Microsoft's Real Changes Are Below the Surface

With Microsoft now putting its own name on its own stuff, there is less market available for big OEMs such as Hewlett-Packard(HPQ) and DELL(DELL) , which will now live on the fringes of Microsoft's world, in offices and data centers. They are suddenly much less viable as consumer brands.

Instead of looking to hardware OEMs, Microsoft is looking toward software developers, companies that will bring out games and software that will be accessed via the Metro interface. That's another significant change. It brings the company back to where it was 20 years ago, only focused on consumer rather than business niches.

This is what I meant a few weeks ago when I called Microsoft "the most interesting stock in the world."

There is more risk here than we are used to seeing from the company, and more change. But there's also the chance for more gain.

At the time of publication, Blankenhorn was long MSFT, IBM, AAPL and GOOG.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor, separate from TheStreet's regular news coverage.