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Microsoft Posts Record Earnings
sriram_2001 writes "Microsoft has just had a record quarter where their profits have doubled from the previous quarter. Total sales are at $10 billion, exceeding both internal and external expectations. Microsoft has attributed the rise in earnings to increased server sales (where *nix-based systems are supposed to be doing well) and more XBox units being sold. For a company that most Slashdotters would say is on the decline, Microsoft sure has weird financial results!" To put it in perspective, Microsoft's income is about the same as New York State receives in taxes - below California, and well above the other 48 states.
Server Sales 18% up - thats quite a share :-). Especially if you regard how hardware sales of servers developed in the end of last year:
Hewlett-Packard: +21%
Dell: +28%
IBM: +36%
(Gartner quote)
http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=P243
There have to be quite a couple of linux- and other boxes, if Microsoft ist just +18%.
Anybody got more precise infos on actual sales of iron?
btw: Profits are also significantly up because of the cut in personell.
Details on different aspects of server sales: http://www.itfacts.biz/index.php?id=C0_5_1
The numbers are real alright but they do say something else:
I can't find the actual data of this quarter, but here are the data for the last four quarters. Notice that the quarter ending 12/31/2003 is the one used for comparison by the article.
-quarter ending 12/31/2003:
revenue $10,153,000, net income $1,549,000
-quarter ending 9/30/2004:
revenue $9,189,000, net income $2,528,000.
How can they have a billion less in revenue and a billion more in income?
The answer is also there: they spent $1.4 BILLION *less* in Research and Development.
Microsoft is of course still in a dominant position, and their software still sells like no other piece of software ever did, but the real advancement from last year is a +6% in revenue (which is propably *less* than the overall market growth).
Washington bullets will simply be known as the "Bulle
WinNT to W2003 resulted in a huge upswing in MS spending in the later half of last year for my company. I was hoping for a decent rationalisation of why were were using WinNT in some of these cases (e.g. DNS??? file/print servers???), but as usually business managers have their backs up against the wall (e.g. procrastinate on spending) and just want to pay their way out of a situation when they have no choice.
And if you have to upgrade the OS (which results in lots of application regression testing, which is labour and the most expensive cost of the whole process), you may as well replace the server which is probably 4-5 years old at this point. So the upswing in server sales for the last quarter or two I would attribute to this WinNT retirement. WinNT upgrade = license fees, + labour + h/w....ironically the catalyst is probably the least expensive component in the equation.
At least, that's how it played out at the bank I work at...
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
For a company that most Slashdotters would say is on the decline, Microsoft sure has weird financial results!
Yeah. People were laughing at Alan Greenspan for a number of few years before that bubble burst too. I guess some of us silly Slashdotters just don't "get" the new Microsoft economy. It's ok though, you just go ahead now and keep putting your money there. After all, what could be wrong with Microsoft's accounting practices?
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.