If you're not familiar with this video from 2006 (although this one has been enhanced - I couldn't find an original), you should be. Steve Ballmer understood at the core of his being that the success of Windows depended upon developers. Microsoft hadn't quite eliminated all office software competition at this point. That day would soon come, but in 2006 it was still important to get developers for Windows in order to cement Windows as the default desktop operating system. Microsoft still needed Lotus 123 and WordPerfect development, for example, because they were still reasonably popular. In time, however, Microsoft Office would be the last man standing.
In the end, Microsoft achieved a near monopoly on the desktop. Microsoft would dominate almost all software used on Windows. And because its applications would become near ubiquitous in the work place, their software became very dominant on the Mac, as well. Steve Ballmer continued to chant "developers developers developers" but it was no longer critical to the success of Windows and its office applications.
Here's where Microsoft stumbled. A year later, in 2007, Apple's Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone after having worked on it since 2004. It became the de-facto standard for smart phones. Apple briefly held the smart phone monopoly. Google followed quickly by releasing Android, an iPhone knock-off, and a quite primitive one, in 2008. Microsoft entered the market in 2010 with its Windows Phone 7.
The problem for Microsoft was that the iPhone was already slick and popular, and it became a status symbol to own an Apple iPhone. It was the luxury item and still is. Android played catch-up with the help of developers, but Android succeeded mostly because it was based on open source. OEMs could adopt Android and sell phones based on their version of Android. Unlike Apple and its iPhone, everyone and their third cousin twice removed could sell an Android phone.
Microsoft's Windows Phone was actually a fine product, but it was too little too late. It was neither a status symbol nor a platform OEMs could exploit. In my not-so-humble opinion, Microsoft could have eventually dominated the smart phone market if it had open-sourced its phone OS immediately and offered it free of charge to OEMs along with contracts for their own app store. Instead, Microsoft kept the OS closed and partnered with hardware OEMs like Nokia. That just wasn't good enough, and the Windows phone eventually died.
The Moral Of The Story
Developers, developers, developers are still key to success. But in the above history, you can see that developers succeeded under three conditions:
- They developed for an established monopoly foundation
- They created or developed for the first best new market entry
- They developed on an open source foundation
History is one of the most reliable sources of education. I suspect the key to being a successful developer is to choose one or more of the above conditions as your target and go for it.
