TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Horace Dediu:

However, the big contrast is between mobile and desktop. Microsoft tries with Windows 8 to merge the two. But these are different ecosystems. Buyers, OEMs, users, all have different behavioral patterns (jobs-to-be-done) for mobile OS vs. desktop/portables. Will the cycle time for Windows 9 and Windows 10 tighten up? Can Microsoft operate its OS division at this new cycle time?

What is even more bad news is that the most important customers for Microsoft, enterprises, actually upgrade every other version. The Windows “radius” is nominally averaging about 35 months but large account adoption is closer to 60 months.

As much as Microsoft wants post-PC devices to be a part of the PC market, it’s going to be difficult to combine the two, because there are inherent differences. So far, Apple’s moved very quickly in releasing new versions of iOS, and up until building a tablet version of Android, Google did, too. The mobile market (smartphones and tablet devices) moves quickly because it’s a consumer market, whereas the PC business—as Horace points out—moved slower in the past because it was driven in large part by enterprise sales.

Those are two very different markets and Microsoft is trying to combine them into one single operating system. Can they move Windows on to a more mobile-friendly development schedule? Will enterprise customers accept the faster pace?

Hard to tell, and Microsoft will be dealing with it while Apple continues to quickly iterate on iOS. By tying Metro, their post-PC OS, to Windows, Microsoft may have tied a boat anchor to their future in the name of preserving their current business.