14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has always tried to stay close to Apple, Google, and other large tech companies in pretty much every single market category, and now that most firms seem to be looking into cars, it’s only natural to believe that the software giant is aiming towards the same industry as well.
But according to CEO Satya Nadella, this is not the case, as Microsoft wants to remain a partner for car manufacturers and not to become their rival.
All-in on Azure
Speaking with WSJ’s Gerard Baker at the WSJD Live conference in California, Satya Nadella explained that he’s actually proud that so many car makers adopted Azure for their own systems, but the company won’t follow the traces of other companies, such as Google and Apple, to build its own cars.
“I’m very thrilled about all the car companies using Azure today. It’s the best thing that happened to us quite honestly,” Nadella said when asked whether Microsoft is planning to build a car or not.
“That’s our strategy, it goes back to our identity,” he continued when Baker pressed him on whether this is as far as Microsoft is willing to go in the automotive market.
“Whether it’s Daimler, it’s BMW, it’s Ford, or Toyota, they’re significant customers. In essence, they’re looking for a trusted partner who’s not going to compete with them and who has the same capability that it’s about image recognition or about cloud infrastructure. That’s really what we’re doing and in fact, if you’re looking at self-driving cars, just before we had [them], they were using simulators for testing driving safety and in there they were using all of our cognitive capabilities.”
Microsoft is already working with several car manufacturers on providing services for their in-vehicle systems, and more recently, the firm partnered with Renault-Nissan to boost productivity behind the wheel with Azure cloud services.
Furthermore, Microsoft has already presented several new implementations that would bring Office 365 and Cortana right inside the cars, giving drivers the option to remain productive even when leaving the office.