An article called ” Microsoft’s consumer brand is dying” by CNN points out that the software giant’s execution is no longer winning the market. They cite a blog from Ray Ozzie who says fit and function has been surpassed. This sounds right to me. Consumers often say they like the feel of Apple and Google better.

Then the article has this odd quote from an analyst:

“In this age, the race really is to the swift. You cannot afford to be an hour late or a dollar short,” says Laura DiDio, principal analyst at ITIC. “Now the biggest question is: Can they make it in the 21st century and compete with Google and Apple?”

I disagree. Apple and Google were not swift. Neither was first to market. The race is to the simple (smooth and sexy), not the swift. Ozzie is right, Didio wrong.

More importantly no one seems to be saying the race is to the secure. Microsoft used to get beaten up in the news for being insecure. Although they have done much to improve this, which helped them stop loss in the enterprise market, it appears not to be a primary factor in the fashion-fickle American consumer market where simplicity reigns.

EDITED TO ADD: Tonight I spoke with students at Cal Berkeley and they asked me to explain this further.

First, let me give another great example of a latecomer strategy that is successful:

…interviews conducted by SF Weekly with several former Zynga workers indicate that the practice of stealing other companies’ game ideas — and then using Zynga’s market clout to crowd out the games’ originators — was business as usual.

Rather than comment on whether Zynga is right or wrong, my point is just that they are not in a race to the swift. Zynga apparently is making a lot of money and being successful with a strategy of being later but executing better.

Second, since they were students of political science, I emphasized that people underestimate the value of complexity. Consumers often say they like simplicity but they probably do not realize that this is inversely related to freedom.

The less you can adapt and alter an environment the less freedom you are granted. Looking at the spectrum of freedom in another context, democracy is complicated while a dictatorship is simple. It was at this point the eyes of my audience suddenly lit up, wide with excitement. I was gratified to hear:

Oh! I see now. I never thought of it that way.

Reducing complexity in one area can open up freedom to tinker in another area. Demand for simple interfaces is not hard to understand. But if the market for simplicity gets crowded then differentiation may next come from privacy or security, which Microsoft has actually made progress with lately. I still do not see speed to market as the race Microsoft has to win.