[mikemike]

An idea proposed in the questions for CP+ reminded me of some of the cool stuff that I have seen coming out of Microsoft's research division. Looked it up and there are some things that they are doing that would be really awesome if Ricoh picked up and ran with. They have certainly done so with the Theta and there are a lot of other demos of projects that would fit really well with the Pentax system and using the SR system in creative ways.

MS brings these projects to market in the form of windows phone and kinect but I am sure there are opportunities for third parties to use some of this.

Seeing Mt. Rainier: Lucky Imaging for Multi-Image Denoising, Sharpening, and Haze Removal

Multi-Image Fusion

Image Deblurring using Inertial Measurement Sensors

Interactive Visual Media - Microsoft Research

[boriscleto]

M$ reminds me a lot of Kodak or Xerox. Lots of research that will never be used and ultimately sell for pennies in a bankruptcy auction.

[savoche]

Too early to conclude that MS will fail. Yes, the PC era has peaked. Yes, they're late to the phone party, and I can't get myself to like their phones. But they have a considerable pile of cash, they have a lot of very competent people. What they have lacked for a while is the right people at the top. If they can fix that there's still hope for MS.

I sincerely hope they will succeed, although not that they will dominate - again. We need the competition.

Yes, I know the same could be said about Kodak and Xerox at one time or other, but for MS it's still not too late.

And it's definitely not too late for Ricoh to get in on whatever good tech MS can come up with

[monochrome]

M$ reminds me a lot of Kodak or Xerox. Lots of research that will never be used and ultimately sell for pennies in a bankruptcy auction.

Bankrupt? They should break the company in pieces and spin off the pieces to the shareholders. They're a behemoth, unlike anything ever before until Google. +/- $75 / share CASH, net of all conceivable liabilities.

---

Last edited by monochrome; 02-17-2014 at 10:51 AM.

[danny09]

Agreed. I am unwilling to write off MS yet. With Satya Nadella at the top their consolidation game is in the Enterprise business verticals. They are in no position to challenge Google or Apple for the next 5 years at least.
But they will not fail like Enron fail. Rather fade into oblivion like IBM PC/Server business.

[boriscleto]

Bankrupt? They should break the company in pieces and spin off the pieces to the shareholders. They're a behemoth, unlike anything ever before until Google. +/- $75 / share CASH, net of all conceivable liabilities.

At one time the same would have been said of Kodak or IBM.

IBM was broken up, Kodak is basically just a brand name now. Xeroxed anything lately? (But I'm pretty sure you've used a GUI or transmitted data over Ethernet lately)

[mikemike]

Just because a business shifts focus towards commercial instead of consumer oriented doesn't mean they are in trouble. It is a sign of the times. Businesses are where the money is, consumers are still recovering from the credit crisis, rebuilding their balance sheets and reevaluating their priorities. MS's wheelhouse is still Windows and Office but they also have a lot of irons in the fire with SQL Server, .NET, Xbox, cloud services, Bing, and windows phone. They have an uphill battle in cloudservices vs. Amazon, search vs. google, and mobile devices vs. apple and google but I would never count them out. I have used windows phone just to try it out and I am very impressed by how light weight it is compared to android and it definitely shook up and inspired apple's iOS 7 redesign.

This kind of stuff does make it out like I said in the form of kinect which is an amazing piece of imaging hardware and phones which is where a lot of innovation happens in photography.

[boriscleto]

Just because a business shifts focus towards commercial instead of consumer oriented doesn't mean they are in trouble. It is a sign of the times. Businesses are where the money is, consumers are still recovering from the credit crisis, rebuilding their balance sheets and reevaluating their priorities. MS's wheelhouse is still Windows and Office but they also have a lot of irons in the fire with SQL Server, .NET, Xbox, cloud services, Bing, and windows phone. They have an uphill battle in cloudservices vs. Amazon, search vs. google, and mobile devices vs. apple and google but I would never count them out. I have used windows phone just to try it out and I am very impressed by how light weight it is compared to android and it definitely shook up and inspired apple's iOS 7 redesign.

This kind of stuff does make it out like I said in the form of kinect which is an amazing piece of imaging hardware and phones which is where a lot of innovation happens in photography.

Some would say they have too many irons in the fire and no clear focus.

The one piece of interesting technology they have is Kinect, and they bought that from someone else.

[monochrome]

At one time the same would have been said of Kodak or IBM.

IBM was broken up, Kodak is basically just a brand name now. Xeroxed anything lately? (But I'm pretty sure you've used a GUI or transmitted data over Ethernet lately)

Neither ever had $10 a share in CASH, inflation adjusted or nominal. That's 30% of the share price!!!

When was IBM broken up? Never read about that one. Did you mean AT&T? They bought NCR after the wireline companies were spun off into the 7 Baby Bell companies in 1984.

Neither Kodak nor Xerox had ratios like Microsoft has. They were Plant & Equipment-bound, labor-intensive, capital-heavy businesses that collapsed under the weight of their obligations. Microsoft has no obligations (or comparatively none).

Granted, MS is sclerotic and too big to capitalize on its ideas, which is why they should self-separate into smaller pieces - but bankrupt? Never gonna happen.

[boriscleto]

Neither ever had $10 a share in CASH, inflation adjusted or nominal. That's 30% of the share price!!!

When was IBM broken up? Never read about that one. Did you mean AT&T? They bought NCR after the wireline companies were spun off into the 7 Baby Bell companies in 1984.

Neither Kodak nor Xerox had ratios like Microsoft has. They were Plant & Equipment-bound, labor-intensive, capital-heavy businesses that collapsed under the weight of their obligations. Microsoft has no obligations (or comparatively none).

Granted, MS is sclerotic and too big to capitalize on its ideas, which is why they should self-separate into smaller pieces - but bankrupt? Never gonna happen.

IBM wasn't broken up completely, but bits and pieces have been sold off over the years. The most visible part of IBM was the PC division, and that was sold off to the Chinese. They spld the printer dovision to Ricoh, the PoS division to Toshiba. So what is IBM now? A semiconductor company or an IT services company? They just announced 15,000 layoffs yesterday.

List of mergers and acquisitions by IBM - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And someone should remind the government why the Bells were broken off in the first place, they are all owned by AT&T or Verizon now...

Microsoft is doomed, but first it’s going to make a ton of money

[VoiceOfReason]

It would make sense to license the technology and make money off of it that way.

[mikemike]

Imaging and computer vision also has a lot of applications in other fields like mapping which they do with bing and other areas like robotics or self driving cars if they ever get involved in that field.

[jogiba]

IBM wasn't broken up completely, but bits and pieces have been sold off over the years. The most visible part of IBM was the PC division, and that was sold off to the Chinese. They spld the printer dovision to Ricoh, the PoS division to Toshiba. So what is IBM now? A semiconductor company or an IT services company? They just announced 15,000 layoffs yesterday.

List of mergers and acquisitions by IBM - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And someone should remind the government why the Bells were broken off in the first place, they are all owned by AT&T or Verizon now...

Microsoft is doomed, but first it’s going to make a ton of money

IBM was not broken up, it sold it's PC division because it was clueless about the PC market. I remember purchasing IBM OS/2 2.1 on CD that only had support for SCSI CD drives.

---------- Post added 02-17-14 at 06:26 PM ----------

M$ reminds me a lot of Kodak or Xerox. Lots of research that will never be used and ultimately sell for pennies in a bankruptcy auction.

If Microsoft ($312.27 Billion) is bankrupt then Ricoh ($8.65 Billion ) is dead.

Market Capitalization for Ricoh (RICOY) - Wikinvest
Market Capitalization for Microsoft (MSFT) - Wikinvest