A lot of discussion is going on today about whether Microsoft should abandon the consumer market http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com in general and cell phones in particular. The company is clearly not doing that well in this market, compared to top competitors, but this market appears to be where most of the profit is, it certainly isn’t in IT spending.

This would seem to argue to the point that the firm can’t afford to abandon the market but I went back to how Steve Jobs turned Apple into a market darling and concluded that were Steve Jobs brought in to take over Microsoft and assuming he used the same play book, he might initially abandon the consumer market in order to focus the company on what it did best and maximize revenues and profits.

When he took over Apple he abandoned hand held computers, digital cameras, clones and the entire corporate market in order to bring Apple down to manageable size. He has reversed himself on hand held computers (the iPhone and iPod Touch basically fall into that category) and added MP3 players but he first focused on making the company manageable and then put resources into new areas one thing at a time.
He didn’t do both phones and MP3 players; he did MP3 players and resourced them adequately, and then shifted resources to phones. In all cases he focused his efforts on each segment until it was successful with the only real failure being AppleTV.

Microsoft is plagued by lots of initiatives that could have been great. Chrome Effects could have been Flash, Origami a better Apple Tablet, Microsoft Mobile a better iPhone, Plays for Sure a better iPod, and Mira a better Netbook. Microsoft’s history is studded with failed or struggling offerings that should have been great but were under resourced to near or total obscurity. I should point out that Google seems to be going down a similar path at the moment with offerings like Gears.

There is an old saying that goes something like, “if you aren’t willing to do something well, don’t do it at all”. Yoda’s line is “do, or do not, there is no try”. Maybe Microsoft needs a little Yoda and they need to either do Windows Mobile and consumer right or move on to something they are willing to do right. Under resourcing something is generally not better than not doing it at all. Or maybe they need a Steve Jobs who methodically focuses on product after product until it is successful.

In any case I’m left with the belief that, and this is true of any company, if they aren’t willing or able to adequately resource a project they should abandon it in favor of something they are willing to adequately resource. In short it is binary, do or not do, Microsoft’s (and Google’s) problems seem to be too much trying and too little commitment to getting things done.