World after microsoft

Like it or not, Microsoft has a big impact on the world. A lot of people will love to see Microsoft close. And a lot of people will say, its not gonna happen in our lifetime. I don’t think on those lines. But I did get a weird thought and that’s what this is about, What happens to the world after Microsoft?

Scene (lets say around mid 2008)

# Vista and office 2007 sales never took off
# Microsoft looses heavily in Internet Technologies
# Xbox looses out to PS3
# Zune survives iPod but is not enough
# Looses few lawsuits accounting into hundreds billions (again a wild shot)

Microsoft share prices crashes. (Bill Gates is no longer the richest man)

THE IMPACT

A Microsoft exit will leave a very big vacuum in everything, perhaps the biggest that history have ever seen. Thousands of small IT firms working on primarily in Microsoft technology will be either forced to make a technology shift, or exit, or may have to work on some scrap maintenance work. Thousands of developers who have worked their guts out in MS technologies will have to adapt or perish.

This will cause upswing in demand for non MS personnel and solutions. The high demand and low supply will push the salary of these people and prices of their solutions beyond affordability of many business houses. This will in turn slow the growth of these business houses.

A Microsoft exit will slow the research in high performance hardware. The demand for high performance hardware from home segment might virtually become 0. Coz most of them wanted high end h/w to run their slow MS Systems. Sales of PCs will drop drastically as well, as laymen will not be very much keen to learn and adapt to non MS OS. This will slow down major world economies and will start a global recession

What else can happen??? Shoot weird thoughts