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Microsoft Misses Quarterly Revenue Projection
monsterhead78 wrote to alert us to a BusinessWeek article discussing Microsoft's uncharacteristic miss of its own fiscal projections for the third quarter. From the article: "Three months ago, the software giant said it expected revenue for the period to come in between $9.7 billion and $9.8 billion. But when the company released results Apr. 28, it came up short. Microsoft (MSFT ) rang up just $9.62 billion in sales, a 5% increase from the year-ago quarter."
they haven't released anything new, except for free patches to fix broken software...
Here's an excerpt from the AP feed:
Microsoft shares rose 85 cents, or 3.5 percent, to close at $25.30 in Friday trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
The company reported its fiscal third-quarter earnings after financial markets closed on Thursday.
For the quarter ending March 31, the Redmond, Wash.-based company earned $2.56 billion, or 23 cents per share, up from $1.32 billion, or 12 cents per share, a year ago.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were looking for the company to post earnings of 32 cents per share on sales of $9.83 billion in the latest quarter. The company would have met earnings expectations, except for legal charges of 5 cents a share and a 4-cent-per-share charge for the expense of stock-based compensation required under new accounting rules.
Revenue is important but profit even more so. MSFT closed up today 3.48%
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Maybe it has to do with this
Wow, a mutlibillion-dollar company is $300M short. Why is this news?
Who would have guessed 5 years ago that Apple would be Wall street's darling and growing its stock by leaps and bounds while Microsoft software is languishing its stock is stagnant and not meeting expectations?
Obviously it is because of linux!
Finally the giant is beginning to fall!!!
hmmm, only 9.6 billion left to go.
The slide begins...
Seems like that isn't exactly poor performance since it's a) less than 1% below the projected sales and b) an increase from last year. I don't see the point.
Microsoft wrong: World is stunned!
/.
Seriously, who cares? If any other company in the world missed their quarterly projection, it wouldn't be worth the lint in my pocket to know about it. Microsoft comes up short by less than a percent, and it's worthy of
Time to start 20 years of "Microsoft is dying" trolls.
Just another way Microsoft is copying Apple.
-- I'm old enough to have lived through six different meanings of the word "hacker."
Someone smells SCO here?
They'll be going under any day now. Open Source is teh winner!!
And I just saw an article about how Microsoft's profits rose....
Evidence it's the year of Linux!
What, did they really stop cooking their books after the government told them to stop? (That would certainly be a first!)
My theory is they just didn't cook them quite long enough this quarter.
Your revenue increased, but slightly less than you expected it to be!
Take *that*, evil empire!
LOL, take that Microsoft! ONLY 9.62 BILLION dollars! How you like dem' apples?!?
It sux to be them.
There's also this Register piece, which has a different take on things.
Interesting to me was this quote:
Microsoft said that its home division - which includes Xbox - turned a profit for the first time, as did MSN.
So, if sales went up 5% from last year, how much higher can it go? How many more copies of windows do they need to sell? Or will Microsoft metamorpahsize into a service company? It was not that long ago I was reading that MS was going to stop selling Office, and start renting it. Only way to use it is to be on-line or something dumb like that.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
"...the software giant said it expected revenue for the period to come in between $9.7 billion and $9.8 billion. But when the company released results Apr. 28, it came up short. Microsoft rang up just $9.62 billion in sales..."
Sounds pretty dire, alright.
Bill's gonna hafta start tightening his belt, no doubt.
... missed by 0.009%. MSFT stock up by 3.48% on the day. Oh my! this is quite the story. I'm not quite sure that the lead story quite captures the essence of it though.
At this level of revenue, the amount they missed by is practically a rounding off error. BFD.
while $8E7 is a lot to us mortals, they were only off by less than 1%. What is the big deal?
The toad can't burp - and for some reason can't fart either, so it swells up and eventually explodes. --Anonymous Coward
So we're talking about an 80 million dollar miscalculation, out of 9.7 billion dollars (just over 0.8%). I know these are big numbers, but in the grand scheme of statistics, is this more than just a statistical anomoly? Or are the accounts not even supposed to be that little bit wrong ?
I would love to see MS taken down a notch or two, but I have a hard time believing this is more than just wishful thinking on the part of some parties. If we see more than a 1% reduction in successive quarters, then I'll agree we're onto something. But till that time, I'll just keep hoping
Darn, instead of a HolyOhMyFuckingGod!!-Truckload of cash they just made a simple OhMyFuckingGod!!-Truckload this quarter
Well sucks for them...I guess.
Artist will always make art.
Is it not mildly possible that, rather than Red-Blooded, uber-aggressive, and possibly even slightly overconfident Americans are not the source of this phenomena, and rather that this particular problem is a result of the inherently fickle nature of the industry these companies are in and the business world in general?
Not to mention, of course, the fact that 9 billion isn't really a piddly number.....
My little site.
Ooohhh... that is going to hurt my MSFT stock... sigh.
TW
Television is dead. Long live That Weasel Television
poor M$, they only made $9.67 Billion...now longhorn is going to slip another year. Good thing I got Tiger to hold me over...;)
...all would be OK. Sorry, not drinkin' that kool-aid Bill...
It must be idiots who are raising the stock price. Microsoft stock is a pyramid scam stock. They have made a one-time payout recently, but other than that, they have always relied on the demand for their stock to increase share price instead pay dividends like they should.
when I lose .08 billion a quarter like that
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
only 80 mil short. Bill must have at least that in between the cushions of his couch.
(9.8-9.62)/ 9.7 = 0.18/9.7 = .018556
Oh wow, Microsoft's sales got overestimated by 1.8%. This _MUST_ appear in Slashdot!</sarcasm>
Earnings != Revenue Earnings = Profit
So, why didn't Bill just pull $80 million out of his wallet and slip it into the till to make it balance? He must carry at least that much in spare change! (Anybody who doesn't understand what I'm saying has obviously never worked as a cashier. ;-)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I do so love to revel in the misery of microsoft mewahaha .
Instead of being Alot richer than last year , they are slightly less alot richer than expected... um Mewahahaha
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Please disregard. I re-read your post and it makes sense the way you had it. My bad.
Just another way Microsoft is copying Apple.
It took me a while to grasp how much money Microsoft is making. 9.6 Billion dollars. $9,620,000,000.00. I wonder how many nations have a GNP less than what microsoft does in sales??
When Windows first came out, 3.1 was the version for me, I loved it. Before that I was stuck with DOS on my 386. Then Windows 95, I could not believe how beautiful it was, and 98, WOW all the support for multimedia and MMX. But ever since Windows 2000, my love of their product has been dying.
I dunno who is to blame more. Part of me puts the blame 100% on hackers who write viruses. There are a good number of people who blame microsoft for making a bad product. I guess the question would be, if Microsoft was making door locks instead of software, and their locks were crap, who would be responsible for breaking into a house? If everyone knew MS locks = stick a plastic butter knife and unlock, would that make the hacker any less criminal for breaking and entering.
But that is not the point. Microsoft does not offer me the product I want.
And then, with the Slashdot story a few days ago of discovering Microsoft is not only lobbying for their buisness interests (staying a monopoly) but also on social issues I decided I am through buying their product.
Damn, I wish IBM's OS/2 stayed alive. Looking back on 1992, if only it would have caught on, maybe we would have had a choice when it comes to an OS. Instead, we have linux which is being sued. What real choice does a buisness have? Use linux and risk being sued? Pay an outrageous license for unix? We needed OS/2 as a second legitimate choice for the X86 platform.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Poor little guys!!!! They expected to get $9.8 billion and only got $9.6 billion. Awwwwww....
What a nasty slashdot "I hate MSFT" title/post. Stockholders were more than pleased as MSFT jumped 3.48% today on the news: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=msft . This article and how its worded is pretty twisted.
vafrous.com
Poor Microsoft, we should stop giving our money to the homeless people and start donating to Microsoft.
Taco?
That's still 9.62 billion more than what I made in that quarter. :(
Being a code monkey just doesn't pay what it used to.
$9.62 billion in sales...
So it's true what they say about microsoft, they DO make a doller out of every bug, crash and problem...
s it not mildly possible that, rather than Red-Blooded, uber-aggressive, and possibly even slightly overconfident Americans are not the source of this phenomena No.
In our organization, spending on software has declined almost to nothing. We no longer buy MS Office products because OpenOffice.org has eliminated the need to do so; all of our critical infrastructure runs on Linux and FreeBSD; and the desktops and workstations that run Windows continue to run the same versions of Windows that originally came on those workstations. Therefore, we use Windows 98, Me, and XP Personal, which came on several eMachines we bought for office use. And the funniest thing is that while the Linux and FreeBSD boxes continue to use the latest stable and release versions of the OS and software, the Windows boxes have not been upgraded, and there are no plans to do so. It would only be costly, and would offer us nothing in exchange. And I believe the same applies to countless organizations the world over. People will simply not continue to upgrade hardware and software forever.
That, my friends, is why Microsoft missed its quarterly revenue projection.
First, I think I am done buying M$, but having said that, I had an idea.
Why does not Microsoft not release their OS, but hold it for a few months, have a large beta group of testers. Fix the bugs. Have their own in house hackers try and break in, make more fixes. Load it with lots of different kinds of software and fix whatever problems they have.
Instead it feels like they release a product too early. Service pack 1 followed by 2 and 3 and 4.
My second complaint is these service packs are too large for some people with dial-up. If AOL can have 100's of CD's in every computer store, why can't Microsoft have their free service patch CD's in stores??
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Dimwit, the only reason MS was able to show a rise in profits is because they didn't pay as much in legal fees/settlements this year compared to last.
Just like the previous two quarters before this current one they slashed around a billion from their budget to make the numbers.
MS's revenue growth is slowing rapidly and is wildly out of whack with their current stock price. So load up dummy, Gates and the rest of the MS insiders are always looking for someone to hold their bag...
(you do know how much stock they have been dumping this past year don't you)
If Microsoft were a blue chip stock, this would be important. BUT ... Microsoft is a commodity stock - so missed earnings are pretty much irrelevant - because until recently Microsoft has not paid a dividend, and investment stocks usually react differently to bunged projections (cause it means you didn't get paid.) All Microsoft has to do is announce some vapourware and the stock price goes up. Such is the nature of commodities.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
I think you need to bone up on how to read financial statements and pick stocks.
For example, MSFT has a P/E of 24.5. Dor a good explanation of P/E, look here
By comparison, AAPL's is 40 and that other Slashdot darling, GOOG's, is at 88!
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
woah nelly, missed it by 80 million out of 9.7 billion, the sky is falling!
Seriously. I can't think of a really good thing that came out of Redmond for the last quarter. They were exposed as SCO supporters and badmouthed by IBM, they paid an enormous fine to the EU for anti-trust shenanigans, they came out as bizarrely anti-consumer ("Communists!") just as Firefox started making news (cover of Wired, NYT articles, &c). Nevermind the new bouts of worms and SP2 screwups that booched a bunch of companies. Roll all this up in a delay for their next-gen OS while Apple starts KILLING everyone with iTunes/iPods/mindshare penetration and you have a recipe for crappy sales. It's amazing it's not worse.
blarg.
Is it just me or does this mean absolutly nothing. Oh no they are short by $100 million. In MS terms that amount of money is the equivilant to someone who makes $80 000 a year but only got $79 990 this year for some strange reason. It means absolutly nothing. Hell its not even profit, its revenue so it means even less. Even though this wouldn't be the first time that slashdot has posted a front page article that means less then nothing but common. I know this has been like a first or something but its not really even important. I can't believe someone actualy had enough time to waste to actually write an article on something so pointless. Never in my life have I heard people complain that a company only made 9.6 billion in revenue.
Revenue is important but profit even more so. MSFT closed up today 3.48%
I disagree. Revenue is more important than profit because profit growth can be faked by cutting costs. e.g., if Microsoft outsourced all of their engineering and tech support to India, they would cut costs by 1/8 and their profit would skyrocket.
The end is comming!!!! Sell Sell Sell!!
This post approved by Shampoo.
I'm not usually this short, but who gives a shit?
Tell me when they are down period!
just. if only i had revenue of just $9.62B.
I only know enough to defend Sun (I won't stand up for Carly or Bill, sorry). Sun are #1 now in lots of sectors: UNIX (Solaris), Linux (SE Asia), HPC units shipped (Opteron), 64-bit (SPARC and Opteron), price (JDS, JES, Solaris/Linux), and others.
It'll be another year or so for Sun to really overcome their post-boom woes, but they are most definitely set up to do well over the next five years. For the naysayers, Sun is now a break-even company, so they aren't going anywhere ($7billion in the bank is a nice safety net).
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Google News:
Microsoft profits jump to US$ 2.56 billion this quarter (Earthtimes.org)
Microsoft Third-Quarter Profits Double (Yahoo News)
Microsoft: The Cash Machine (Motley Fool)
Slashdot:
Microsoft Misses Quarterly Revenue Projection
It's almost as if there's some bias or something...
Of course, according to this part of the problem is that you are all not buying new machines soon enough. You should all push forward your purchases to keep MS solvent (er, afloat, um, er...)
"Revenue is more important than profit because profit growth can be faked by cutting costs..."
Which is exactly what they have been doing, big time in the recent quarters. I haven't checked the current report to see how much more cutting they have done.
But the real reason they were able to show a profit increase is the insane legal costs they had last year compared to this year so far.
The market cares about revenue growth.
Off the top of my head it is something like this over the past few years:
%15->%13->%10->%8->%5
Wallstreet knows this and that is why MS's stock is going down into the teens over the next few months all while MS fanboys brag about 'increasing profits!!!"
Damn you liberal media!
Bill Gates: OK.
Minion: Revenues for this last quarter were 9.62 billion dollars, up 5%!
Bill Gates: Wow! That's amazing! What's the bad news?
Minion: Revenues were only 99.18% of projections.
Bill Gates: OFF WITH HIS HEAD!!!!
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
Until the the late 1990s the price of MicroSoft stock doubled every two years. Then it reached a peak of arounf $60 in 2000 and has fallen by half since then.
They only made $2.56 billion dollars in profit this quarter! A sure sign of a company on the decline! Linux desktops for everyone by 2006!!
I just find it comforting, with my deflating techie salary and rising energy prices, that at least somebody is having a good time.
To put it in perspective, VA Software, the company that owns Slashdot, is trading at 1.37/share ... down from their 52-week high of 3.17. Those that live in glass houses...
We all know that Sun was money well spent for Microsoft. If Sun execs had a clue, Microsoft would have paid more!
(I didn't write it, nor anything else on this story)
:-).
Knee-jerk mods!
The parent was a Flamebait, not a Troll!
Revenue (i.e., top line) growth is necessary for the long-term growth of the company. Earnings (i.e., bottom line) are more representative of the short term quarter-to-quarter health of the company.
When was the last time that Microsoft came up short on revenue for a quarter?
I think confused investors were thinking Microsoft released Tiger today. :-)
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't know why I even both to post this b/c I haven't posted in months, but can't this site be just tiny, itsy bit less slanted? I understand that MS is the antithesis of Open Source and that is what this site is about, but please spare me this type of story.
No one here would give a crap about MS corporate results, but b/c they miss by a couple percent it becomes a story. Can't there be a little bit more reason? Not everything in the Windows world is terrible and every aspect of Open Source is not perfect. Maybe that is why I like Ars Technica better, b/c they are much more reasonable...
on advise of my broker i also sold my MSFT shares with minimal losses last week. looks like i was still lucky.
If you dig a little deeper on this one, you will see that the cause of the revenue miss is due to currency flucations (the dollar moved the reverse of their hedges, strengthening).
What was important - and eye opening here - is that even with a miss on the revenue side, earnings were double what they were in the year ago quarter.
While you can't continually grow the bottom line (earnings), with a shrinking top line, it is positive and says something good when a company has robust earnings even in the face of declining revenues.
If you break down the revenues you find something interesting. Strong improvements in both Server products and XBox. Both of these are positives for Microsoft and are in line with their long-term directions.
Yours,
Jordan
I remember last year a lot of companies were making their earnings look better by refinancing their debt when the interest rates were low.
...of the VA Linux IPO.
I actually told my 20-something sister (who could hardly print on Windows at the time, much less know what the hell Linux was) about the stock price's surge. She asked "what do they make?" I actually didn't know what they made either, so she said something like "whatever..."
How things have changed since, both for me and VA.
I'm not surprised by the semi-disappointing prediction MS made. If anything, their doubled profit seems like more-than-great news for them (I'm no investor though).
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Forward PE and 5-year growth expectations:
Apple - 28.1, 22%
Google - 46.5, 32%
MSFT - 19.2, 11%
All three companies are balanced in terms of forward looking PE, but for Apple and Google you have to have more long-term faith, or believe that the growth will be higher than the analysts predict. The cash-on-hand is also important to understand...
All three are good investments, for different reasons.
Except with Apple having a market cap of only 30 billion, and Google's only being 60 billion (as opposed to Microsoft's 274 billion) there's a lot more room to grow.
Actually... I'm surprised Google's market cap is 60 billion considering the apparent size of their market (4 billion in revenues which I'm not sure is a whole year vs Microsoft's 40 billion), but hey, they are a company in vogue right now, and that always takes its tole.
Of course the Price/Revenue numbers tell a different story (These are based on somewhat stale stock-values, but you get the idea...):
MSFT: 7
AAPL: 2.67
GOOG: 16? (not sure I did this right, since they're less than a year old)
Of course, none of this is even taking into acount future expected growth or even past history of growth...
It must be a really slow day at Slashdot today. I can hear the crickets now.
Every percentage point of share that OO.org/StarOffice take costs Microsoft big time. So it goes both ways.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
So they missed their revenue proejctions by a fraction, yet they posted double the profits from last quarter by halving their R&D Budget from 3 billion to 1.5 billion. And slashdot doesn't pick up on that.
My question, since R&D covers almost all new development in the company,
Which products/programs where cut?
Have they dropped their "Inovate" slogan?
Just give me the amount of the difference between projections and actual sales figures any day.
Hey, it works for the *AA's. When they get into trouble, sue customers and purchase legislation to increase revenue.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Given the long-term tendency of the market to return to historic P/E ratios of around 15-20, 88 to me sounds like speculation, not investing.
Chip H.
IANAn Investment Advisor.
Brilliant. I guess Apple is cleaning Wall Street's ears but MSFT has their arm up the butt of the Wall Street Parasites right to the elbow.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
...and they made street plus server sales were up 11% over last year...
You've already fucking bought everything, and now you need to like...create new shit to buy. Happens all the time when I'm playing Monopoly with someone. What I usually do is loan someone some cash and just keep playing.
Maybe MSFT should buy Mexico, or something. I say buy Mexico, and then stuff them all through a CS degree. Since we have an open border policy with Mexico, Gates won't have to deal with the visa limitations the government imposes on MSFT. And he'll get all the destitude Mexicans who will work 14 hours a day without benefits. MSFT would need to construct a barracks and campus, complete with mess hall, and then just have a fucking horde of coders.
They'd likely solve the Artifical Intelligence barrier within a decade. We'd have algorithms designing algorithms. It would led into a whole new era of space construction using autonomous construction robots.
All thanks to MSFT.
Get crackin', Billy!
For the naysayers, Sun is now a break-even company, so they aren't going anywhere ($7billion in the bank is a nice safety net).
I don't know where you get your numbers. Here are some key financial stats for Sun (SUNW).
Notice how they have $3.14 billion in cash but $1.12 billion in debt. Also notice how their revenue is relentlessly declining. They're barely profitable by cutting costs (a.k.a. employees). They're getting squeezed out by Dell and IBM. Their hardware is slow, their workstation market is gone and their enterprise server share is declining. Their strategy is confusing to the market. On the one hand they want to sell Opteron boxes but they have really low margins - hard to make money there. On the other hand they want to sell into the high end enterprise, but have no processors or systems that are performance competitive with IBM. So, in order to sell Opeteron boxes they need to undercut their own expensive hardware.
What a dog. When price comes down further, expect a takeover bid by IBM or HP to pick up the remnants of Sun's customer base.
Sun are #1 now in lots of sectors: UNIX (Solaris), Linux (SE Asia), HPC units shipped (Opteron), 64-bit (SPARC and Opteron), price (JDS, JES, Solaris/Linux), and others
Hmm let's see
UNIX - getting their asses handed to them by Linux and Windows. Not exactly a "growth" market there.
Linux in SE Asia? - Are you on crack? This is a price sensitive market which goes to Dell or the various local whitebox makers.
HPC - You can't be serious? What a money-hole this market is. Look what it did for SGI and Cray. They're both on life support.
64-bit? - that's pretty nebulous - most processor families have 64 bit now. Opterons are too low margin for Sun to make money on and SPARC is a dog performance-wise. It also costs Sun ridiculous amounts of money to develop.
Price? - Oh man... you're smoking some of the good stuff.
I think I just talked myself into selling this dog short.
Oh, give me a break -- oil prices haven't been this high in ages, and what are the size of ShellOil's infrastructure investments compared to Microsoft's? You'd do better to look at ROA than unstandardized profits.
They'd perhaps even release something other than service packs.
I only know enough to defend Sun (I won't stand up for Carly or Bill, sorry). Sun are #1 now in lots of sectors: UNIX (Solaris), Linux (SE Asia), HPC units shipped (Opteron), 64-bit (SPARC and Opteron), price (JDS, JES, Solaris/Linux), and others.
As an Anonymous Coward in this thread pointed out, this is factually inaccurate in at least some respects, and irrelevant in others. For example, Sun is not #1 in Unix, at least as measured by their share of the worldwide server market. This report from February of this year, says they are number 3, behind IBM and HP. Also, according to the same report, HP, IBM, and Dell were numbers 1, 2, and 3 in Linux server revenue. Furthermore, Since IBM and HP both ship (exclusively) 64-bit Unix servers, Sun is, by definition, #3 in 64-bit.
Factual errors aside, Java still appears to be a long-lasting strong play for Sun. Financially, their current stock valuation appears reasonable, at something like 1/15th of what it was in 2000; a much more sustainable position, and one that reflects much less crack smoking by the investment community. I'd say they have some legs left in them.
The whole discussion will move until somebody says " Linux grabbed a % from MSFT". . Boring though!
I'm going to slit my wrists because that poor, poor William has to eat....~gasp~ regular filet mignon. This site is starting to be very lame....and by starting, I mean since Taco bought it. Back in the day this NEVER would be a story. Bullshit has become the norm around here. Any alternative sites? Like the OLD /.?
http://xs4.xs.to/pics/04481/p556222.gif
My company's software purchases have also shrunk to nill and I can't get people embrace more Open Source products. It doesn't have as much to do with alternatives but that there is simply no budget for it.
Simply put budgets on hardware and software are still tight and no one simply sees the reason on why to buy Win2k3 if our old servers on Win2K are still working just fine. We can't spend money on new machines. We can't spend money on new software. Most importantly we can't spend money on manpower to do the labor in upgrading.
Unless there is a catastrophic failure or free hardware, free software, and free manhours fall out of the sky I bet most small compnaies are like mine: they simply won't send any more money to Microsoft for the moment.
The GNAA. What happened to GNAA?!
if your paying 400$ for xp - might want to check some the price list becuse your getting ripped..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
I'm not sure what you do (or rather don't do) in order to keep WinXP w/SP2 from acting up on you 3 times a week, but I wish more of my users were like you.
It's about that high right now. They're getting paid the same amount in more dollars.
Not quite, Shell's profit was for the full last year. Microsoft's is for the last quarter. Multiply MSFTs by 4 and it gets close.
Let's post the ONE negative news about microsoft's financial being somewhat shody, but let's not discuss in the least the WinHec conference Bunch of fucken unix turds from slashdot, unix sucks, you won't win
but their still Microsoft's fault. Let me explain. Microsoft spends and enourmous amount of time and money deal with other manufacturers buggy hardware and code. If you've ever wondered what the hell Microsoft does with all those coders, that's it. They're writing workarounds for cheap and lazy venders. As it turns out, this works out just fine for Microsoft. The Dells and the Compaqs of the world love 'em because their software'll run on stuff that'd make a linux or bsd puke it's guts out.
You'll ask, how is Microsoft to blame? The answer's simple: they make it possible for venders to ship crap. Instead of forcing the vender to accually **gasp** fix things, they hack around it. That's all well and good for joe average, who doesn't really want or need a computer. But if you're like me, just knowing that your computer crashes every now and then bugs the hell out of you. I went through 3 cheap mobos before I got something stable (thank God for nvidia).
Now, you're tech savy (your lack of spyware proves it). You probably cherry picked your hardware (or at least bought a good quality Dell or IBM). When you upgrade, you don't buy the no name special. Plus, you don't install software for the hell of it or just for something to do with your $1000 dollar paper weight. So you never see the instablity and general crappiness of Windows. If you used your computer the way Microsoft intended, you'd see a lot more of those bugs.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
MSFT, Fannie-Mae, and many other public corporations are now (finally) under the onus of section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. They can no longer "smooth out" the squiggles on their profit line charts that reflect the true nature of business -- now the corporate officers must certify both the internal financial accounting process AND the quarterly results posted with the SEC.
Juggling the numbers to keep the shareholders numbly ignorant is now a criminal act that the corporate officers are responsible for. Accounting mechanisms for pushing/pulling income spikes and sags into another quarterly report are no longer tolerated.
Any company with large corporate and government customers is bound to have variations in their accounts receivables, some of which will break the rising tide of their profit line charts. There (usually) isn't anything really wrong with these corporations. It's just that the accounting equivalent of cosmetic botox injections are no longer allowed. If this drives shareholders into the mentality of a longer term financial view, like 1, 3, and 5 year outlooks, it would not be a bad thing for the economy as a whole. It will, however, suck rotten eggs for all the corporate officers whose bonuses and incentives are tied to their quarterly results. I will weep giant crocodile tears for them -- NOT!
MSFT has a P/E of 24.5... By comparison, AAPL's is 40 and that other Slashdot darling, GOOG's, is at 88!
That is because both of the latter are growing an impressive rate, wherease MSFT has stagnated, not even keeping pace with the general growth of the PC industry. Taking that into account, MSFT is still overvalued... way overvalued.
And of course, we know the reason why MSFT has stagnated. And the reason it will soon begin to contract.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
How about "explorer generated an exception" message I got yesterday ? Badaboum, menu, Taskbar, desktop everything was gone. Could not even call taskmanager to execute explorer again, had to reboot. Nothing, I repeat , nothing should bring explorer to generate exception and kill the machine. But still in some instance it does. I do not care if this is due to 3rd party stuff or not, fact is you can kill your machine due to OS problem, and this should not happen.
And even if this is only 1 example (can't make generalities out of example) this is one too much.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc?
Perhaps the poor performance of Sun and HP's stock has more to do with it having been run up in the internet bubble, and then having to compete with their own products on the aftermarket as the dot coms were liquidated.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The Register's take on this (quoted above) indicates that MSFT slashed R&D spending by half, from about $2.5B in last year's Q3 to about $1.5B this year. This can't possibly be right unless their R&D expenditures are not uniform across the year. The $1.4B number is a bit on the low side, you expect a license-based software company to spend between 15% and 18% of revenue on R&D. But $2.5B on $10B in revenue is way the hell out there, just can't be right. Anyone know what the Register's source was?
And BTW, it's striking that Microsoft (or anyone) can spend $5B a year on some of the best programmers in the world, and not get anything new and different to show for it. That's why they have so much cash in the bank: they have nothing to spend it on. That's also why Microsoft's owners (that would be us, the investing public) have been clamoring for the cash to be returned to them in the form of special dividends.
tell that to Red Hat investors. for several quarters they hit profit but missed revenue, the headlines screamed "Red Hat Misses Top Line!" and the stock tanked immediately after.
-- Moderation in all things, exceptions to all rules --
UNIX - getting their asses handed to them by Linux and Windows. Not exactly a "growth" market there.
Sun sells Linux, too, and will be releasing OpenSolaris this summer.
Linux in SE Asia? - Are you on crack?
Nope. Sun became the largest Linux supplier in the world after a deal with China. It appears they are distributing the software through a Chinese company, so it isn't Sun branded.
HPC - You can't be serious?
Sun is installing HPC clusters hundreds of nodes at a time all over the world. They probably sell more Opterons in a month than SGI sells Itaniums in a quarter--maybe even a year.
Opterons are too low margin for Sun to make money on and SPARC is a dog performance-wise.
Sun has basically the same fabless supply chain that Dell does, so their margins probaby aren't terrible. SPARC isn't quite the dog you speak of, esepcially when UltraSPARC IV+ and Niagara roll around.
Price? - Oh man... you're smoking some of the good stuff.
You are living in the past. I downloaded and burned Solaris 10 onto CD-Rs for no charge. Their hardware is priced competitively, too. Really, it is, even comparing apples to apples with Dell.
I think I just talked myself into selling this dog short.
Er, you do realize the stock is already down a lot this year...this must be why they say individual investors always buy and sell after the trend is already over.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
I figured $400 for XP _and_ Office was about right. One thing that is interesting, is that there are about 1000 different prices for XP and Office, so it's hard to even figure out what any given business would pay (that's why I gave a range). Microsoft's pricing is like talking to a used car salesman.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Sun is #1 in UNIX. Your IDC report is saying "worldwide server systems market". Huge difference.
Also, I should have clarified that Sun is #1 in Linux units shipped and not revenue.
For 64-bit servers, Itanium is MIA, and POWER's market share is smaller than SPARC. Also, HP and IBM do not exclusively ship 64-bit (e.g., Xeon).
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
"But everything afterward has been bad."
Has been an excellent OS, so I don't know what you are talking about.
I'm no business guy, but Microsoft predicted revenues of $9.7bn and got $9.62bn. They were off by $80M, which--when your company counts its revenue in billions--is practically a rounding error. What's the big freakin' deal?
They ONLY make $9.62 Billion and ONLY raise profits by 5%.
Wonder how that happened when allegedly Linux is taking market share from Windows and OpenOffice making inroads into MS Office markets.
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
Was there any spin on the article? No, just a straight report on their earnings. And VA isn't an unpopular, convicted monopolist who's growth might be stalling. So take your "glass houses" comment and blow it out your ass.
Not to be a troll, but can someone tell me specifically what bugs everyone is always talking about? Currently running Windows XP sp2 at home and work, my computers have not crashed once this year...not frozen, not blue screened, nothing.
So you are saying Microsoft doesn't need to do bug fixing, because XP is okay to use after FOUR YEARS of bug fixing? Did you think about this for two seconds before you posted? It's taken Microsoft two service packs and hundereds of updates to get Windows XP to be moderatly secure, and you don't think that's a sign that they need to do more testing?
You obviously need a reminder. Reformat your box with a fresh install of XP, and don't patch it. Leave it on the Internet without a firewall for a week, and then see if you still think that a testing period would be a waste of time.
I will put it this way: Growth is easier if you haven't already gotten really really big. I don't think MS has stagnated as much as they've hit the wall in terms of their share of their major markets (desktops, office suites etc). Now it's time for them to branch out (become PROFITABLE in video game consoles, new applications of PC tech like smart phones and tablets) and really become solid in the server market (they're not really weak there but could use some more market share). Though I don't really trust those Apache vs IIS stats that get thrown around on Slashdot...
Sun is #1 in UNIX. Your IDC report is saying "worldwide server systems market". Huge difference.
Also, I should have clarified that Sun is #1 in Linux units shipped and not revenue.
For 64-bit servers, Itanium is MIA, and POWER's market share is smaller than SPARC. Also, HP and IBM do not exclusively ship 64-bit (e.g., Xeon).
Look, I understand from your handle, "SunFan" that you are fond of Sun. I appreciate that; there are good reasons to admire some of Sun's products. However, you would do well to actually check some of your facts before making statements about the industry. It's okay to be a fan, but you don't do Sun any favors if you are unaware of the facts.
So, take this not as a personal attack, but an attempt to provide a solid foundation for your interest in Sun:
First of all, this IDC report is just a periodic report on many aspects of the IT industry.
Second, both my post and the article to which I referred state that Sun is number 3 in the worldwide Unix server market. Perhaps the phrasing in my post was less than perfectly clear, but the IDC report is unambiguous.
Third, IBM and HP both ship Unix exlcusively on 64-bit platforms. Your assertion otherwise is false. IBM ships AIX (their Unix) exclusively on 64-bit POWER-based systems. You can verify this yourself on ibm.com. Similarly, HP ships their Unix products exclusively on 64-bit, non-x86 hardware, including Itanium 2, as you can find on their web site. Neither IBM nor HP has a Unix product that runs on 32-bit x86 hardware, as you suggest. In fact, this may be an advantage Sun has in this market, as Sun is the only significant Unix vendor that has a Unix product that runs on x86 (e.g. Xeon, Opteron, etc) hardware.
Finally, "Linux units shipped" is a bogus measurement (that's why IDC doesn't use it); most systems (server and otherwise) upon which Linux is installed, or part of the sales deal, are not shipped with Linux preinstalled. It is a fact that Sun ships a lot of Linux on Opteron-based hardware (not on Sparc), but if, as you say, they are shipping the largest number of Linux units but they are not even in the top 3 for Linux revenue, this is an indication that they may indeed have a problem; this is not the kind of fact that impresses people that Sun has a viable business model.
http://www.vdare.com/blog/040805_blog.htm#b1
Citibank has been among the 50 most popular searches for H-1b visa use for a while. Recently, it appears the outsourcing facilitated by their intensive use of H-1b and L-1 visas is having consequences. [Indian Call Center Employees Hack US Bank Accounts, Slashdot.com]
The question remains: are immigration intensive companies a good investment? Every indication is no. The SEC should start requiring all publicly traded companies to report their use of work-based visas (L-1/H-1B) immediately. Then we'd have the clear data to prove just how bad a financial decision these guest worker visas are.
Google News:
Microsoft profits jump to US$ 2.56 billion this quarter (Earthtimes.org) - Yawn.
Microsoft Third-Quarter Profits Double (Yahoo News) - Double over what? A seasonal low?
Microsoft: The Cash Machine (Motley Fool) - A fool and his money are soon parted. See here to trade some of your money for something you can get free as in speech and beer.
Slashdot:
Microsoft Misses Quarterly Revenue Projection
Me: Holy shit, something that's never happened before! How did that happen? What does it mean? Sounds like NEWs to me, I suppose that's why Business Week wrote the article that way. Reading the article is a good idea. Wow, it's because M$ did not sell as many versions of it's OS as it though. Could it be that people are tired of buying second rate software?
Astrotrufers will never know. They are too busy with the following dumb questions:
How can we act like nothing has changed?
What can we say to insult our competition?
How fast can we fill up and self mod Slashdot's coverage.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Obviously it is because of linux!
But he may be on to something. Let's read the article:
[Microsoft] cites a greater-than-expected decline in commercial and retail licensing for its business selling Windows operating systems for PCs, and a drop in currency exchange rates from when the company projected its earlier numbers.
Fewer people are buying Winblows, I wonder why?
Finally the giant is beginning to fall!!! hmmm, only 9.6 billion left to go.
That money won't last four quarters at Microsoft's current spending rate if their revenues go down the tubes. Remember DEC? Wang? They failed quickly and they actually had something worth buying.
The Microsoft game is closer to over than you think:
The feedback on their fall is all positive. The results will be that way too.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Let Gates and McNealy put their money where their mouths are. If they really want foreign workers, let them pay for them through an auction of H1B visas.
But keep the cap.
An auction would help make H1B workers unattractive as cheap labor. But if you just gotta have them Indian and Israeli programmers, then it'd be worth your while to cough up a good chunk of dough, possibly more than their annual salary.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA