kuro5hin.org || What the Future Holds for Microsoft "Many people consider Microsoft to be this all-powerful entity that always gets its way and succeeds in whatever it attempts (whether through technical ability, luck, marketing, or illegal means). But in fact, if you look back at all the initiatives Microsoft has attempted, most of them have failed. Remember Windows at Work, an attempt to unify all office machines on a network? Or TrueImage, a clone of the PostScript page description language? Or ACE, the Advanced Computing Environment, designed to replace the Intel PC architecture? If you look at all the things that Microsoft has boldly announced with a gaggle of industry partners, the success rate is maybe 10 to 20 percent. So pick any ten things that Microsoft is attempting now: Auto PC, cell phone operating system, set-top box, Xbox, electronic books, Internet Gaming Zone, Tablet PC, Pocket PC, speech recognition, MSN. The odds are that only one or two of those will actually succeed."
Interesting self-interview from someone who wrote a book about his decade with Microsoft.