Motley Fool Writes Off Microsoft

The Vista disaster has caught Wall Street's attention before but I've never seen the popular press understand the issues like this argument in the Motley Fool. The opposing argument is a weak statement of faith, essentially "as it was in the beginning is now and forever shall be." "You don't need to watch the 'I'm a Mac, I'm a PC' commercials to see that Microsoft is taking a beating. You see it in the company's financials where its online unit, incredibly, is operating at a loss; overheating Xbox 360 consoles find the company taking a huge warranty hit for a system losing market share to the Wii; and the upgrade wave of its flagship operating system has been more of a ripple than a tsunami. That last point is important. This was supposed to be Microsoft's final feast, the major last hurrah for its Windows Vista operating entry and its Office 2007 suite of applications before the inevitable embrace of cheaper open source operating systems and Web-based apps... In fact, even Microsoft will tell you that its fortunes peaked several months ago."

Comments

In other news

[El Cabri]

MSFT shares are up 3% today after another strong rise yesterday, after announcing their financial results and outlook.

Re:In other news

[eldavojohn]

MSFT shares are up 3% today after another strong rise yesterday, after announcing their financial results and outlook. Yeah, I noticed that on MSN Money when I was running at the gym last night. The reason they cited that was strong Vista sales. That's not what I've heard on Slashdot.

Now I know he's a Microsoft robot but on the otherside of this issue is Ed Bott who cites adoption rates. Of course there are other factors like Vista being forced down people's throats.

You have to admit, the stories we're hearing just don't add up. People can spin this like Vista's a flop or success. I'm guessing it's par for the course and Microsoft is doing fine. My company will be shoving Vista onto my workstation in a year and it's hear to stay.

Do I like Vista? Not at all. That still doesn't mean I should live under a rock in denial.

Re:In other news

[orclevegam]

Really? Has Microsoft really made back 5 years of development effort from Vista sales? I find it hard to believe with most sales coming from bundled (i.e. low profit) type sales. Most of Microsoft's sales come from the OEMs who buy licenses in bulk. Even if they can't offload them onto end consumers MS still made the money because the OEM fronted it. What MS does lose with poor Vista uptake is the leverage a large install base can give them, so rather then using pre-installed apps on Vista to gain a foothold they have to use "requires vista" on apps as a carrot to force Vista onto people. It's all about leverage, and unfortunately MS is holding 90% of the sticks (god, that works on so many levels). Our only real hope at this point is that they hurry up and release Windows 7, and we can go ahead and stick Vista on the same shelf that ME is using to collect dust.

Re:And yet...

[MBGMorden]

They also have more money than God Major point there. No company is permanent or invincible, but Microsoft is the type of behemoth that can bleed off small ammounts of money for DECADES without folding.

They are still turning a (sizable) profit. They not only need to start taking a loss, but they need to either start taking a MAJOR loss each quarter (doesn't look likely), or, we gotta wait it out. As long as they're managed just well enough that their losses are minor, I doubt we'll see Microsoft go away in the foreseeable future.

Still, that doesn't mean that they need maintain their current control for that long. I'd love to see Microsoft in 15 years, putting out their OS that only has about 25-30% market share, and shipping Office for Linux (and naturally Mac, but they already do that so no big change there). Xbox would likely be scrapped by then (admittedly though, the 360 is the only current gen system I own, but I bought it pretty much exclusively for Mass Effect).

If Linux could just get that level of commercial support, I think it would be a major victory. I'll admit that, though not the only things, having WoW and MS Office available are major factors in my preference of MacOS over Linux right now. Linux is ideologically the better way to make software, and I hope to goodness that within the next few years it gets the functionality, polish, and commercial support to be functionally the better of the two as well. Microsoft has already proven that Windows is steering towards crippleware, and Apple is likely not far behind.