Microsoft is now giving away copies of Windows 8.

Don’t worry about standing in line any time soon: Copies are being given away only to hardware manufacturers. Specifically, manufacturers of mobile devices. Microsoft is eager to get a chunk of that market and they figure giving away their operating system is the best way.

My prediction: This will succeed.

Zillions of low-end phone and tablet manufacturers will flood the market with cheap-o Windows 8 mobile devices. That may not make Windows 8 any more popular, although it the action fails, I can proudly say, “Windows 8: They couldn’t even give it away.”

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According to a Wall Street research firm, Google is now the world’s number one brand, ousting Apple.

It makes sense.

Consider many of the innovations brought by Google — and not just the search engine, Android OS, and online collaboration tools. I mean, Google has self-driving cars. That that, Apple!

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Samsung has Galaxy Gear, their version of a wearable mobile device. Motorola is working on their wrist phone. So where is the iWatch?

According to the article, linked below, a Wall Street analyst is saying that Apple has less than two months left to demonstrate that they can innovate something in the post-Jobs era, or they will become irrelevant.

Of course, the same analyst is claiming that Apple’s stock will continue to go up, so who knows?

I do recall that Steve Jobs was supposedly planning the Next Big Thing just before his passing. Will we ever discover what that is?

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Mark Randall, who is high up on the Motorola food chain, describes today’s SmartWatches as all being “pretty crappy.”

Yep. I think he nails it.

Of course, the SmartWatch that his company is coming out with, the Moto 360, is going to be much, much better.

Perhaps.

I still believe the SmartWatches all blow it. A SmartWatch needs an audio interface, not a video one. You talk to the thing, it talks back. Sure, it can display the time, and the Moto 360 looks lovely. But . . . voce, voce, voce!

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