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Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected
An anonymous reader writes "Despite reports, it seems Microsoft is not only alive, but has been thriving these last few months. Following Apple's solid earnings yesterday comes above-expectation reporting from Microsoft. Profits jumped 65% from the previous year, and sales of its Windows operating system were strong: 'Microsoft said it deferred $1.2 billion in Windows Vista revenue to the third quarter, to account for upgrade coupons given to PC buyers during the holiday season before the consumer launch of the new operating system. Excluding this figure, client revenue totaled $4.1 billion, 30 percent higher than last year.' Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said Vista beat internal forecasts by $300 million to $400 million, and Office 2007 sales were $200 million better than expected."
it figures that sales are higher than last year, XP is not new and is installed mostly everywhere,,,Vista aint, so if we compare growth and sales Vista will surpass sales for Xp since most of every windows users already own a copy of XP and dont need to purchase it every 6 month
So are they counting upgrade coupons as full sales? What if they're never used?
Also, not once do they mention the number of units sold to consumers. Are they including units shipped to stores in their figures, like book publishers do? "We sold 10 million units! 9 million were returned unsold by the stores, however..."
Didn't they lower their expectations in January? And now they're saying it's higher than expectations? How does that work?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Create a crap OS.
Oh come on. If it really were crap, then you wouldn't have 99% of major commercial software vendors targeting it as a primary platform.
All of this is true, which is why I'm no expert -- as I said. It just seems like a 30% increase after releasing a new, higher priced, product compared to a product that is six years old and already saturating the market isn't too impressive. Yes, 30% for Microsoft is a lot of money, but after the hype they applied to Vista... I'm still not impressed.
If I only had a moose...
How many times have we seen companies play games with the books to beat Wall Street expectations only to have to restate those earnings later? In short, who the hell knows what state MS is actually in?
Fas as whether MS is "dying," that's a bit of a tautology. When you're the dominant operating system of planet Earth, where do you go next? Mars needs Windows? There is only one direction for them to go and it ain't up.
You know, IBM beat back the government's anti-trust suit against them only to, in time, resort to essentially breaking themselves up in a desperate effort to survive. Their fall (and turn around) took a number of years to play out. MSFT thinks they "won" the anti-trust fight. Not only did they not win, they cut their own throats. If they were smart, they'd break the company up on their own. I doubt their corporate culture will allow for such thinking.
We'll see.
All I know is all those non-techie folk I told--all those years ago, all those times, "You should buy a Mac, they're easier," have started coming back to ask which Mac should they get.
Took 'em a while but they finally got the point...
Well, it's probably better to be in an emerging and growing technology, than a large but shrinking technology. Wages in the former will be on the way up, and in the latter will be in decline due to a growing supply/demand imbalance.
He IS NOT a geek. But he does all his work and some photo stuff on his notebook and desktop. He HATED Vista. No driver for the printer, some software he uses won't work, had trouble with the camera etc... He was pretty pi$$ed when I talked to him... I told him maybe we could get Dell to give us XP and send Vista back and that would fix everything... (he has XP on the laptop and its OK :)
I tried to get Dell to trade it in, or give me credit, a discount on XP or something like that... but they blew me off and told me that I would have to send back the machine so I could then order the "open source" version. I talked to my dad and he just went nuts for a while and them said he would take care of it... So I figured that he was going to send back the machine and let me build one for him...
NOPE - he gave M$ more money and they also have another "Vista" user on the books... He went out and just bought a full version of XP. I didn't say anything other than OK I'll be up and get it loaded for ya... You have to know my dad... I already found all the drivers that he needs for XP. So everything should be fine.....
BUT IT JUST SUCKS!!!! I freakin HATE MS for this kind of stuff. Did you know that you CAN NOT downgrade Vista Home(any version) to XP - BUT the business versions are ALL downgradeable. You wouldn't want FORD to not buy windows because they have to use the CUTTING EDGE CRAP that we will be QCing for them for the next six months. BUT its OK to screw joe user at home!!! I dont know why they would even make some one PAY for an OS at home.... I guess that 70trillion dollars a year from the businesses just ins't enough.
I would love to load BSD/ubuntu/etc... on my pops machine - I really would. But he's 60ish and NOT a geek and its just not there yet.
Yea M$ sales are up and they should have a column on the sheet that is headed "Customers outright screw and we still made money."
Geesh, I should learn how to write code so I can contrib...
Duke
FreeBSD: Nothing runs like a daemon with a pitch fork.
Windows =computer.
There will always be a lot of sissies, that use "computers". And computers are those with this cute start button in the left corner, right. The reality is, that those are the majority of the people. This is a fact.
So there was this previous Wins family and there will be the Vista generation. Very few will actually pay for it (predominantly those who must), but most of earthlings will use it. What can we do about the stupidity of earthlings ? Do we have to do something ? Maybe we should.
I don't spend hours either, I play the few linux compat games (ET, Doom3, quake4, ut), and for the rest I use my xbox, DS, or GBA. The consoles I have plug directly into my tv tuner card, which works in Linux, allowing me to play console games without buying a TV [yeah you can do that in windows too, just saying it works fine in Linux].
You can *choose* not to continue to buy games from publishers who don't respect your right to choose an OS (and frankly, I think development in Linux or BSD would be cheaper as the OSes favour software development a lot more than Windows anyways).
And in the grand scheme of things it's just a video game. Most of the time I'd rather hang out with my friends, jam on my piano, or just chillax then sit there holding a controller or at the keyboard hunting fps baddies. I think I can do without the windows games if it means I don't have to run/buy/install/deal/think about/etc windows.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I choose to use Windows because, as a developer, its the most widely installed OS, and God knows, I love the money that comes rolling in from the users of the most widely installed OS. I develop useful applications and web services that don't require my customers to build and learn a new operating system. I let my customers make the choice. (Psst, I also develop on Linux and provide solutions to those customers that make that choice.)
In other words, as someone who likes money and lifestyle, who likes eating, who likes playing, who I choose to go where the money is. Idealism is fine. Personal crusades of windmill tilting are fine, Don. But, in the end, they don't put food on the table, they don't pay for the Hummer, they don't allow you to jet to Fiji for a cool vacation.
I remain flexible, screw idealism and useless and childish OS prejudice.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
If your only goal in life is to make money. All the power to you.
:-)
:-)
To me working is a split of "what does this day have to offer" and "it pays the bills." Don't get me wrong, I love my job and my station in life, but if I had the choice of being well off (e.g. financially set) or working I'd rather be well off. Gives me more time for my actual interesting pursuits like music, and a high score in Wii tennis
I also write software, albeit usually in the form of software libraries and not end user applications. Most of our customers are embedded folk who really don't care about Windows in the slightest. I guess when you're in a rational market your customers aren't demanding the lowest of you. E.g. if you don't sell drugs, your customers won't ask you for drugs.
I'm not trying to pretend that I'm somehow morally superior because I use OSS over closed source msft shite. Just that I'm aware that I have a choice and I choose not to use, develop, or support anything to do with windows. I'm not an enabler
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
What I find funny is when people laugh and say it's indicative of a failure when Dell et al. start selling systems with XP again instead of Vista. Um, hello? So far as I know, XP is from Microsoft too. The failure I'm looking for is when Dell and such start selling systems with something not made by MS. And I'm not talking about the times they've charged the same (or sometimes, much more) for putting some random distro of Linux on the boxes. I'm talking about Dell putting their own little touches on RH-workstation, or Ubuntu, just like they do with Windows. Actually *selling* the systems, not just offering them on an obscure corner of the web page. Things like mentioning the extra virus safety inherent in the alternatives, for example. Or better, when someone like Sony stops using directX, and puts out all their games in OpenGL. Then, sells a single install DVD that will install on either windows or Linux, because fark, there's not *that* much extra they'd have to do to develop in parallel. Yeah, I know, Loki. Guess what, Loki didn't have the luxury of doing it side-by-side, they simply ported the games others made. I also think Loki would do much better in 2007 and beyond than they did prior to closing in 2001/2002. But yeah, back on point...XP still puts money in MS's coffers, and realistically, for most people the things that are slowing down tech purchases right now have little to do with MS. 1) stupidly power-hungry components, esp video cards and processors 2) blue-ray vrs HD-dvd war 3) availability of directX 10 cards (which should have happened by now, even if MS was slow giving out specs)
Vista OEM price is not that much higher than Windows XP right now (in fact they are both $149 for business version). If you know some reseller you can verify my claim on this.
When Windows XP rolled out, The OEM price for WinXP Professional is less than Windows 2000. Based on previous experience its only a matter of time before MS eventually position Vista Business version with better pricing than Windows XP to move user into the new OS. But they will need to solve the software incompatibility and driver issues first.
A lot of "us" windows developers have been programming on it since before it became the "EVIL SATAN" often portrayed here on slashdot and make an excellent living at it.
Some of "us" old-timers developed software for CP/M systems...or Apple II or Commodores...and made a good living on it too. Those platforms were all market leaders in the PC realm at one point in time and they all faded away in obsolescence. CP/M was not a Microsoft product and was what powered the vast majority of "open architecture" PCs for most of the first decade of the markets existence. It doesn't matter how big a leader one platform is over another, it does NOT make sense to jump on one wagon and dismiss the others. There is nothing wrong with taking advantage of a leading market position, however far too many people doing that neglect the alternatives. People need to broaden their horizons.
Can I program on Linux? Sure, I do so all the time at home, programming embedded devices and robots and I've released open source software under GPL license. Maybe one day I'll be able to work on them full time.
Glad to hear that--especially that you make contributions towards the vast library of Free software out there. That way, you aren't limiting yourself should other opportunities arise in your career. There are already many people making a good living with Free software, and perhaps if (when?) you get bored and/or frustrated with Windows you can seek employment with a company such as IBM or Red Hat or Novell, where thousands of people make a living at computers without windows.
But right now I work on the "Ford" of the industry. It's not unwise and it's not unethical. It's just reality. We deal with the reality of the industry, and that reality is that Windows dominates the market so it makes economic sense to use it.
Sometimes it IS unwise, or even unethical, to stick with "the Ford of the industry". Ford USED to be King, and along came this upstart Japanese company Toyota, at a time when "made in Japan" still meant "cheap junk" to many in America. Fast forward to last year, when Ford LOST over a MILLION dollars PER HOUR and Toyota passed them in market share. This would've never happened if people stuck with Ford because it was the market leader. However, people noticed some superior attributes of Toyota products (fuel efficiency, price, reliability) and Toyota improved quickly in area where it was weak (acceleration, corrosion resistance, etc). In the meantime, Ford rode on its established presence and conentrated on sweeoing its problems under the rug instead of actually fixing them (Hello there Pinto!).
So, in the late 1970s, would've you considered it unwise to buy one of those new Honda Civics instead of a Ford Pinto because Honda was new to the US car market and had a much smaller market share? I'd consider that foolish. I'd rather have bought the Civic and saved on fuel, plus the Civic was somewhat less flammable. Market share be damned...the Civic made more economic sense than a Pinto by far.
Microsoft really IS like Ford and Windows sure drives like a Pinto, and I've seen it crash...and burn...far too often not to look at alternatives. Apple could enjoy a Toyota like renaissance...or perhaps Red Hat or Novell or some company yet to emerge.
To hell with Microsoft "Ford Pinto" Windows. I'm looking at "Toyota Corolla" Fedora, "Honda Civic" SuSE and "Subaru" Ubuntu to see what they have to offer.
The problem is..
.net job. A large part of this decision seems to have been mainly just to screw with java (which is a HUGE threat to them).
Our major application is broken because New Windows is not compatible with Old Windows.
It is going to take us several months to fix this. Microsoft is aware of the issue (CSS differences) and has no plan ot address it.
That means we have to have ONE block of code that works in all browsers and another block of code that works in IE7.
Likewise, a couple years ago.. Microsoft completely divorced backwards compatibility in Visual Basic leaving many developers stranded unless they could swing a
As the hardware gets more powerful, java applications (and other generic languages) are going to be a better choice to develop in. And when you can get the same software to run on any hardware (and we are even seeing video games lately) you start to lose the need to be in Windows.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Personally I only program windows when I have to because it is horrible to work with, especially system programming. But having working mostly with Unix, I find the transition to programming for Windows (everything from system to app programming) to be much, much easier than someone trying to transition the other way. I purposely employ good programming practices that keep my code as portable as possible. My full-blown GUI apps run quite easily on any *nix, Mac, or Windows operating system. The effort expended to achieve this portability is exceedingly minimal. To me, more important than using Linux, is to not tie myself down to *any* OS, whether it be Linux or Windows. Each OS has its time in the sun. I'd rather be as nimble as possible than to completely tie myself down to even the most dominant, lucrative OS. Plus I can explore other markets easily, as my skills are much more transferable than some of my friends who are Java programmers only, or .NET programmers. I can fairly easily work in Java, C#, C, C++, php, or python (and whatever other language is needed), whereas as they find it more difficult to do that (or at least uncomfortable). Perhaps it is because I'm an old-school, pre-Java programmer. They likely will make all the money they need, and will have no problems staying employed for life. I also have the same, but with a greater breadth of experiences that I enjoy very much.
When I'm hiring people, I look specifically for non-windows experience. The main reason is that I know that a Unix guru will work just fine with Windows or whatever OS I throw at them. But even more important, it shows they enjoy computers and actually make a hobby of it, something that's not really possible to do with Windows. They are likely the people that are tinkerers and people who try to really understand the under-the-hood things, and understand that computers are tools. Qualities that make good employees.
As for paying for trips to fiji, I know plenty of people who leverage standards and open-source technology to make a lot of money, particularly in web development. Note that this is a field that makes Vista irrelevant. It makes any OS irrelevant.
So... what MS shareholders want most is for MS to go out of business?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!