Microsoft Has Suddenly Gotten Serious with Mobile
The Article’s overview Microsoft is showing that it wants to meet mobile users where they are, not where the company hopes they will be one day. Instead of using the strategy of pushing the mobile operation system in customer’s smartphones, Microsoft turned outside the company to bolster its mobile app offerings for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android operating system. The reason for changing the strategy is that the company has figured out that Window’s mobile operating system dominates only three percent of the market share of mobile phone, while Android occupies the largest for 85% and iOS, the second, is at 11%.
Initially, Microsoft attempted to compete with Apple and Google by buying the Nokia Company to put its own mobile operating system on the market as Windows Phone. Also, Microsoft did not make its software available for any competitors. However, this strategy never hurt any rivals, only Microsoft itself. With disappointing results, Microsoft has shifted its strategy and developed more applications and services and has brought them to Apple’s and Android’s devices.
Early last year, Microsoft released the mobile version of Office 365 applications as well as OneDrive. They work well with other cloud storage apps such as Dropbox, Google Drive, or iCloud.
Outlook is the latest application that was released in late January 2015. It is the email and calendar application for the heavy email users. Outlook is a real mobile application which consists of two applications, Acompli and Sunrise. Acompli is an email application made by a start-up company. This e-mail app was acquired from Microsoft last December for $200 million. Microsoft rebranded Acompli and released the new e-mail app as Outlook. Then in February, Microsoft acquired another popular calendar app, Sunrise, which is already included in the Outlook mobile application. However, Microsoft continues to offer Sunrise as a stand-alone free app.
The strength of Outlook is that the app will automatically divided emails into two queues: Focused and Other by using the software’s algorithms. Javier Soltero, the former CEO of Acompli and the current general manager of Microsoft Outlook, explains that people receive a lot of e-mails but will spend only 24 seconds looking at all of them, and Outlook will make those 24 seconds, most productive. Therefore, Focused e-mails will show the e-mails that people want to look at with their 24 seconds, people might look at Other e-mails later or not at all. It would be easy to dismiss Outlook as a fluke if Microsoft were not also making so many other credible mobile apps. Early last year, it finally released high-quality versions of its main Office apps — Word, Excel and PowerPoint — for iPhone, iPad and their Android variants. Then the company made nearly complete versions of the apps free. In addition, if the customer upgrades to a paid subscription to Office 365, which costs $6.99 a month to use on a single smartphone, tablet and PC or Mac, free unlimited OneDrive storage is include. With all the good deals from Microsoft, the arrival of Outlook and Office suite 365 on tablets and mobile phones will give customers one less reason to use a traditional computer running Windows. That is not great for Microsoft, but at least they will be using Office.

Microsoft Has Suddenly Gotten Serious with Mobile by Nick Wingfield
The Marketing concept and term in the Article
I. Chapter 7 Analyzing Business Market Concept and Term 1. “Direct Purchasing” : Microsoft bought the e-mail application system from Acompli 2. “System buying and selling”: Microsoft deals with Sunrise but still offers Sunrise as a stand-alone free app and says that it would share more details in the future about how the app will be used to improve other Microsoft products.
II. Chapter 8 Identifying Market Segments and Targets Concept and Term 1. “Demographic Segmentation”: by using “occupation “No one wants to miss a crucial email from a boss”. This means that Microsoft targets its market as the office workers or business consumers. 2. “Behavior Segmentation”: by using these words “mobile users”, “heavy email users.”
III. Chapter 13 Designing and Managing Service Concept and Term 1. “Categories of service mix” Microsoft shifts its strategy from “Tangible good with accompany service” to “Pure Service” as the article illustrates that instead of offering mobile phones with Widows mobile operating system. It now concentrates more on developing and offering the software or application to use with any smartphone and operating system.
IV. Chapter 20 Introducing New Market Offerings Concept and Term 1. “Organic growth”: the development of new products from within. As seen in the article, Microsoft attempts to focus on making apps for Apple or Android devices instead of making mobile operating system or Windows phones , an increasingly hard sell. Also, the Outlook mobile version is developed from the Outlook PC version, but it is thoughtfully tailored for how people use e-mail on smart phones. 2. “Types of New Products: revisions of existing products”, when most new- product activity is devoted to improving existing products. Microsoft is one of the companies that applied the new- product activity by “revisions of existing products.” Before Outlook was released, Microsoft offered Outlook Web Access (OWA) app. However, the app was only a shortcut for the webpage and lacked the performance and richness of a native mobile app. Moreover, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, pointed out that the company’s priorities were shifting. “The new Outlook is everything its predecessor was not — snappy and, for people who are heavy email users on mobile, a genuine improvement on the standard Apple email app that comes on every iPhone.” 3. “Managing the Development Process: Concept to Strategy”: Microsoft develop its product concept by demonstrating that Outlook is an intelligent email and calendar app, which will makes 24 seconds of user glancing more productive. Outlook uses software’s algorithms to automatically divide emails into two queues: Focused and Other. Put simply, Focused is supposed to give the messages that users want to look at in those 24-second glances, while Other is stuff that customers might want to look at later or not at all. 4. “Concept Testing:” Concept testing means presenting the product concept to target consumers, physically or symbolically, and getting their reactions. The fact that Microsoft released the new Outlook in late January is a clear sign of how quickly the company feels it needs to move in the mobile business. Also, the writer, Nick Wingfield, responds that the outlook is able to fill the “Need Level” which he could arrange a meeting over email within one app he does not have to use the calendar app separately. “Gap Level” Wingfield also mentions that “I like how Outlook sorts emails and prefer its approach over the Gmail app. Outlook generally allowed more messages into my Focused queue than I would like. Gmail, in contrast, omitted things from my Important queue that I wanted to see.” 5. “Cross-Functional Group so-called ventured team”. They are charged with developing a specific product or business. As seen by Microsoft announcing that the new Outlook was not Microsoft’s work, exactly. The app is mostly a rebranding of Acompli, an existing app made by a start-up that Microsoft acquired in December for $200 million. Moreover, in February 2015 , the company bought the maker of Sunrise, a popular mobile calendar app, suggesting that Microsoft has no plans to let up on its deal-making 6. “Studying Competitors” The article often compares Microsoft and its competitors. For example, Outlook versus Gmail app, both Google and Microsoft have similar tricks for ranking important emails. They look at who user has emailed in the past, whose messages user opens and who user bother replying to. They generally downgrade messages from broad email lists and social media notifications. OneDrive versus Google’s drive, Dropbox and iCloud Microsoft offer unlimited storage with the Office Suite 365. Whereas iCloud charges $19.99, Google Drive and Dropbox charge $9.99 for one terabyte per month. 7. “Product Development : Customer Tests” “Beta testing” Alpha testing tests the product within the firm to see how it performs in different applications. After refining the prototype further, the company moves to “beta testing” with customers. As the article describes, that “the fact that Microsoft released the new Outlook in late January, when the ink was barely dry on its Accompli deal, is a clear sign of how quickly the company feels it needs to move in the mobile business.” So the company might see the high volume of downloads from “Beta testing”, which may be the reason that Microsoft acquired Sunrise.