In a move that will affect some 300 million users worldwide (October 2012 numbers from Comscore for Hotmail users), Microsoft plans to transition all users accounts from it's current email service, Hotmail.com (aka Windows Live Mail), over to its new email service, Outlook.com, by the Summer. All accounts will be kept intact, including passwords and addresses. For many years, Hotmail was the largest email provider in the world, and still remains the largest or second-largest (depending on who you ask) as it competes with Google's GMail. The transition automatically makes Outlook.com one of the largest email providers int he world, despite just coming out of the closed beta. Overall, I feel that this is indicative of a movement at Microsoft towards brand awareness and cohesion.
This Hotmail move, combined with the already announced move of Messenger users over to Skype, as well as the convergence of operating systems in the Windows 8/RT platform, present on current Windows PCs, tablets, and the planned "X-Box 720," shows that, like Apple and Google, Microsoft is trying to create a cohesive, heavily-marketed and branded computing environment to provide users with platform-independent experiences. This is a continuation of a trend that began at Microsoft with Windows and Windows CE, and later, Windows Mobile. It was Apple who took the reins and created the cohesive "Apple experience" with OSX and iOS, and Google that trailed behind with Android and Chrome OS. However, unlike Google, Microsoft was a player in the PC operating system game, and is still the largest in the world.
The current high-end technology market is no longer selling individual devices, but overall experiences, where a device will tie into other devices and peripherals, allowing for more flexibility and utility. Microsoft, in its complacency, fell behind the development curve and fragmented their products into poorly branded, poorly marketed individual pieces. Now, it seems that Microsoft aims to directly compete with Apple on every level, including providing an "experience," by consolidating all their services under the single banner, and using acquired IP with high consumer awareness (like Skype) to push their platform. With this move, as well as the others listed above, Microsoft seems to be positioning themselves to continue this trend and push themselves into the market at every level (PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, gaming devices, media hubs) to provide a Windows experience to consumers in a way that Apple can't do currently with their limited device lineup. If this strategy works for Microsoft, it could end up taking a large part of the mobile market share from Apple and Google, the PC market share from Apple, and the console market share from Nintendo and Sony.
As a Hotmail user for nearly 10 years, I find the move particularly interesting out of all the news this week, but also confusing (at first). I did not understand why Microsoft would essentially just be switching the names around. However, thinking back, it seems obvious why this moved had to happen. Hotmail has been around a long time, but consumers failed to ever make the connection to Microsoft. It had always seemed like Hotmail was its own entity. With the relatively recent change of names from Hotmail to Windows Live Mail, Microsoft was trying to push Hotmail into the Windows domain, but it still failed. I never once saw Windows Live Mail used in reference to anything but XBox accounts. Most people still referred to it as Hotmail, and even Microsoft still called it Hotmail, as evidenced by their current webpage for it. To incorporate email into their platform, Microsoft had to kill the Hotmail brand, and push a new, yet familiar one. Enter Outlook, a brand familiar to most who have used a Windows machine, since it is part of the very familiar Microsoft Office suite. Combined with the push towards integrating Skype and other services, as well as integrating all platforms under one general operating system, it became clear what Microsoft was doing.
As for next weeks' topic, I can't help but wonder what the future holds for DRM and piracy, as well as the evolution of the iTunes platform, and its competitors, like Amazon. I'm also interested in the viability of services like Netflix, Amazon Video, and Hulu to be TV replacements as their popularity grows and consumers leave cable behind.
Links:
Tech Radar: Outlook to Hotmail
Email Marketing Reports: Email Statistics
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