I do a weekly column for Techpinions in addition to my regular stream of posts here on Beyond Devices. Today’s post is about what cloud-first, mobile-first – one of Satya Nadella’s mantras – means for Microsoft. Here’s an excerpt:

The bigger challenge, though, is Microsoft will increasingly be competing against the owners of the two major platforms even as they seek to broaden their offerings onto these platforms. Apple and Google both have their own offerings which compete with Microsoft’s Office, Skype, OneDrive and Outlook.com products. Their competing products are in most cases free to the user, bundled into a broader suite of online services or into a hardware purchase. How will Microsoft compete against these two companies on their own platforms in a way that both adds enough value to justify charging money and overcomes the disadvantages of being a second class citizen? Other commentators are saying Microsoft should abandon both its devices and platforms businesses and focus on cross-platform services, but the fact Microsoft’s two major competitors own those platforms should be cause for reflection.

You can read the full post here.