Microsoft's comeback plan might actually payoff

Since a few years back, the tech community is witnessing the comeback of once sleeping giant of a tech company called Microsoft. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, they haven't impress the tech community with their mediocre product releases. Windows Vista and Windows 7 was a trainwreck and users demanded something better.

Whatever Microsoft is doing for the past 3-4 years, I hope they can keep it up. Since 2008, they have been releasing some amazing products beyond their core products (Windows, Office, etc) and been attracting some serious talents as well, a solid proof that they have a really compelling roadmap.

Here's a few things from Microsoft that's going to be big :

Bing

Although underrated, as a new breed of search engine it's actually very impressive. Working together with Facebook was a great strategic move to improve their indexing and relevancy platform integrated with Facebook's social platform.

I'll say this, but Bing's search engine has a chance to take Google's search engine down especially when Google is now diversifying their services beyond search, which means they're not focusing on search engine per se any longer. Bing's map platform is also turning a few heads as well, as they gather more data they can be a good alternative for Google Maps if not replace it.

Windows Phone 7

Analysts wasn't too excited when Microsoft announced they're going in to the mobile OS business, and the partnership with Nokia didn't get a warm welcome from analysts in the mobile industry. But Microsoft got them amazed when they release Nokia Lumia series complete with the all-new metro style Windows Phone 7 operating system.

Not just the analysts, WP7 is also receiving a good response from the developer community. In Indonesia alone, both Microsoft and Nokia is pushing their effort to promote WP7 platform to developers and reaped up great results. Both end-users, analysts and even shareholders are very optimistic and excited about WP7 going into the battle with iOS and Android; some people even wish Microsoft launched WP7 earlier.

XBox 360 Kinect

When launched in 2010, Kinect was a big hit in the gaming industry. It was revolutionizing the way people play games, changing the passive gaming into active all-sweating gaming. It was basically a plugin for their XBOX 360 gaming device they launched before, and now puts Microsoft competing with huge gaming console companies such as Nintendo (Wii) and Sony (Playstation).

So far, 66 million Kinect units are sold worldwide. Although still way below Wii (95 million units) but it has passed Playstation 3 (62 million) in terms of units sold. As a "new player" in the gaming industry, that is quite an achievement.

--

Based on that three products only, it seems clear that Microsoft has found a formula to build great products and a chance to join the fierce competition. WP7 puts them competing with iOS and Android, XBOX360 + Kinect puts them in competition with Nintendo and Sony, Bing puts them in serious competition with Google.

In so many ways, Microsoft has been doing an amazing job with their diversification plan and go beyond OS and software. Thus the justification for a really good comeback in the tech industry for the once underdog of a giant company. And I'm not even talking about Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 9. At least, not yet.

image source