Re-branding?

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crackrdbycracku

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#139104 28-Jan-2014 10:59

Hey,

Anybody noticed a flourish of re-branding over at Microsoft?

Microsoft Office Web Apps to be renamed Office Online is the latest but I think there have been a few recently, say last 24 hours.

I've been happy with my Outlook.com/ Skydrive (yep, think that got a new name) and Windows Phone experience for over 12 months now. But as a consumer who buys devices on a three year cycle I really hate instability more than anything else. I want to know that the stuff I buy today will be supported for the next three years at least and that the user experience will get better because the ecosystem will develop. I was an early adopter of mini-disc and I don't want to do that again.

Experience has taught me that re-branding is often a sign a company in desperation. Change the name instead of addressing the problems.

I really hope this isn't the case here.

Didn't anybody tell you I was a hacker?

freitasm

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#975836 28-Jan-2014 13:15

Not sure how a company that made record profits on record venues could be "desperate."

More like some names don't reflect public perception. Or in other case simply they have to stop using registered trademarks (Skydrive -> OneDrive).

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crackrdbycracku

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#975846 28-Jan-2014 13:26

freitasm: Not sure how a company that made record profits on record venues could be "desperate."

While I agree with that if you think of Microsoft as a single company, I starting to think of it as a cluster of companies. They part of that cluster which is responsible for selling phones isn't doing too bad but isn't making record profits. The part of the cluster responsible for driving sales of Windows 8 PCs to consumers, those people may well be desperate.

Most of Microsoft's profits, from what I understand, come from servers and corporate sales. The part that does consumer computing isn't as big but gets a lot more press, and isn't doing as well.

As far as the re-branding goes I probably agree with you that the names could be better. I guess what I would like to see, in a perfect world, is a re-branding exercise which has an overall theme and where it all fits into a cohesive whole. I'm not seeing this yet.

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nathan

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#975877 28-Jan-2014 13:59

3 year support? I'd say MS is the best here for support timeframes out of the 3 ecosystems, Google, Apple, Microsoft

crackrdbycracku

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#975904 28-Jan-2014 14:18

nathan: 3 year support? I'd say MS is the best here for support timeframes out of the 3 ecosystems, Google, Apple, Microsoft

Android support is one reason I don't have an Android phone any more. Apple is good. Microsoft ... we will see when the next big update comes.

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nathan

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#975909 28-Jan-2014 14:22

we've already said Windows Phone 8 is upgradeable to the next release of Windows Phone version

johnr

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#975919 28-Jan-2014 14:39

Someone is digging a deeper hole with each post they do

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