They were late to the browser.
They were late with tabbed browsing.
They were late with the zune.
They were late with using non admin accounts.
They are late to the tablet market.
They did however succeed with the Xbox.
They make good ergo keyboards and mice.
I'm going to refute as that seems to be my stereotype....
IE is currently the most used browser across the different Windows platforms. Current IE 10 is king until google updates chrome after a few updates.
Zune was FAR too late to the market. 2006 was a bad year to chose an mp3 player release, 2003 would had been more appropriate. Now, it's been rebooted to Xbox Music, the app is questionable and being from Microsoft, still a work in progress as January will bring new updates to it. But content wise it's real nice.
Don't know how this can be refuted.
Actually, funny you say they were late to the tablet market....
Not only that, Microsoft developed Windows 3.11 for pen computing, which was basically tablet computing with a stylus.
Xbox is king, has been for a straight 22 months.
Their keyboards are real decent, mice are as well.
Windows Phone was technically late to the party, but Windows Mobile was a decent smartphone platform LONG before apple really had a good streak going. The iphone more or less made the smartphone a commonplace device when it was used mostly for business pros.
Microsoft was late to the party, sometimes fashionably late, sometimes when the party already climaxed and fizzled out. Microsoft has set their goal to beat apple at EVERY turn and blow up every rock that apple considers touching. Which makes the possibility of them building a Surface Phone, a Surface AIO, and even building an Xbox Surface tablet. This also made them expand the Xbox as a cable box and multimedia center for the living room outside of just gaming. This may also make them use the Kinect for more than gaming, which is being done for Windows 8 apps, and possibly using it as an total hand gesture input device for the PC. Overall, though sometimes late, they end up with a good portfolio of winners.
REFUTED!