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Microsoft Revenue Up, Tries to Hook Third World
rocketjam writes "Microsoft reported record revenue for the last quarter Thursday due to increased sales of personal computers. Analysts were impressed with the company's overall performance, however they expressed concern about the continuing drop in unearned revenue, reflecting Microsoft's difficulty in signing up customers for long-term, sustainable business contracts. The $400 million drop in unearned revenue was less than the drop in the last quarter but still exceeded many analyst's expectations. The company's continuing problem in gaining long-term contracts is generally attributed to growing security concerns among customers and company's unwillingness to go along with Microsoft's 'Software Assurance' upgrade subscription plan." Also in the news: Microsoft is donating a pile of software to the United Nations -- retail value, $1 billion; wholesale value, maybe $1 million or so -- attempting to hook the Third World on Microsoft software.
Mikey adds "
Do you have any real data to back this up, Michael, or is this yet another of your unnecessary and unwanted biased editorials? Not that I'm in the pro-Microsoft camp but a 1000-to-1 profit line sounds pretty high. This is shoddy "journalism".
Feel free to bitch slap me and any subsequent thread.
Trolling is a art,
attempting to hook the Third World on Microsoft software
While I'm an avid Linux fan, why do I get the feeling that if a large Linux distributor like Red Hat arranged for a glut of software to be sent to UN countries, the headline would have been slightly more flattering? Something like "generously supplied Third World coutries with Linux software" instead of the negative connotations implied with "hook" that is attached to Microsoft's gesture.
"In the news today, something good happened to Microsoft. However, we at OSDN feel we must say something bad about them, so as not to focus less on the positive, more on the negative. Thank you for nodding your head."
I can't see that it really matters if Microsoft tries to "hook" the Third World on their products. The Third World can't _afford_ Microsoft prices (sort of what makes them Third World) and so if they are using Microsoft products it will be at no gain to the company's bottom line.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
Not neccisarily. During the 90's MS knew that software priacy in China (real copy/sell piracy not ??AA piracy...)was big in China, but they let it happen because they the Chinese would get 'hooked' and MS products and then MS could really turn the screws and milk them. Drug dealer tactics. The first one is always free.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Yes, but there are a few benefits to this:
1) They have a chance to get in on the ground floor in those countries. If all the people there are used to using MS software, guess what they'll keep using if/when the economy starts to get going?
2) It pushes the numbers of people using Windows up, which is what a lot of PHBs look at. "Why would we switch over to Linux when 99% of the world uses Windows?!"
3) Tax write-off.
4) Looks good to consumers - "Wow, they're so generous!"
5) Maybe MS just felt like being nice. There's no exclusivity agreement, so even if the people there take the free software, there's nothing stopping them from using alternative software if they feel like it. Pretty cool of MS.
A friend of my put it best ..
"In other news, crack dealers give first hit of crack for free to kids"
[alk]
Read the statements again. 3 month income is down, year over year.
Microsoft is trying to spin this as improved results, but they are just playing a shell game. Note that the increase revenue is more than balanced by increased expenses. Translation: Microsoft is buying sales and hiding the costs. Translation of the translation: Microsoft is being forced to offer heavy incentives to move their tired old products. Translation of the translation of the translation: a million Penguin bites really do hurt.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but: The desktop OS/Office Software market is not your typical 2-3 major-player market. Microsoft is a convicted monopolist with over 90% market share. This is not an offer of help, this is a predatory offer to stop 3rd world countries from adopting Open Source Software.
I can't see that it really matters if Microsoft tries to "hook" the Third World on their products. The Third World can't _afford_ Microsoft prices (sort of what makes them Third World) and so if they are using Microsoft products it will be at no gain to the company's bottom line.
You seem to have completely missed the finer points of monopoly versus normal competition. The very last thing you want as a monopoly is a competitive alternative. Read up on some basic economics about profits in monopoly versus duopoly and how much money it's rational to sink into barriers to entry.
Microsoft would want nothing but for the third world to use their products, both officially (like this giveaway) and unofficially through piracy, because it means they're not using anything else. While they may cry their hearts out over the massive piracy, the truth is that if they actually forced them to pay, they'd lose their biggest barrier to entry.
You're right, the third world doesn't gain their bottom line. But if they let an alternative develop and grow popular because their prices are too high, it could seriously hurt their bottom line where it matters - in the rich countries. That's what this is all about, what they are trying to prevent.
That's also why threats of moving to Linux is so effective - the more people are on Linux, the more the rest can threaten to move to Linux. So it's probably cheaper to buy them off than to increase the Linux userbase and make the switchover threat worse. They sacrifice a little profit to keep their monopoly, because that is what matters in the greater picture.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Microsoft is obviously doing this just to hook the third world. Its not like they, nor Bill Gates have ever made any charitable donations before, right?
Maybe one day slashdot will get rid of Michael and will slowly become a respectable news source again.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
If you like, I'll give you $1000 worth of software - it's easy because I can arbitrarily set the "value" of a trivial chunk of code at $1000 and be no different that what Microsoft is doing here. This is why Microsoft likes to donate software or vouchers for software (most which usually come back to them) instead of cash.
The people who run this web site are not journalists by any stretch of the imagination. They never were, and they never will be. The only one to come remotely close to that description was Katz, but he was so far gone to the left that it didn't matter.
I agree with what you're saying, but I cringe whenever someone accuses them of "shoddy journalism" - that's an insult to real journalists everywhere. Instead, they should be criticized for running a web site that unfortunately commands the attention of millions of people all over the world and knowingly appending their snippy comments to stories submitted by other people in order to sway the opinion of said millions (ok, maybe thousands).
Being a "perl hacker" (whatever the hell that means) and hitting the jackpot by accident does not make you a journalist anymore thatn learning to hack a weird scripting language makes you a professional software developer.