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Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the so-it-begins dept.

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."

69 of 394 comments (clear)

  1. Well it figures by Chris+whatever · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

    1. Re:Well it figures by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Seriously. Between the general lack of logic present in the submission and the fact that it was submitted by an AC, methinks it *could* be astroturf.

      These are facts. Reported to the SEC. You can't call raw, concrete sales revenue/profit "astrotuf," especially when they provide the breakdown of numbers with coupons excluded. There isn't even any gray area left.

      Just because you don't like Microsoft doesn't mean everything positive about them is astroturf. I'm hoping it's because you didn't bother reading the article, but you come across like a bitter twelve year old.

    2. Re:Well it figures by Mr.+Underbridge · · Score: 4, Insightful

      These are facts. Reported to the SEC. You can't call raw, concrete sales revenue/profit "astrotuf," especially when they provide the breakdown of numbers with coupons excluded. There isn't even any gray area left.

      Facts are nothing without interpretation. The submission implies that a relatively modest increase in sales on the heels of the first new OS release in 6 years means that everything is fantastic over at Redmond. This indicates either presence of spin or lack of a brain. You pick. Coupled with the fact that the submitter is anonymous, I lean toward a PR campaign, which MS has been known to do in that fashion.

      Just because you don't like Microsoft doesn't mean everything positive about them is astroturf. I'm hoping it's because you didn't bother reading the article,

      I don't particularly care about MS, but lack of logic skills in reporting bugs me. The headline of the submission "Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected" is simply not supported by the only externally available evidence ("Profits jumped 65% from the previous year") because Vista DIDN'T EXIST last year.

      You want to do a real study, find out how Vista did vs. XP in terms of quarter-over-quarter earnings jump the first quarter after release. Let's not rely on intentionally-low earnings forecasts from MS that have room for built-in good news. Hell, maybe it would show that Vista is doing better. I really don't care. But let's have some intelligent, unbiased reporting and submissions that don't come from anonymous shills.

      Sheesh. Basic logic skills are sorely lacking around here.

    3. Re:Well it figures by X · · Score: 2, Insightful

      His problem though is that those were internal forecasts, and since they weren't public they could always have been adjusted after the fact to make it sound better than it was.

      --
      sigs are a waste of space
    4. Re:Well it figures by encoderer · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What's your point? Do you understand what you're talking about? Most companies only begin to pay dividends to their shareholders when they're no longer able to grow the business and therefore their capital has more utility value to investors in the form of dividends than it does in the form of re-investments designed to push stock prices up.

      Most investors would GLADLY sacrifice the paltry amount they make in dividends in exchange for the company growing their business (and thusly their stock price).

  2. No! by MyLongNickName · · Score: 4, Funny

    No. It can't be. I've been hearing on Slashdot how Microsoft is a dying company for the past five years. And I believe EVERYTHING I read on Slashdot!

    --
    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
    1. Re:No! by bigman2003 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not only is Microsoft dying..

      But every other OS that manages to bump up its marketshare more than 3% is the wave of the future, and the only bandwagon you should be on!

      A lot of people seem to think it is harmful to your career to ally oneself with the technology that is still the overwhelming leader in the market. Personally I don't understand that.

      It's kind of like being the the transportation industry, and choosing to specialize in bicycles...economically, it is not a very good plan.

      --
      No reason to lie.
    2. Re:No! by marcello_dl · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A lot of people seem to think it is harmful to your career to ally oneself with the technology that is still the overwhelming leader in the market. Personally I don't understand that.

      If you don't understand that I have a fairly comprehensive explanation for you to download.

      In quarkXpress 7 format only.

      --
      ---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
    3. Re:No! by mattgreen · · Score: 4, Funny

      Crap, you beat me to it.

      Luckily, THIS year is the year of Linux on the desktop, however!

    4. Re:No! by tomstdenis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I choose not to use Windows because as a developer it's not a useful OS in the slightest. That it costs more than Gentoo, is less standard compliant, and the target of more bugs [regardless of the quality of OSS that is] doesn't help either.

      A lot of people use Windows not by choice but by the virtue of it's what came with their computer and they don't care to investigate alternatives [even if it's to their benefit].

      It's the same reason people eat at fast food joints. It's convenient, around every corner, and seeking out alternatives means they have to do some thinking on their own, which is really scary.

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
    5. Re:No! by daeg · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm sure all of the engineers, factory workers, and shops that center around bicycles would like to disagree with you. I'm sure a lot of the European and Asian countries would also like to disagree with you, given that many of them have higher rates of bikes per capita than vehicles (not so in North America, except for a few cities perhaps). Bad analogy.

      And a lot of people, at least here at Slashdot, make a good living administering Linux, so being knowledgeable about multiple operating systems is a good thing. If you can make $A administering Windows, and $B administering Red Hat, and $C administering FreeBSD, it stands to reason that if you know Windows, Red Hat, and FreeBSD, your pay, $D, should be $D > ($A, $B, $C). If Red Hat fell out of favor, you still have two other systems you can manage.

      Besides, a 100% identical network isn't good practice, no matter what company you work in. You don't want every server to be impacted by the same security flaw on the same day. Competition to Microsoft is good for everyone, including Microsoft administrators.

    6. Re:No! by klubar · · Score: 4, Funny

      I believe that correct answer is, "next year is going to be the year of linux". Thus you can always be right.

    7. Re:No! by bigman2003 · · Score: 2

      Good point...

      QuarkXpress was competing with the overwhelming market leader in the design/layout space- Adobe.

      Quark is all but forgotten, while Adobe used its position as a market leader to continue to grow and expand. The people on the Quark bandwagon whithered, while those on the Adobe bandwagon continued to thrive.

      --
      No reason to lie.
    8. Re:No! by Yvan256 · · Score: 5, Funny

      I've been hearing on Slashdot how Microsoft is a dying company for the past five years.
      They're just trying to copy Apple again, which has been dying for over 20 years now.

    9. Re:No! by countach · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    10. Re:No! by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A lot of people seem to think it is harmful to your career to ally oneself with the technology that is still the overwhelming leader in the market. Personally I don't understand that.

      It's kind of like being the the transportation industry, and choosing to specialize in bicycles...economically, it is not a very good plan.


      As someone who makes a living progamming on different Operating Systems Every Day. There is a definate advantage having skills in the non-market leader products.
      First You can charge more. .NET programmers are a dime a dozen. But for a good FORTRAN Developer that will cost more, and can't easilly be replaced. Or someone who can make heads or tails out of an RPG Data File. For many of these people with old systems moving to windows is much to expensive moving to Linux is much better, easier to port old software, current administration skill, etc... So learning different languages and systems is a real bonus. Even if it not and never will be #1. Also as technolgy advances a lot of things that were old become new again. People with knowlege in a wider skill set are much more adaptable to different systems. How many advanced windows users get fustrated just because a Linux distribution decides to put the Minamize, Maxamize, and close button on the other side of the windows. How many Mac Users or Linux Users get confused when working on different systems. The more you know the better you are at each one. Also it helps with administration even if you don't know the systems as well as an expert with you knowelge with other OS's it allows you to ask the right questions. Say I know the SEARCH command on VMS and I do a google search for VMS to Unix commands and I find that grep does the job of SEARCH. Or if I need to do some scripting on windows what I learned from the numerious SH scripts I can put into .BAT files. It really helps. Putting all your eggs into one OS even if it is the most popular one will lead you become obsolute rather fast.
      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    11. Re:No! by Jearil · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Except back in the mid-late 90's and even into the early 00's, Quark was the standard for design and layout. Adobe had PageMaker, but real professionals used Quark.

      So if you placed all of your important work into the defacto standard of the time, Quark, you'd be a bit behind right now as the industry has mostly moved on. I think what the GP was trying to make a point with, is no companies dominance lasts forever, so try not to tie yourself to heavily to one.

    12. Re:No! by tomstdenis · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.
    13. Re:No! by WED+Fan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I choose not to use Windows because as a developer it's not a useful OS in the slightest.

      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.
    14. Re:No! by e2d2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you don't understand that I have a fairly comprehensive explanation for you to download.

      Yes but there is a difference between a technology causing harm to the industry and causing harm to you personally. For instance if I'm a developer working on Windows I won't be causing myself any harm. In fact I'd probably be helping myself.

      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. 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. 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.

      I don't align my personal feelings with a technology, it's not wise.

    15. Re:No! by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And that's a nice rational decision.
      We make those kind of decisions all the time and there is nothing wrong with it.
      There are probably a lot of windows users who really appreciate that you are a good windows developer.

      As a developer, I'm typing on a windows machine right now tho I create java programs. I'm more of a project leader these days tho (havn't coded in months) and I like it. A fixed body of knowledge to learn and master (like the older programming languages) instead of the constant treadmill of learning things that are obsolete 12 months later.

      As an end user, I've personally moved everything but everquest to applications that will run on any platform because I see that windows wants to move me to a tightly controlled environment that i pay a monthly subscription fee to use.

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    16. Re:No! by WebCowboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

    17. Re:No! by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Speaking from experience I can tell you that this is not what happened. You can use the output of various Adobe programs inside of Quark, that's not the issue. The issue is that Quark went from being light, fast, and reliable to being a gigantic bloated pile of shit in which you couldn't fucking find what you were looking for and if you did the program would probably crash. This has left things open for Adobe to make InDesign into a big turd and STILL control the market, which is why I'm so pissed off at it these days (CS2, so far.)

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    18. Re:No! by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The problem is..

      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 .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).

      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.
    19. Re:No! by e2d2 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That was a great argument and I see exactly what you are saying. I do see innovation being introduced in Linux and that makes me happy. I do see Linux surpassing Windows one day, but on that day Microsoft will proclaim Linux the greatest thing ever and reverse course. They are pretty slick. BUT eventually all things come to an end, especially undeserved positions of power. It's one thing to dominate a market on merit, it's another to dominate a market using a monopoly and strong arm tactics. Those tactics are coming back to bite MS in the ass these days.

      I can see the writing on the wall, Windows is not the juggernaut it used to be. I just wanted to explain why windows developers do what we do. Many on here see us as either weak developers using VB to funk up a pathetic office app or simply industry shills. But we have motivations like every other man and woman.

    20. Re:No! by caseih · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    21. Re:No! by Divebus · · Score: 5, Informative

      As for Xerox, well APPLE stole from them, not MS.

      Here we go... Xerox invented then ignored the personal computer as we know it and Xerox management didn't "get" that, much like HP didn't "get" the Woz. Xerox was a COPIER company who was playing in computers only because IBM started making COPIERS. Management wasn't serious about computers and was happy enough to sell off the technology.

      Apple actually licensed the technology from Xerox and hired some of the design team. I worked for Xerox at the Training Center when all that was going down. Yes, I worked on the Xerox Alto workstations, the Xerox 820-II CP/M machines and even touched a Star 8010 Workstation just before they dumped it all.

      --

      Most of the stuff on /. won't survive first contact with facts.
    22. Re:No! by TrancePhreak · · Score: 2, Informative
      Allegro is not a good solution. It has lots of issues and bugs of its own, and the only support you get is "here's the source!".

      Second, I don't see how writing for DX can be easier than GL. DX like all MSFT software has a long list of complicated functions that are well documented in the MSDN but only useful for that platform. Learning GL means you can write apps for many more OSes.
      It's "in MSDN", no need for "the". Learning GL means you can use GL on the platform you learned it on. They all have various incompatabilities and differences in how they operate. There are some libraries that try to take care of this all, but usually they fall short of the quality one would expect from a game company if given the time to do a proper release. Also, you need to consider that it's Direct3D, as GL provides no real competition to DX as a whole.

      It's lazyness and indifference that causes people to just use DX and other msft proprietary shit apis.
      And here's the strong-man showing your true goal to push inaccurate FUD. DX is much more an enterprise class API with the debugging and profiling support than GL. MS has teams of people you can call and get support from. GL has the internet. Expecially if we consider managed DirectX, then programming in GL you will often end up trying to add things in that DX already has such as reference counted buffers and texture management.
      --

      -]Phreak Out[-
  3. Only 30%? by EchoD · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Revenue is only 30% higher after releasing a new product, and this is higher than expected? I'm no expert, but for a new "revolutionary" product that the whole Windows world is expected to adopt... not so good.

    --
    If I only had a moose...
    1. Re:Only 30%? by maxume · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's a matter of perspective; that 30% revenue growth is equivalent to all of Google's revenue for the quarter. It's hard to push an elephant.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    2. Re:Only 30%? by Rolgar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What's the OEM price difference between Vista and XP. If Vista OEM is 50% or more expensive that XP when buying a new computer, then, sure they're getting more money, but they aren't moving any more copies than they were before. This was the whole point of the new OS, to milk more money from the same number of customers.

    3. Re:Only 30%? by EchoD · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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...
    4. Re:Only 30%? by denobug · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Vista OEM is 50% or more expensive that XP
      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.
  4. Sketchy figures... by Theaetetus · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

    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..."

    1. Re:Sketchy figures... by Simon · · Score: 4, Informative

      I agree. It sounds very fishy. It looks like they are counting the combination of XP+coupon as being a Vista sale. I wonder if they also counted it as being XP revenue at the same time? I have a hard time imagining that even 50% of the XP+coupon systems sold before January 30 have been upgraded. Most people are capable or interested in upgrading an OS, and a big chunk of those who are, probably (hopefully!) have common sense to stay with XP.

      --
      Simon

    2. Re:Sketchy figures... by bigman2003 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Thank god there are financial analysts here on Slashdot to point out Microsoft's accounting shenanigans.

      Microsoft had the entire financial industry bamboozled, but nothing gets past the wiz-kids here!

      --
      No reason to lie.
    3. Re:Sketchy figures... by draos · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That's not how it works. They offered upgrade coupons to PC buyers during the holiday season since the product wasn't out the door yet...essentially those users "bought" Vista in the form of a coupon in the third quarter. So now when they ship a copy of Vista to a coupon holder it is counted as sale made in the third quarter...this is a standard accounting practice that is accepted throughout the business world. They are looking at it, financially, as though they released Vista during the Christmas season rather than when they did because they ran a promotion that was equivalent from a marketing perspective. Because they are a public company they are required by law to look at it this way, only small businesses can use cost based accounting that records the sale as occurring when the money/product changes hands.

    4. Re:Sketchy figures... by firedancer414 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Deferring revenue is a pretty common accounting practice ... it's used to make your revenue streams more static ...

      For example, if you were, say HR & Block and you make money for only 3 months out of the year, instead of marking all your revenue for that quarter and posting a loss the other 3 quarters, you would defer some of that revenue and "use" it some of the other three quarters if you have salaried employees ... This isn't sketchy at all.

      Also, they aren't counting the upgrade coupons as full sales next year ... this example is kind of like Red Sox tickets. Let's say the Red Sox sell out all their regular season games on one day at the beginning of the season. They won't say that they made $200 million in revenue on one day, and then had losses the rest of the season. They'll defer that revenue over all the games, even though most people paid for their tickets on the first day ... Whether or not people actually show up for the game or not (or choose to install Vista or not), they paid for it in one way other another, and that's what counts for your earnings.

      Seriously, this is very normal.

  5. Well, duh. by KlausBreuer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Obviously they sold a lot of Vista.
    After all, every new PC comes with Vista, if you want it or not (with very few exceptions).
    Thus, sales are up. Since Vista is not all that cheap, profits are up.

    You're surprised?

    --
    Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
  6. Coupons == Stock manipulation? by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This just reeks of stock manipulation. Hold back your sales figures for an extra quarter, cash in those stock options, and then suddenly announce, 'oh yeah, we had these coupons, so we had to hold back our sales figures.' Then watch your stock price shoot through the roof.

    But, I just looked at their insider trading roster and actually Bill Gates sold off a suspiciously large number of shared in Feb. I wonder why?

    --
    My blog
    1. Re:Coupons == Stock manipulation? by da_foz · · Score: 2, Funny

      He needed the extra cash so that he could afford to upgrade all of his personal computers to Vista...

  7. Ahhh-Chooo!!!!!! by Taimat · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Ahhh-Chooo!!!!!! ....excuse me, I'm allergic to bullshit."
    -Will Smith, i-Robot

    --
    The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
  8. This is getting old by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We all know that Vista sales will increase and XP sales will fall. We all know that however much Windows idiots say "I'm sticking with XP," it's really not their decision. They'll get Vista with their next computer, and they'll like it, because that's the only choice they'll have. And if not the next computer, certainly the one after that because the hardware won't be supported in XP.

    So can we please stop getting these articles about Vista sales? It doesn't really matter. In 5 years Vista will be just as entrenched as XP and it's not interesting how fast it gets there. Especially when all the articles contradict each other. Every other day Vista sales switch from very bad to very good.

  9. Expectations by webrunner · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  10. Maybe Vista does make sense by eebra82 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe this does make sense after all. Here's why:

    Windows XP is a very mature operating system. People rarely experience lockups (I haven't had one for months), it looks OK, it's speedy with today's hardware and it is far more secure than it was a few years ago.

    The point is that XP is good to those who currently use it. Those who want 'more' just get Vista. Maybe XP and Vista is going to co-exist longer than any of MS:es previous operating systems ever have before, simply because both products are good (or at least Vista will be in half a year or so). Previously, we had 2K and XP competing, and before that 9x/Me and 2K, where we had a clear winner in both operating systems. Now I can't say that Vista is a clear winner to XP, but rather a good 'alternative'.

    Yes, Ubuntu and OSX are great alternatives, but it takes a lot to make a user switch an operating system entirely, so I am not taking this into account.

    --
    Full Tilt
    1. Re:Maybe Vista does make sense by hexed_2050 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It is a clear winner. Sure people on Slashdot will be the first ones to tell you it's garbage, but if you actually sit down and really go through it and learn the new security measures in Vista, you will begin to love it as a system administrator.

      Why do I say you'll love it as an administrator? Well let's just put aside for one second our gripes about Microsoft and the fact that they are a monopoly and just focus on comparing it to XP...

      What is one of the most nagging, worst things that a system administrator will tell you he/she hates about XP? This is easy... It's the fact that it is almost impossible to log a person in as a 'normal user' in a corporate environment and not have them calling IT every two seconds to install a new piece of hardware or do something that a system administrator can only do. Therefore what ends up happening? Come on, we all know.. 99% of Windows users are logged in 24/7 as an administrator level account which allows people to pick up a ton of wanted gems such as malware, spyware, This all changes in Vista. After system admins sit down and really READ what is new and PROPERLY understand it, they will begin to love UAC because for once, Microsoft users will actually be able to be logged in as a simple user instead of an administrator all day long.

      There are so many great things that Vista offers over XP, but UAC once you understand it is one of the best for the corporate environment once you understand it internally and how to harness it in a GPO domain environment.

      Yes, I do wish that we could just deploy FC6 across our networks, but let's face it.. it's not happening anytime soon so I'll welcome Vista because it's light years ahead of XP in terms of assisting me do my job.

      h

      --
      Valkyrie is about to die! Wizard needs food -- badly!
  11. Hmm, this is odd... by mattgreen · · Score: 4, Funny

    I've read so many predictions of Microsoft's demise here because of (admittedly well-founded) flaws in Vista. Surely this article is wrong! Maybe RoughlyDrafted can set the record straight for me...

  12. Someone had better tell Ballmer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected "

    Then someone had better tell Ballmer. He's been saying forecasts were over-optimistic:

    "Ballmer's comments came during a conference call with financial analysts in which he repeatedly hammered home the theme that sales forecasts for Windows -- Vista in particular -- have been "overly optimistic."

    http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;7680622;fp;1 6;fpid;1

    Obviously, Ballmer thinks people's "expectations" were "overly optimistic"; now we're being told they were overly pessimistic. There's a disconnect somewhere.

  13. Coupons, Coupons, Coupons by Marcion · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Counting Coupons according to when they are redeemed is a way to spread out the data. It's a big game, no one outside of Microsoft really knows the real numbers, otherwise the shareholders would demand serious restructuring (kill Xbox, Zune, become MS Office company, return cash pile to shareholders, produce more Mac software etc).

    --
    My little Linux and tech blog
    1. Re:Coupons, Coupons, Coupons by Marcion · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sure, I would not hang up the Xbox, but spin it out, look how well IBM have done, Printers became Lexmark, Laptops became Lenovo and so on. Applications is what Microsoft were good at and they need to get back to it and get on with them, making them faster, simpler and more collaborative, and sell them to anyone who will buy them including Mac, Linux, Symbian, embedded, mobile phones etc, if they don't then in 5-10 years they will find Adobe and Google will have redefined how to be productive and will have pulled the rug out under them.

      --
      My little Linux and tech blog
    2. Re:Coupons, Coupons, Coupons by arse+maker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, if that means shareholders are short sighted idiots. With software the target is always moving, you have open office gaining traction and Linux gaining traction. Microsoft has something big... it's a 60 billion+ war chest... it's time to find more things to do. While Microsoft aren't the nicest company around (well what big companies are, anyone like their insurance company?) they are good at doing something well as long as they want to. It's in their interest to diversify and try to secure their future. Hell that's what IBM did, the largest revenue company in the world (last time I checked anyhow). They started their consultant business and that is now their most profitable department. Standing still is the death rattle of a company. Once you don't expand you get taken over... as a developer I know its 100x times easier developing an application to compete against an existing application than it is developing it from scratch (another argument against over ambitious patients, they should be there to help, not to hinder simple ideas being used, they need to take into account international conditions, it's not just in the west we are competiting).

    3. Re:Coupons, Coupons, Coupons by zippthorne · · Score: 2, Interesting

      So... what MS shareholders want most is for MS to go out of business?

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
  14. FUD! by McGurk · · Score: 2, Funny

    What is WITH all the M$ FUD on /.??? Can't you just report facts in an unbiased fashion? What's with all this "Vista will fail" shit? All this "Vista don't work" shit? All this "Vista... " wait, hold on. Vista sales exceeding expectations? Lemme check my URL, hang on... Nope, this is /. Oh, wait, it must be one of those fishing sites exploiting vulnerabilities in IE7 in order to get my OSTG login information! DAMN YOU HACKERS!!

    --
    You're doing it wrong--http://youredoingitwrong.mee.nu
  15. M$ is lying by surfduke · · Score: 4, Informative

    Folks.... it's a complete and utter smoke and mirror trick so investors won't begin bailing out. I sell Technology products to Schools and Universities.... To date, not one of our 4000 clients have ordered Vista. For those who have ordered new computers, 100% of them have said they will be erasing and putting XP on the new machine. Vista is as complete disaster for M$. It's their Newton.

    1. Re:M$ is lying by laffer1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You contradict yourself. If they ordered a new PC with Vista, then they did order Vista. Just because they choose not to use it does not mean it doesn't count as a sale.

      I can also explain the reasoning behind not upgrading. Many software applications do not run properly on Vista. Some require software upgrades. Schools have to roll out a lot of money to get new versions of software if they even exist. I am a sys admin for a computer science department. (labs + servers) We are 50/50 Mac/PC. We have no plans to upgrade to Vista, but plan on running XP for some time. The current plan this summer is to buy iMacs to replace our Dell optiplex systems and use boot camp. Actually, we are considering trying to triple boot Windows, Mac OS and Linux. Since they are Macs, they will not count in Microsoft's numbers.

      I don't think Vista will be a disaster long term. Initially, after each Windows release I saw people complain and say this one is the one that will get another OS to take off, etc. When I upgraded to Windows 95, older geeks said I was stupid and it was not worth the upgrade. Likewise, Windows 98 was just a "rehash" of windows 95, Windows 2000 was just NT4 with graphical improvements (which is not true), and Windows XP wasn't any better than 2000. I've been discouraging users from upgrading to Vista for one reason. There aren't any drivers for sound cards or video cards worth a damn. My audigy actually drops out audio randomly and I have to reboot. This really sucks while watching a DVD or playing WoW. Industry doesn't want to pay for the interface changes Microsoft has made in Vista. Eventually, they'll have to. Until then, I can watch movies in MidnightBSD and try to use my wife's Mac to play games. (funny isn't it)

      --
      MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
    2. Re:M$ is lying by imsirovic5 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I happen to work on Wall Street, and the ignorance of how some people perceive the financial markets is just amazing. I am sure "surfduke" is way smarter than the analysts than the following Analysts that follow MSFT:

      A. G. EDWARDS & SONS, INC. KEVIN BUTTIGIEG
      ARGUS RESEARCH CORP. ROBERT BECKER
      ATLANTIC EQUITIES CHRISTOPHER HICKEY
      BANC OF AMERICA SECURITIES LLC. KIRK S. MATERNE
      BEAR, STEARNS & CO. JOHN DIFUCCI
      CANACCORD ADAMS PETER MISEK
      CIBC WORLD MARKETS CORP. BRAD REBACK
      CITIGROUP BRENT THILL
      COWEN AND COMPANY WALTER PRITCHARD
      CREDIT SUISSE - NORTH AMERICA JASON MAYNARD
      CROWELL, WEEDON & CO. JAMES D. RAGAN
      D. A. DAVIDSON & CO. ALAN L. DAVIS
      DAVENPORT & CO. OF VIRGINIA, INC. F. DRAKE JOHNSTONE
      E.K.RILEY INVESTMENTS, LLC ROBERT E. TOOMEY
      FIRST ALBANY CORP. MARK MURPHY
      FIRST GLOBAL STOCKBROKING LTD. SHASHIKIRAN RAO
      FRIEDMAN, BILLINGS, RAMSEY & CO. DAVID M. HILAL
      GLOBAL EQUITIES RESEARCH TRIP CHOWDHRY
      GOLDMAN SACHS & CO. SARAH FRIAR
      GRIFFIN SECURITIES, INC. CHRYSTYNA BEDRIJ
      ICAP EQUITY RESEARCH RICHARD T. WILLIAMS
      JPMORGAN ADAM HOLT
      JYSKE BANK PER-ROBERT JACOBSEN
      KINTISHEFF RESEARCH TSVETAN KINTISHEFF
      LEHMAN BROTHERS ISRAEL HERNANDEZ
      MCADAMS WRIGHT RAGEN SID PARAKH
      MERRILL LYNCH KASH RANGAN
      MORGAN STANLEY MARY MEEKER
      NUTMEG SECURITIES JEAN WOPAT ORR
      PACIFIC CREST SECURITIES BRENDAN J. BARNICLE
      PACIFIC GROWTH EQUITIES YUN KIM
      PIPER JAFFRAY MICHAEL J. OLSON
      PRUDENTIAL EQUITY GROUP, LLC JOHN P. MCPEAKE
      RAGEN MACKENZIE, A DIVSN OF WELLS FARGO TAUNYA R. SELL
      RBC CAPITAL MARKETS (CANADA) STEPHEN WALKER
      RBC CAPITAL MARKETS (US) ROBERT BREZA
      ROCHDALE SECURITIES LLC DAVID ELLER
      SANFORD C. BERNSTEIN & CO., LLC CHARLES J. DI BONA
      SOLEIL-ONE-ON-ONE RESEARCH DAWN S. TALBOT
      STANFORD GROUP COMPANY NEIL J. HERMAN
      THOMAS WEISEL PARTNERS TIM E. KLASELL
      UBS (US) HEATHER A. BELLINI
      WILLIAM BLAIR & COMPANY, L.L.C. LAURA J. LEDERMAN

      Not to mention countless buy side institutions with trillions dollars in combined assets such as hedge and mutual funds. At the moment of this writing the stock is up $1.24 or roughly 11 billion dollars in market cap. I guess they are not reading slashdot. I wonder why don't all the people on here that forecast demise of MSFT put their money where their mouth is and just short the stock, or even better buy some put options. Go ahead take a second mortgage and bet your life against the Company if you really believe MSFT is doomed. I used to be a frequent visitor to Slashdot since I always valued input of some really smart people on vide-variety of mostly scientific topics. But blatant, childish attacks on MSFT and herd mentality on some of the topics made me visit this website less and less. And its amazing some other companies, like AAPL for example seem to be darlings on this board. And its surprising to me that AAPL stands higher on moral and idealistic scale even though it is a fact that AAPL has been accused of many monopolistic practices, it is a fact that Steve Jobs is a liar and a thief (anyone that does thinks that a CEO of a major corporation has no idea what option backdating is needs a reality check.). It is sad to see such consistent high scores on comments that exhibit such level of herd mentality on this website. Anyway I will stop now, I am sure I provided enough material to get moded as a troll. Its an earning season and if I want to get out of the office by midnight I need to stop wasting my time here and go back to work...

  16. Re:Microsoft genius by Junks+Jerzey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  17. Simple Explanations by cordsie · · Score: 3, Funny

    The way I see it, this can be one of two things:

    1) Vista is actually being well received, and selling like hotcakes despite all reports to the contrary.
    2) Even MS-Excel has critical bugs when running under Vista, especially the version used by Microsoft's accounting department.

  18. And how many times... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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...

  19. Might not be ALL real numbers.... by Dukebytes · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I just spec'd out a new Dell for my dad. He wanted XP on it - but it only came with Vista. I told him that it should be OK......

    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.
  20. Remember by geekoid · · Score: 2, Insightful

    accounting is funny stuff.

    This goes for ANY company:
    When a company seems to be doing better then the market indicates, look at the numbers very closly.

    Were there 'expectations' lower than reasonable? Are they counting units moved to outlets, or the unit's then sold?

    What is there deal with outlets? can they return unsold stock*? How many lisenses did DELL purchase that it's not using?

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  21. Windows is for sissies by messner_007 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  22. Doesn't he do that all the time? by kiwimate · · Score: 2, Informative

    I seem to remember reading somewhere (on Slashdot, in fact) that he regularly sells off lots of shares in order to (amongst other things) prevent speculation and/or distress if he were to sell them off sporadically.

  23. Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected by darjen · · Score: 2, Funny

    Vista Sales Strong, Higher Than Expected
    Expected by who - the Slashdot crowd, or the rest of the world?
  24. If You Lie, You Die Inside... by SixFactor · · Score: 2

    ...that's what we've drummed into our kids.

    If MS is lying, or even overstating its earnings, it will be just a matter of time before bad things catch up with them. Witness the Apple CFO mess.
    On the other hand, if their earnings reflect the positive reception of Vista, then good for them. As far as I'm concerned, the more OSs there are to play with, the merrier any geek will be (by discovering something new and shiny, or by making $ from fixing people's machines because of various OS "features").

    It's all fun.

    --
    Science never settles, never rests.
  25. what I find funny (MS still doing quite well) by dAzED1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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)

  26. Anonymous-Astroturf=0? by haakondahl · · Score: 2, Funny

    An anonymous reader writes "Despite reports, it seems Microsoft is not only alive, but has been thriving these last few months.


    An anonymous reader from http://marketing.microsoft.com/Vista/PhaseII/Oh_Sh it.aspx ...
    --
    Don't trust anyone under thirty.
  27. ... and dont need to purchase it every 6 months? by Skapare · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... and dont need to purchase it every 6 months

    Please don't given them any ideas.

    --
    now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
  28. Re:Microsoft genius by vindimy · · Score: 2, Funny

    (1) Create a crap OS. (2) Force people to buy it (3) People can't stand it and buy a second OS (4) Crow about sales being up

    (5) Profit!!!
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