One more time: remove two layers of middle management and replace Steve Ballmer. Microsoft, you're on your way to becoming another Commodore. Don't let it happen.
I agree. I have no love fro microsoft but this Ballmer seems to be destroying it. That is quite an achievement considering what he inherited. Particularly galling is the failure to learn from lessons, panning the ipod and then again the iphone after being completely wrong? Humans make mistakes but it is generally considered wise to learn from them. I get the impression he is just a code monkey or some technician. No vision at all and Bill Gates had some, albeit rather conservative compared to Steve Jobs.
It's a done deal. Many IT shops will roll out Win7 simply because it:
a) doesn't suck any worse than XP
b) is a zillion times more secure than XP
c) XP is getting really crufty and 64 bit XP is really crufty
Folks typically have an inordinate amount of IT crap on their XP builds. A good number can go away under Win7 leading to faster performance than under XP.
Maybe for the individual pc users this will happen but at institutes, government etc I find it hard to believe. If we have to do a major system upgrade then why not go to linux? Then perhaps I wouldn't have time to go for a coffee as my computer starts up (I kid you not and it is a new one). I am sure they will almost give away 7 so IT will jump at it as they are usually not the sharpest tools in the box and are unable to see a trojan horse.
Folks here really like to ignore MS' core strengths. One of which is its developer support. VS and all the SDKs MS has is a significant advantage over competitors. This is also one area that Apple does well but something unix/linux vendors, Sun/Java and companies like Nokia suck at. Google does 'okay" but too much of their stuff is a bit hackey as well.
It remains debatable that "the web has won" as Google proclaims (Gundotra at Google IO). I remember Sun making that claim a decade ago about Java...
Well I will be buying Windows 7 for my gaming box, so maybe that will help out a little I will also be buying Snow Leopard, which is way better, however I'm looking forward to W7 more simply because Vista is so crap and Leopard is not bad.
Maybe for the individual pc users this will happen but at institutes, government etc I find it hard to believe. If we have to do a major system upgrade then why not go to linux? Then perhaps I wouldn't have time to go for a coffee as my computer starts up (I kid you not and it is a new one). I am sure they will almost give away 7 so IT will jump at it as they are usually not the sharpest tools in the box and are unable to see a trojan horse.
Because Linux sucks for the desktop? Gee, that's a hard one.
Show me a major linux desktop deployment that has NOT fallen on its face.
Munich: LiMux - epic failure. Out of 14000 computers 1,800 converted. Refuses to give up after 6 years and probably wont be done after 10. And at the CURRENT rate of conversion (0.71/day(), it'll take 48 years MORE.
Vienna: Wienux -epic failure. Out of 16000 computers 720 made the switch, gave up and switched back. Total effective conversion rate: 0.
China: Epic failure. Red Flag Linux. All the rage from 2000-2005. Chinese government to move away from Windows and Office monopoly! The year of the linux desktop is here! MS wins in China in 2007. Total effective conversion rate: 0. Bill Gates hosted by Chinese premier and declared a "friend to china".
Switzerland: No alternative to MS on the desktop, no point in competing bids. RedHat sues. That should be fun.
Typical linux success story? Some 8 person shop where the owner forces everybody to switch and declares victory over MS.
Show me a Fortune 500 company with significant Linux desktop deployment.
no Steve won't do it. but not cause of Bill. He won't do it because to destroy Microsoft puts Apple at risk of gaining the market strength and when that happens, Apple loses the sanction to tie hardware and software. it would be abusive at that point and violate anti-trust. Apple would be forced to reopen the whole cloning game and unlock OSX to work on all configurations. Something Apple does NOT want.
Apple can and has switched gears if the opportunity presents itself. (under Steve Jobs that is)
Apple is a hardware and software company, but if faced with a opportunity to take Microsoft's place in the world as the leading operating system, it would jump at it and sell OS X separate from their hardware.
It's because they will have the best of both, the niche premium, high margin hardware market and the rest of the worlds operating system supplier.
Sort of a Apple and a Microsoft combined in market share.
Sure some hardware sales would be cannibalized, but Apple has established itself as a quality hardware company (except for glossy screens IMO), so people wanting a piece of hardware that works well will continue to buy Apple.
Sure... the article says "but the second negative quarter..."
Which was the first negative quarter? i.e. that helped tip msft into a full year loss (sic)? According to the author, it was the previous quarter (ending on March 31, 2009).
But, for that quarter (ending on March 31, 2009), msft had a net profit of $4.438 Billion, which was higher than the same quarter in the previous year of $4.290 Billion.
I haven't bothered to check all the other numbers and info quoted in the article. Really, it is the author's job to get the information right.
I believe the author is referring to earnings not revenues. Microsoft quarter to quarter revenues declined for Q2 and Q3 from last year.
Other divisions also took a hit, including a 25 percent blow to the Entertainment and Devices group that handles both the Xbox and Zune as well as in Microsoft's server software, online and business segments.
it's plain as day MS is living off its past. but it will still make tons and tons of money for many years. NT 6.1 (the so-called Windows 7) will be popular just because it is not as bad as XP and Vista - and MS has also had to drop the consumer pricing a lot. even a family pack!
big growth on the high-priced enterprise side may never return tho after the recession ends, and that is MS real bread and butter. businesses are looking for less costly and less complicated alternatives, and practical new web-centric options are bound to materialize over the next few years. the smartphone revolution is the leading edge of this, by the way. once there is a cheap, easy to set up alternative to Exchange the exodus will begin.
MS forays into other consumer products are failures. the Zune? pathetic (how many did they sell this quarter? oh, they forgot to mention). WinMobile? obsolete. only the XBox is any kind of success, having beat out Sony for the teenage boy market. congrats. but still just an also ran far behind Nintendo.
but MS will still make tons and tons of money for many years despite it all. what will finally bring it down? when some Chinese company comes out with a really cheap OS (probably some version of linux)/white box combo for like $99 that pushes MS out of the developing world. and then gets better and spreads to the first world. just like the japanese car industry did to the american manufacturers.
not Apple. Apple really is headed down a different path, thank heavens.
I don't know, maybe, but I've never seen that phrase used that way before.
Well, I think I have not seen it used like that in English as well. Maybe it was just obvious for me, because in German this use is quite common, actually several newspapers used that very phrase today.
"NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Following a complaint from Apple, Microsoft has quietly tweaked at least one of the ads in its "Laptop Hunters" campaign to reflect its rival's lower pricing on its Mac notebooks."
"NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Following a complaint from Apple, Microsoft has quietly tweaked at least one of the ads in its "Laptop Hunters" campaign to reflect its rival's lower pricing on its Mac notebooks."
"NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Following a complaint from Apple, Microsoft has quietly tweaked at least one of the ads in its "Laptop Hunters" campaign to reflect its rival's lower pricing on its Mac notebooks."
I just had to imagine Turner doing cartwheels all the way to the ad agency, screaming "pull it, pull it" and Ballmer on the phone with Google to make them pull the videos from YouTube. Truly priceless.
really? Microsoft never in their 30-year history made less money than they did this year? That's shocking, because they still had tens of billions of dollars in revenue and billions of dollars in profit. I gotta think at some point in the early years they didn't have $30+ billion in revenue....Yes, it's down from last year - and that's the big story here - but it is not their "worst fiscal year ever." Just more faux-journalism from AI.
It's a done deal. Many IT shops will roll out Win7 simply because it:
a) doesn't suck any worse than XP
b) is a zillion times more secure than XP
c) XP is getting really crufty and 64 bit XP is really crufty
Folks typically have an inordinate amount of IT crap on their XP builds. A good number can go away under Win7 leading to faster performance than under XP.
I agree with the above, but for a lot of big companies this will still take years. The company I work for (12,000 +) has a couple divisions and several business units and before anything is deployed, absolutely every single application gets tested with the new OS "image". Going business unit by business unit, it took about 2 years to get the majority and almost 4 years to get our entire organization off of NT and onto XP. We're a bigger organization these days, but unfortunately with a smaller IT group.
I agree. I have no love fro microsoft but this Ballmer seems to be destroying it. That is quite an achievement considering what he inherited. Particularly galling is the failure to learn from lessons, panning the ipod and then again the iphone after being completely wrong? Humans make mistakes but it is generally considered wise to learn from them. I get the impression he is just a code monkey or some technician. No vision at all and Bill Gates had some, albeit rather conservative compared to Steve Jobs.
Gates built the company on several strokes of incredible luck, and a desire to win by any means necessary. Ballmer is an old FOB (friend of Bill) from his Harvard days and has worked for the company since nearly the start. He's an MBA, not a tech guy -- which was important to Microsoft especially in the early days, when nobody else really understood business management. Still, it's difficult to imagine him becoming anything more than a middle manager if he'd started anywhere else. I think he suffers from a lack of vision for where Microsoft ought to be going. He also suffers from a bad case of the Microsoft Disease, which comes from 25 years of winning so effortlessly. At some point you have to believe that you win just by showing up. That kind of attitude is a real company killer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NasserAE
I believe the author is referring to earnings not revenues. Microsoft quarter to quarter revenues declined for Q2 and Q3 from last year.
I believe so, and that's why this is a big financial and tech story. The broader stock market took this very badly today, which is hardly a surprise, but is still a real shame since I think this is much more of a Microsoft story than an indicator of where the economy is headed.
Comments
... that doesn't want to admit it's sick.
One more time: remove two layers of middle management and replace Steve Ballmer. Microsoft, you're on your way to becoming another Commodore. Don't let it happen.
I agree. I have no love fro microsoft but this Ballmer seems to be destroying it. That is quite an achievement considering what he inherited. Particularly galling is the failure to learn from lessons, panning the ipod and then again the iphone after being completely wrong? Humans make mistakes but it is generally considered wise to learn from them. I get the impression he is just a code monkey or some technician. No vision at all and Bill Gates had some, albeit rather conservative compared to Steve Jobs.
It's a done deal. Many IT shops will roll out Win7 simply because it:
a) doesn't suck any worse than XP
b) is a zillion times more secure than XP
c) XP is getting really crufty and 64 bit XP is really crufty
Folks typically have an inordinate amount of IT crap on their XP builds. A good number can go away under Win7 leading to faster performance than under XP.
Maybe for the individual pc users this will happen but at institutes, government etc I find it hard to believe. If we have to do a major system upgrade then why not go to linux? Then perhaps I wouldn't have time to go for a coffee as my computer starts up (I kid you not and it is a new one). I am sure they will almost give away 7 so IT will jump at it as they are usually not the sharpest tools in the box and are unable to see a trojan horse.
It remains debatable that "the web has won" as Google proclaims (Gundotra at Google IO). I remember Sun making that claim a decade ago about Java...
Maybe for the individual pc users this will happen but at institutes, government etc I find it hard to believe. If we have to do a major system upgrade then why not go to linux? Then perhaps I wouldn't have time to go for a coffee as my computer starts up (I kid you not and it is a new one). I am sure they will almost give away 7 so IT will jump at it as they are usually not the sharpest tools in the box and are unable to see a trojan horse.
Because Linux sucks for the desktop? Gee, that's a hard one.
Show me a major linux desktop deployment that has NOT fallen on its face.
Munich: LiMux - epic failure. Out of 14000 computers 1,800 converted. Refuses to give up after 6 years and probably wont be done after 10. And at the CURRENT rate of conversion (0.71/day(), it'll take 48 years MORE.
Vienna: Wienux -epic failure. Out of 16000 computers 720 made the switch, gave up and switched back. Total effective conversion rate: 0.
China: Epic failure. Red Flag Linux. All the rage from 2000-2005. Chinese government to move away from Windows and Office monopoly! The year of the linux desktop is here! MS wins in China in 2007. Total effective conversion rate: 0. Bill Gates hosted by Chinese premier and declared a "friend to china".
Switzerland: No alternative to MS on the desktop, no point in competing bids. RedHat sues. That should be fun.
Typical linux success story? Some 8 person shop where the owner forces everybody to switch and declares victory over MS.
Show me a Fortune 500 company with significant Linux desktop deployment.
no Steve won't do it. but not cause of Bill. He won't do it because to destroy Microsoft puts Apple at risk of gaining the market strength and when that happens, Apple loses the sanction to tie hardware and software. it would be abusive at that point and violate anti-trust. Apple would be forced to reopen the whole cloning game and unlock OSX to work on all configurations. Something Apple does NOT want.
Apple can and has switched gears if the opportunity presents itself. (under Steve Jobs that is)
Apple is a hardware and software company, but if faced with a opportunity to take Microsoft's place in the world as the leading operating system, it would jump at it and sell OS X separate from their hardware.
It's because they will have the best of both, the niche premium, high margin hardware market and the rest of the worlds operating system supplier.
Sort of a Apple and a Microsoft combined in market share.
Sure some hardware sales would be cannibalized, but Apple has established itself as a quality hardware company (except for glossy screens IMO), so people wanting a piece of hardware that works well will continue to buy Apple.
Sure... the article says "but the second negative quarter..."
Which was the first negative quarter? i.e. that helped tip msft into a full year loss (sic)? According to the author, it was the previous quarter (ending on March 31, 2009).
But, for that quarter (ending on March 31, 2009), msft had a net profit of $4.438 Billion, which was higher than the same quarter in the previous year of $4.290 Billion.
I haven't bothered to check all the other numbers and info quoted in the article. Really, it is the author's job to get the information right.
I believe the author is referring to earnings not revenues. Microsoft quarter to quarter revenues declined for Q2 and Q3 from last year.
Other divisions also took a hit, including a 25 percent blow to the Entertainment and Devices group that handles both the Xbox and Zune as well as in Microsoft's server software, online and business segments.
That's interesting to hear considering that the Xbox 360 is the only home console to see a year-on-year rise in sales.
I guess the Zune is dragging everything down with it.
big growth on the high-priced enterprise side may never return tho after the recession ends, and that is MS real bread and butter. businesses are looking for less costly and less complicated alternatives, and practical new web-centric options are bound to materialize over the next few years. the smartphone revolution is the leading edge of this, by the way. once there is a cheap, easy to set up alternative to Exchange the exodus will begin.
MS forays into other consumer products are failures. the Zune? pathetic (how many did they sell this quarter? oh, they forgot to mention). WinMobile? obsolete. only the XBox is any kind of success, having beat out Sony for the teenage boy market. congrats. but still just an also ran far behind Nintendo.
but MS will still make tons and tons of money for many years despite it all. what will finally bring it down? when some Chinese company comes out with a really cheap OS (probably some version of linux)/white box combo for like $99 that pushes MS out of the developing world. and then gets better and spreads to the first world. just like the japanese car industry did to the american manufacturers.
not Apple. Apple really is headed down a different path, thank heavens.
Good, maybe the stock will get so cheap Apple and/or Google can buy them out and end the suffering of billions.
If Apple put their mind to it, they could wipe Microsoft off the face of the earth.
Guess Steve just can't do it to old Bill.
Maybe Eric can.
I don't quite get this mentality. Why would you want to swap one monopoly for another?
I don't know, maybe, but I've never seen that phrase used that way before.
Well, I think I have not seen it used like that in English as well. Maybe it was just obvious for me, because in German this use is quite common, actually several newspapers used that very phrase today.
"NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Following a complaint from Apple, Microsoft has quietly tweaked at least one of the ads in its "Laptop Hunters" campaign to reflect its rival's lower pricing on its Mac notebooks."
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Micros....html?x=0&.v=2
Hehe
"NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Following a complaint from Apple, Microsoft has quietly tweaked at least one of the ads in its "Laptop Hunters" campaign to reflect its rival's lower pricing on its Mac notebooks."
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Micros....html?x=0&.v=2
LOL! Priceless.
Hehe
"NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Following a complaint from Apple, Microsoft has quietly tweaked at least one of the ads in its "Laptop Hunters" campaign to reflect its rival's lower pricing on its Mac notebooks."
I just had to imagine Turner doing cartwheels all the way to the ad agency, screaming "pull it, pull it" and Ballmer on the phone with Google to make them pull the videos from YouTube. Truly priceless.
really? Microsoft never in their 30-year history made less money than they did this year? That's shocking, because they still had tens of billions of dollars in revenue and billions of dollars in profit. I gotta think at some point in the early years they didn't have $30+ billion in revenue....Yes, it's down from last year - and that's the big story here - but it is not their "worst fiscal year ever." Just more faux-journalism from AI.
1) Zune + online media store
2) Windows Mobile
3) MSN
4) Bing/search/advertising
Still, I doubt that Bing will get the axe because it's a new front in their war with Google.
Oh, and Ballmer will have some explaining to do to the board and he might get the axe as well.
It's a done deal. Many IT shops will roll out Win7 simply because it:
a) doesn't suck any worse than XP
b) is a zillion times more secure than XP
c) XP is getting really crufty and 64 bit XP is really crufty
Folks typically have an inordinate amount of IT crap on their XP builds. A good number can go away under Win7 leading to faster performance than under XP.
I agree with the above, but for a lot of big companies this will still take years. The company I work for (12,000 +) has a couple divisions and several business units and before anything is deployed, absolutely every single application gets tested with the new OS "image". Going business unit by business unit, it took about 2 years to get the majority and almost 4 years to get our entire organization off of NT and onto XP. We're a bigger organization these days, but unfortunately with a smaller IT group.
One of Microsoft's non-core businesses will be axed in the next year:
1) Zune + online media store
2) Windows Mobile
3) MSN
4) Bing/search/advertising
5) Retail stores
One of Microsoft's non-core businesses will be axed in the next year:
1) Zune + online media store
2) Windows Mobile
3) MSN
4) Bing/search/advertising
Still, I doubt that Bing will get the axe because it's a new front in their war with Google.
Oh, and Ballmer will have some explaining to do to the board and he might get the axe as well.
Interesting!
I'll say #1 (already obsolescent), followed shortly by #4.
Is there really any point to #2 after all this time?
I agree. I have no love fro microsoft but this Ballmer seems to be destroying it. That is quite an achievement considering what he inherited. Particularly galling is the failure to learn from lessons, panning the ipod and then again the iphone after being completely wrong? Humans make mistakes but it is generally considered wise to learn from them. I get the impression he is just a code monkey or some technician. No vision at all and Bill Gates had some, albeit rather conservative compared to Steve Jobs.
Gates built the company on several strokes of incredible luck, and a desire to win by any means necessary. Ballmer is an old FOB (friend of Bill) from his Harvard days and has worked for the company since nearly the start. He's an MBA, not a tech guy -- which was important to Microsoft especially in the early days, when nobody else really understood business management. Still, it's difficult to imagine him becoming anything more than a middle manager if he'd started anywhere else. I think he suffers from a lack of vision for where Microsoft ought to be going. He also suffers from a bad case of the Microsoft Disease, which comes from 25 years of winning so effortlessly. At some point you have to believe that you win just by showing up. That kind of attitude is a real company killer.
I believe the author is referring to earnings not revenues. Microsoft quarter to quarter revenues declined for Q2 and Q3 from last year.
I believe so, and that's why this is a big financial and tech story. The broader stock market took this very badly today, which is hardly a surprise, but is still a real shame since I think this is much more of a Microsoft story than an indicator of where the economy is headed.