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Microsoft Posts First Quarterly Loss Ever
HangingChad writes "Microsoft's announcement of a late October release date for Windows 8 was eclipsed by its earnings report, in which the computer giant posted its first-ever quarterly loss since going public in 1986. The loss stems from Microsoft's continued struggles with the online services division."
NSFW
"The loss stems from Microsoft's continued struggles with the online services division."
That's a flat-out deception! The loss stems from the fact that they made a 6 billion dollar write-off. The summary makes it seem like their online division is just naturally bleeding billions.
Millions, maybe, but not billions.
Indeed. They made an investment that didn't pan out several years ago, and now they're writing it off in a lump sum that's hitting them this quarter. That means that the biggest contributor to their quarterly loss was a one-time event that is already over and will not have any bearing on future profits or losses. This is not the proverbial writing on the wall yet.
As many other people have pointed out to you in other articles, Microsoft makes bad acquisitions every year. The underlying losses are as significant as they seem.
This apologist attitude is dangerous to investors and Microsoft employees alike.
You're joking, right? Last fiscal year they had net income of $23 billion and the previous quarter they made they made about $21 billion in revenue and net income of $6.6 billion.
Gay porn alert, /.tters! Do not click, well, unless that's your thing.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I probably shouldn't respond to an AC... but oh well.
I actually read TFA and it said they lost $6B due to a bad acquisition and that's why the quarterly profits were where they were. I made a deduction from that article that it isn't going to affect Microsoft in any way really and posted a reply to the 'finally they're going down' comment.
I'm not what you'd call a fan of Microsoft in any way, I use their products because I have to.
Basically what happened is a bug hit Microsoft's windshield , and Microsoft will flick on the wipers and be on their merry way.
It was in fact NOT a great quarter for Microsoft. I agree that the $6.2 billion loss on the acquisition is a red herring, but if you disregard that and look at the rest of their business, you'll find that their windows revenue declined 13% Yes, DECLINED 13%. Now, you can further write off most of that decline by saying that this is due to the reduced cost of Windows 8 that Microsoft offered to people buying Windows 7 now, but even after you do that, Windows revenue declined 1%. That's not huge, but they still DECLINED in windows sales. You know... WINDOWS... one of the two cash cows that Microsoft owns? Microsoft's core business is shrinking. If I help Microsoft stock, I'd be a bit worried. (For what it's worth, I do hold Apple stock, and I'm worried there too, Microsoft's wave has crested, Apple's is at the peak so there's nowhere to go but down, I'm just waiting for the right time to sell, it might be now.)
But don't let that stop the speculation about how "Microsoft" is doing great.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
The accumulated deficit of OSD is now about $16 billion. Any way you slice it that's a lot to spend on a grudge.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It's not from their "continued struggles", it's from a single acquisition 5 years ago.
Why do we keep hearing this tired apology over and over again? Aquantive was worth $6.2 billion on the day it was bought then slowly bled bit by bit until it was worth zero. What bled away was its "good will" (aka expected income) as it became increasingly apparent that Microsoft was unable to leverage Aquantive's auction model in the same way that Google had leveraged Applied Semantics.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
And the $6.2B was a write down from a 2007 acquisition.
Taking the loss now is intended to make things look better once Windows 8 has launched. They've shuffled numbers before to mask slow uptake, like combining their Mac software numbers with Xbox 360 to fluff up the later.
76 million Android activations/ quarter
For fuck's sake! Google doesn't make money on Android activations.
Who says anything about making money? Guess AC doesn't know what market share means.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You don't have to make money, directly or otherwise, to have market share, nor do you have to make money to have an impact on your competition. And when discussing Windows' market share with regard to, say, desktop installations, no one discounts those installs that are pirated copies (most are in some parts of the world) because whether or not those installs made money for MS does not affect that fact that their OS is used on those machines.
That isn't really an apples-to-oranges comparison though. The desktop/laptop markets are different enough from the phone/tablet ones at the current time that you probably shouldn't compare Windows 7 against iOS and Android.
Also iOS and Android are growing fast due to new kit the people previously didn't own - they are not replacing Windows in most cases. MS's install base is rather impressive compared to iOS and Android so even at their current growth rate (which they can't maintain indefinitely - there will be a saturation point in the market somewhere) it'll be much time before they come close to eclipsing Windows.
I'm happy for you to put Microsoft down, but I recommend not using obviously flawed statistics as it just looks like desperation (when such desperation is probably not required).
I wish I knew what NSFW meant before opening the link :'(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_safe_for_work
This sounds more like it was a major once-off write-off of a loss-making division (a "me-too" attempt at online advertising to try compete with Google - hell, I didn't even know Microsoft had such a division until I read this), rather than necessarily an indicator of poor cash flow. So I wouldn't be ringing that death knell quite yet. The way Apple's going with their increasingly patent-troll-based business model, we might yet want to see strong competition between all the major players rather than consolidation.