wanted to change the way we consume content with virtual reality being used in the education and healthcare sectors, not just gaming. Yes, tech majors are thinking beyond mobile for the future.
And it is not just Taiwanese companies that are hedging their bets. Across the tech world, companies are working on radical technologies, even while they continue to invest heavily on incumbents, hoping that this would be the next big thing. They are now willing to leave their comfort zones—or are left with no option but to—hoping to be able to plot where the trends are going. They know that there is a big disruptor lurking around the corner and are hoping it is in their R&D labs and not in a garage somewhere down the road.
nandagopal.rajan@expressindia.com