“So explain to me again why Microsoft doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt for picking a fight with its hardware partners? … No doubt this [Surface tablet] was a cold move but the blunt truth is that most of the OEMs now silently fuming about having to compete against their key operating system supplier have turned out consistently crappy devices, effectively leaving Apple to mop up the tablet market.”
– Charles Cooper, executive editor, CNET
“Older companies have failed, for the most part, in doing the long-term research and development they needed to do over the last decade to have native applications to compete with Salesforce. … I don’t see companies like Oracle and Microsoft folding the tent any time soon, but their profitability might have an upper limit if they can’t convince everyone of their social, mobile and cloud chops. … The best way to do this is to articulate a vision of business in the near to intermediate future that is not simply better and faster — I don’t think that’s where we are — but truly different.”
– Denis Pombriant, managing principal, Beagle Research Group
“Before IBM went on their buying spree they came to us first because they recognized the fact that our solutions were something no one else has; everyone else is just a tool maker. I wasn’t willing to sell because I have seen what happens to companies that get swallowed by a bigger company,
– Jim Goodnight, chief executive, SAS Institute.
“From almost all the technical reviews so far, Surface is actually really good and might even transform the tablet market. In other words, Microsoft isn’t out of creative solutions, but it has failed to express this fact. … Microsoft beat Apple long ago by picking the PC as the platform that would rule the world. Maybe Microsoft is doing the same thing with the tablet. … [They overlooked ] the importance of the naming process. [T]hey ought to have tried harder to get the name right. “
– John Tantillo, writer for FoxNews.com
“Chips may get to 7 to 8 nanometres, but guess what, that is only three generations from today. If all you do is disk drives, or all you do is chips, or all you do is memory, you are dead pretty soon.”
– Bernard S. Meyerson, vice president for innovation, IBM