Rewind back to July 6, 2012: smartphone platforms.

T'was 14 months ago that I blogged about how the company formerly known as RIM was in a death spiral.

"From where I'm standing, it sure looks like RIM is simply following the same path that was blazed by Palm with WebOS, which has been curiously followed by Nokia."

And in the last two weeks we've learned that Nokia has sold off its D and S division to Microsoft while Blackberry is looking to sell itself off and possibly laying off 40% of its staff.  Basically, it's a signal that the only part of Blackbery worth a dime, is the BBM system.

And I'm still relishing this prediction from February 16, 2011:

"I'm calling it: Ballmer is out as CEO at Microsoft, by 2013, when investors realize that Ballmer and company completely missed out on the tablets and smart phone markets."

Prescient, no?

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Speaking of missing out on tablets ...

I've been thinking about Windows desktop OS lately.  The expectation is that Windows 9 would come out in 2015.  If Windows 8.1 doesn't jump start adoption, will the market stick around for Windows 9, or will it move on?  We know that the desktop OS market is being displaced by tablets and smart phones, and in two more years, the trend will be more profound than today.

Look around and you see software companies using a combination of web technologies to move their presence to the cloud, and in doing so, exchange software sales to subscriptions or service fees.  Autodesk has AutoCAD 360, a less than robust replacement of AutoCAD LT to be sure, but not many people use much of AutoCAD LT, let alone the full blown version of AutoCAD. By the way, notice that there's no Windows RT or W8 app.

Same goes for graphics apps.  Autodesk's SketchBook is really good.

Hypothetically speaking, if Windows' move to Live Tiles UI for touch had worked, the shortfall from desktops should have been compensated for, by a rush of tablet purchases with the standard Windows OS, regardless of how RT performed.  But since both RT and the regular Windows tablets have failed to gain traction, the bottom line here is that Windows is failing fast.

Live Tiles has failed.  Unless Microsoft were ready to ditch their UI, I'd suggest that there's not much chance that Windows makes a comeback in 2015.