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Where Microsoft's Profits Come From
derrida writes "Microsoft is the largest, most profitable software company in the world. In case you had any doubts about where Microsoft's profit comes from, there's nothing better than a graph to make all those numbers clear. As you may have guessed, the desktop division is quite profitable, while the online division is a money pit."
What I find most interesting is the way all changes are perfectly synchronized with the exception of entertainment related stuff. This is clear indication of the power of vendor lock-in and tying unrelated products together.
What I would find interesting is to know what events occurred during the valleys and rapid climb moments indicated in the graph. Specifically, what happened in Dec '06 and Sep '09?
We look at the graph: MS is losing like 500Million per year on the Online Division
Then we look at the other graph and sees that Windows and Office has a 2Billion a year profit, EACH
And then we have to read crap like this: "We wonder when Microsoft will finally decide to do what it should have done years ago: Save its money and flush its entire online division down the drain."
No hon, SteveB is stupid, but not as stupid as you. It's called 'strategy', look it up. If it's working or not it's a whole different matter.
how long until
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Indeed, office 2000 and office 2007 are esentially the same product. And Windows 7 is worse than XP.Microsoft has been living all this decade by selling stuff they already had and didn't significantly improve, MS is the biggest scammer in the world.
And Google's cash cow is search advertising and loses money hand over fist on YouTube ($753m last year).
Microsoft is the same company they were 20 years ago. Windows, Office, and Server software are how they make money.
Everything else under Balmer's tenure has been a (financial) failure.
Now, Balmer wants to spend the war chest to win the "search" war. I've just got one question for Steve:
Hey Steve, how much money did you make on the browser war?
This idiot wants to kill Google by spending tons of money on search, yet he has not explained how this will make Microsoft a single dime.
For Microsoft to grow and prosper in other areas, Steve Balmer needs to go.
-ted
They make their profit on their monopoly products and lose money on almost everything else. That is why the methods they use to maintain these monopolies continue to be the subject of antitrust investigations.
This also demonstrates that they are very good at maintaining their monopoly, but not so good at successful new product development. With a stagnant pipeline, they are especially at risk as FOSS alternatives like Linux, Firefox and OpenOffice become less "alternative" and more "maintstream".
I don't know, what can you do with Win7 and Office 2010 that you couldn't do with WinXP and Office 2000? What new improvements in productivity do you gain from them? How did they lower your other costs (e.g. hardware)?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Dividends? How quaint! The profits are there to line the CEOs pockets and to allow 'journalists' to fluff up the share price. The only way you (or any outsider) to make money is to buy low and sell high. Investing is so last century. Gotta Gamble Baby!
Recently I came across Guy Kawasaki's lectures. In one of them he mentioned, back in the 80s when he was a Mac-Evangelist, Macintosh department employees were given world class treatment like professional massage treatments during working days, First Class air tickets if the flight is 2+ hours etc.
But in reality, Macintosh wasn't earning a dime and continuing the spending spree of all what Apple II department was earning. In return, not a single Apple II employee was permitted to enter the Macintosh building.
I observe some similarity here in Microsoft too (i.e. one department earns, other spends). But seems it is not that bad.
In my humble opinion, I predict the demise of Office and Windows OS in next 10 years (maybe there will be cloud versions). I believe Microsoft will move into more enterprise/back-end technology space rather than remaining in desktop/consumer space (just like IBM). But nothing can be predicted to a higher accuracy, as the internet backbone is yet to achieve higher bandwidths and reliability, which is somewhat mandatory before a full migration in to a cloud based software eco-system.
I don't know, what can you do with Win7 and Office 2010 that you couldn't do with WinXP and Office 2000? What new improvements in productivity do you gain from them? How did they lower your other costs (e.g. hardware)?
Well, new versions of Office simply exist to force you into their new file formats. Office 97, simply put, does everything anyone could want, and does it well. The only real selling point for the latest iteration is the collaboration technology in it, and even then, that's only good for you if you're using it in a business or groups. There's really no practical justification for a home user to upgrade Office.
Windows 7 though, that's a bit different. It appears that MS has really given us a reason to move on from XP, with better graphics support and better security, without the bugs of nags of Vista. Windows 7 is really what Vista should have been. And it would be more compelling if all versions of 7 were 64 bit native, as CPU's have been 64 bit for quite some time now. The 64 bit part would be the real selling point here, as it would allow all versions to move past that 4 GB memory limit, hardware permitting. For a lot of people, the only reason they really had to move to XP from 98SE was the file system limits on FAT32. While 98 was more stable than 95, the reason I upgraded was the 2 GB FAT limit that was smashed with FAT32. Microsoft too often forgets that we need practical reasons to upgrade, not just shiny eye-candy. And real practical reasons, not artificially forced situations like their new Office file formats. The only reason they did that was to force businesses away from 97 and 2K.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Sounds more like a tautology to me. In markets where they have competed so successfully that there is no surviving competition, they are successful. In markets where they have not and there is still lots of competition, they are not. Or, in the even shorter form: Microsoft is only successful in markets where Microsoft is successful. What a strange coincidence!
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Office 97, simply put, does everything anyone could want, and does it well
That's just not true. Try publishing a book with Office 97. Suppose you want to change the style of your section headings. LaTeX can do it with a simple change in your header. Just edit a couple of lines and you're done. Or, suppose you want to change the style of references in your bibliography. Again, just a few quick edits in LaTeX. I have no idea how you'd do that in Office 97.
While I can't say that Office 2010 offers anything over Office 97(due to lack of experience), it is definitely not the case that Office 97 does everything one could want. I have heard that the equation editor in 2010 is much better, FWIW.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I can do a lot of things with Office 2010 than I couldn't do with Office 2000. Search folders, RSS, Galleries, better task management, better calendar sharing, better utilization of 64-bit machines....
Windows 7 has some nice advantages as well - it's faster, has better 64-bit support, some nice improvements to the UI (such as pinning items to the taskbar), is more secure...
Are either of them "must upgrades for everybody"? No. Some people will do just fine staying on Windows XP and Office 2000. But a lot of people, especially folks who are power users, will find a lot to like in the new versions.
-B-
"Microsoft tells us it's time to upgrade".
That might be true except for the giant period you ignored where almost everyone didn't upgrade to VIsta, funny XP gets all this praise after years of being torn apart as the most insecure OS during the Vista release and even after the excuse that Vista was bloat which Win7 came along to fix people still complain.
Win7 replaced an old copy of WinXP on an old Dell 1150 laptop and it actually runs better even though I only invested $30 for 2GB of ram at FRY's, even though I had to do a quick google search for video drivers everything else(wifi,burner,etc) worked perfectly fine.
MS used to always be great at the compatibility part and terrible at security/stability, but they have really fixed those two other voids with Vista/Win7 and the ball is in their court. Linux missed the biggest opportunity to capatilize on MS's blunder with Vista and there might never be a chance again for 15+ years considering how stable Win7 is.