Who created this lie that Microsoft struggled with consumer?

Xbox was always consumer and is massive. A huge chunk of the Windows line was always about consumers. The office line straddled both. Hotmail was consumer first.

Not a lie. Any modern-day "success" with consumers from Microsoft has been limited to them riding the coattails of the well-established and decades old Xbox and Windows platforms. Every other Microsoft foray into consumer computing since Xbox has largely flopped (Windows Phone, Windows tablets, Zune, smartwatches, wearables, Skype, Bing, Cortana, etc...)

Even with Windows, which is their most successful consumer product, its success can arguably be attributed to the fact that Microsoft essentially has a 100% market dominance on computers sold under $1,000. Would that product be as successful if it faced competent competition? We really can't say for certain.

Office has historically seen consumer success (however I suspect the rise of G Suite has significantly curtailed that), but that's only because Office has been a necessity if you want to interact with business documents (which are typically .docx and MS Office files).

The common theme here is that, with the exception of Xbox, Microsoft's consumer products only seem to see success when consumers have no other options.

Zune, Skype, Windows Phone, Kin, Xbox under Don Mattrick, Windows Store, Microsoft Store, Mixer, Band.

What consumer successes has Microsoft had recently other than Surface?

xbox at first was so bad they buried it in another division that was very profitable. I remember reading it in their prospectus when I owned some of their stock at that time. xbox now is only 'good' because sony made the ps3 which was a cool box but expensive to buy, use and produce on.

MS has what I call the 6 versions rule. v1 do not get, v2 interesting toy, v3 hey kinda usable, v4 get this thing it is cool, v5 they manage to mess it up badly, v6 just kinda put that back but not quite. They then toggle between v5 and v6.

Xbox got lucky with the ps3, and is now struggling to remain relevant with the ps4/5 in my opinion and friend circles.

Xbox still to this day is a net negative. Whole division has never turned profit if you consider investments. Lets not forget Xbox One launch fiasco with always online DRM, emphasis on TV services, no game resale. That cost them ~25% market share. https://www.vgchartz.com/article/442352/switch-vs-ps4-vs-xbo...

There's a chance that they could just make it crash and burn. Mixer was a live streaming platform like Twitch that was owned by Microsoft. Technologically, it was superior to twitch, but design decisions affecting moderation, rules, and culture prevented it from gaining traction. There's a chance that a shift in culture could kill TikTok too.

" Acquiring a social media platform is going to catapault it into the heart of consumer tech."

It will catapault one of their subsidiaries into the heart of that.

Remember they used to 'own the world' through IE, very much a consumer product, and that didn't shape them.

They own Skype, one of the world's most prominent p2p communication tools, and screwed that up.