{"id":33699,"date":"2012-11-25T22:17:39","date_gmt":"2012-11-26T03:17:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/forex-news\/2012\/11\/microsoft-will-crush-google\/"},"modified":"2012-11-25T22:17:39","modified_gmt":"2012-11-26T03:17:39","slug":"microsoft-will-crush-google","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex-news\/2012\/11\/25\/microsoft-will-crush-google\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Will Crush Google"},"content":{"rendered":"

By The Sizemore Letter<\/a><\/p>\n

In recent weeks<\/a>, I\u2019ve written that Microsoft ($<\/span>MSFT<\/a>)<\/strong> will ultimately muscle-out Apple ($<\/span>AAPL<\/a>)<\/strong> as the leader in smartphones and tablets.\u00a0 It will be a long war of attrition, but Apple has no durable long-term advantages\u2014what Warren Buffett calls \u201cmoats\u201d\u2014to keep most of its customers loyal.\u00a0 And Apple\u2019s insistence on controlling every aspect of both its software and hardware puts it at a disadvantage to a more flexible Microsoft.\u00a0 With Nokia ($<\/span>NOK<\/a>)<\/strong>, Samsung, and other major manufacturers lining up to produce Windows phones, we will likely see a very different smartphone market a year from now. (To read the whole story, click here<\/a>. \u00a0And to see what caused Nokia’s share price to jump 30% last week, see Nokia Lumia sells out in Germany<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

But what about Google\u2019s ($<\/span>GOOG<\/a>)<\/strong> Android?<\/p>\n

It may seem odd that Google gets barely a mention from me, given that the Android operating system dwarfs both Apple and Microsoft in market share.\u00a0 By some estimates (it depends on what your threshold for \u201csmartphone \u201c is), Android has over 75% of the market.\u00a0 And I myself carry an Android phone.<\/p>\n

If you want to know why I don\u2019t take Google seriously as a long-term competitor, consider my recent experience with Google Play Music, which is Google\u2019s (shoddy) attempt to compete with Apple\u2019s iTunes.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Google Play Music sounds<\/em> great, in theory.\u00a0 It offers you the ability to upload your entire music collection into the cloud and sync all of your mobile devices to one library and one set of playlists.\u00a0 You can stream the songs over the internet or keep copies locally on your phone\u2026or so I thought.<\/p>\n

This is where I start to curse Google under my breath.\u00a0 Google Play is incapable of syncing music to an SD card; it can only save your music to your phone\u2019s internal memory.\u00a0 That\u2019s a problem when you have 32 gigs available on your SD card and less than 2 gigs in the phone\u2019s internal storage.<\/p>\n

This has been a \u201cknown issue\u201d for over a year, and one that Google should seemingly be able to fix in a matter of hours.\u00a0 Yet in order to get Google Play Music to use my SD card, I had to hack my phone with a jury-rigged scripting file.<\/p>\n

Seriously?<\/p>\n

You simply don\u2019t have these sorts of problems with Apple or Microsoft.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because they are real companies with real business models.\u00a0 With a few exceptions, they actually charge for their products and offer some degree of support.<\/p>\n

Given that Google gives most of its products away for free, you have to question how seriously they take them.\u00a0 And given my experience with Play Music, the answer is \u201cnot very.\u201d<\/p>\n

I should be clear that I am not forecasting an immediate collapse in Google\u2019s share price.\u00a0 I simply have no way to gauge the sustainability of their advertising model, so I find it more prudent to invest elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Disclosures: Sizemore Capital is long MSFT. This post first appeared on TraderPlanet<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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The post Microsoft Will Crush Google<\/a> appeared first on Sizemore Insights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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