Did Microsoft Alter Windows Sales Figures?

Saxophonist writes "InformationWeek claims to have analyzed Microsoft's most recent Form 10-Q and observed that a reported increase in earnings for the Windows unit may be due to accounting trickery rather than actual sales growth. Microsoft apparently increased its reported revenues for its Windows, Server & Tools, and Office units at least partly through shifting revenues from other units. While there may be nothing 'to suggest the company's revisions violate any accounting rules,' the actual growth in Windows sales was likely nowhere near the high double-digit percentage growth claimed. InformationWeek speculates that revenues from Xbox and Surface may have been among the revenues shifted to the other divisions."

Comments

SOP?

[Nidi62]

I thought pretty much every publicly traded company did stuff like this?

Re:the truth!

[AdmiralXyz]

But see, that's the beauty of corporate accounting. They never actually lie, it's all a matter of classifying revenue sources and sinks in brain-twisting ways that are technically accurate, even though from a bird's-eye view they give a completely mistaken impression of what's going on.

And this isn't consigned to Microsoft, like an above commenter said, every Fortune 500 company has done it to varying extents. It's difficult to make illegal, too, because there's no one technique used (seems to be as much an art as it is a science, finding loopholes that aren't closed); so it's impossible to write a law that's general enough to stop the practice yet still enforceable.

Re:Shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic?

[Toe, The]

I think it's turning out more like shuffling governors in the Ottoman or British Empires. A slow, gradual, slightly-pathetic decline as one setback overshadows another.

Re:Yes

[hsmith]

Well look at it this way - they aren't fudging their balance sheets as bad as the US Government