iPod has become the mainstay of the financial revival of Apple Computer Inc (AAPL). Microsoft Corp (MSFT) has obviously been watching the financial gains Apple has had due to soaring iPod sales. Typical to its life long strategy of tinkering with "every" profitable market found by *any* player who is in the tech industry, Microsoft has been working to build an iPod killer. Is it *required* of Microsoft to build an iPod killer? Perhaps No. They have a million other things to do, like building a better Web Search Engine. Will Microsoft build a copy of iPod? Yes.
It is the same question that Microsoft's new leadership has to ask itself. How critical is it for Microsoft to go ahead and take a hit at everything that everyone else does? (Something that Google (GOOG) seems to be mimicking.)
Now that Web Search has emerged to be a profitable business -- Microsoft wants that market. It wants iPods. It wants to mess with Adobe System's (ADBE) PDF by creating XPS. Microsoft killed Netscape by making Internet Explorer free and bundling it tightly with Windows OS. Java had to be messd with.
Fighting Microsoft legally is such a long drawn out process that by the time the courts decide the market has been butchered. And it seems Microsoft management desperately needs to have its own version of the entire Software and hi tech Industry. So if you are successful software maker for the Windows platform -- beware Redmond is watching.
Why? Perhaps because innovation is just an overused and abused word to be blurted out in every marketing campaign? Risk taking is not the main trait of large corporations. I keep wondering why Microsoft should be the way it is? And whether the change of gaurd and slow moving out of Bill Gates will make any difference in the way the company thinks. Meanwhile this non-innovative; monopolistic mindset has been hurting Microsoft's stock for several years now. Markets find a way to punish bad behavior.
