Patrick Sauerwein | @virtual_patrick

The press briefing on Wednesday January 21st 2015 was the start of Microsofts new chapter towards Windows 10. I was really overwhelmed after watching the Windows 10 Story regarding new devices and possibilities, which made me write a blog post about it: #Microsoft is back on innovation leadership after the Windows 10 press briefing.

Reflecting about Windows 10 this week I believe Microsoft is at the peak of inflated expectations when using Gartner Hype Cycle terminology with Windows 10.

Peak of Inflated Expectations: Early publicity produces a number of success stories — often accompanied by scores of failures. Some companies take action; many do not.
(Source: Gartner Hype Cycle)

So why that? Because the Microsoft share of personal computing device sale is still decreasing as you can see in mobile is eating the world by Benedict Evans.

I do believe Microsoft made a great move in positioning HoloLens as the new desktop while protecting their customer base by giving Microsoft 10 to existing customers for free, at least if you are on Windows 7, 8 or Windows Phone 8.1. HoloLens might be a disruptive game changer like the iPhone release back in 2007. This technology might be attractive again for developers which moved to mobile platforms and different business models. And without independent developers and a working ecosystem Microsoft is struggling through the “mobile tsunami“. In addition, holographic devices are not really new, there are and have been plenty of different vendors out there before the announcement of Microsoft. I always remember my first experiences with Microsoft tablets back in 2006. And looking back the road, Microsoft was not able to bring tablets successfully to the people. The same happened with mobile phones in spite of buying Nokia.

So, why should it be different this time? HoloLens is a new hardware device which is not covered nor mature by any other big software vendor today. Even Google closed their Explorer program about Google Glas on January 19th (see their post on Google+). Gaining attraction to a new innovative market combined with the idea of a unified Windows 10 might be a good strategy to win back several market segments like mobility, browser and gaming in the future. But there have been a lot of critiques since the announcement of Windows 10 about a “one size fits all” approach which means “one OS for all hardware devices” won’t work out.

What do you think?