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Class-action Suit Filed Against Microsoft Over Surface Write Off
New submitter used2win32 writes with news that at least one investor is unhappy with the Surface inventory write off, claiming that Microsoft mislead investors who purchased stock during Q2 and Q3 by not announcing just how slow inventory was moving at the time "The class action lawsuit claims false and misleading information regarding sales performance of Windows RT based tablets. Microsoft has earned a U.S. $900 million write off and a market share of less that 1% to show for its Windows RT endeavors. Asus, Lenovo, HP, Samsung and HTC discontinued their models leaving Dell as the only OEM producing a Windows RT tablet."
Stockholders win the lawsuit and each get 10 bucks. Microsoft stock takes a huge hit. Stockholders lose a lot more than 10 bucks.
Nevermind, I forgot about the lawyers. The lawyers always win.
Typical sue-happy mentality of the USA: My bad judgement is your fault.
If these people had made money with the stock, do you think they'd be offering to pay Microsoft part of their profits?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
As much as I despise Ballmer, he is a bean counter/finance guy. I don't think you can lay all blame for all decisions in Win8 at his feet. The issue with Win8 is that what works about tablets: Security/simplicty/stability etc weeded out the bulk problems of users. Making Win8 a full OS forced onto tablets took away all of those and left behind the pains of legacy cruft. Now tablet users get to worry about Virus' and malware and services that conflict. New device same problems. Plus the added confusion of WinRT and the fact that you need to jump back and forth to a desktop mode (entirely schizophrenic in practice)
Given that part of MS' struggle with RT arises from the desire to not cannibalize their cash cows, I'd be surprised if they ever let something with a copy of Windows(even a gimped one) and a copy of Office (even with restrictive license terms) baked in out the door for $99. Even if they were OK with that, I suspect Dell wouldn't be amused, nor would the various sellers of (modestly less doomed) Atom-based Win8 mostly-tablet things.
I'd honestly be unsurprised to see them sold wholesale to be stripped for components, or debranded and flashed into mysterious pacific rim non-brand Androids, or otherwise quietly disposed of rather than dumped on the retail market at more than a modest discount.
HP's little fire sale, to the degree it made sense at all, only made sense because they had no less-doomed products in potentially competing areas, so if blowing them out at retail was the best deal they could get, per unit, it was the best thing to do.
We'll stop confusing the two Surface products when Microsoft give them different enough names to make a distinction.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
No, its just that for the first time, they seem to have viable competition they can't FUD or lawsuit away.
They never made decent products. In fact they've made their best products ever.
Don't believe me, windows 95, MS bob, etc...
They have had a string of bad products because people more or less had to buy them to get a computer.
It is very hard to see what technologies make it and what doesn't.
Usually you get the following factors I call it the 6P(mostly).
Price
Performance
Power
Portability
Programs
(Ph/F)eatures
Now at any given time there is a demand for some balance of these, however it isn't usually sure where the sweet spot is as it can change.
Price, sure the lesser the better... However if you are selling these things you want to make as much money as possible per unit, People are willing to spend so much for something until it becomes too big of desion and will need to weigh the other 5 P's
Performance, Yeah we want the fastest, but how much is that going to cost, and do we really need it to be fast for our use for it.
Power, how long will the battery last, will it affect its portability.
Portability, how small and light is it. Is is rugged enough for my daily use, does it have the Features that will allow me to be portable with it, does it look good to have on my person...
Programs, like features, however you can add your own. How good are the programs available, how many of them are their.
Features, what does it do what doesn't it do. Can I live with what it doesn't do.
Now different stuff has a different balance of this stuff. I have a crossover Lenovo thinkpad laptop/tablet. I have gained in Performance, Features, and Programs, but I lost out portability, power, and price. But I like it, because it fits my needs.
However we really don't know what the people want until it is out. You can have as many checks to see if people like it as you want. But you will never know until it is released.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
There's fraud and then there is the usual behavior of MBAs. Microsoft is clearly a company run by MBAs and not the original engineering types. With engineering types deceitful behavior would not be expected and thus would be unexpectedly fraudulent. But with MBAs they will twist any statistic until it bleeds thinking that if they can spreadsheet it then it becomes reality.
This creates many amusing situations such as MBA types issuing Mortgage backed bonds based on mortgages issued to people with such bad credit that they usually missed their very first mortgage payment. It is the typical MBA's difficult relationship with the truth that resulted in GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Practices) limiting their truth distorting ways.
So any investor that invests in an MBA dominated company should know that they are dealing with a den of thieves who have degenerated into Bottom Line dominated monsters. So the only change that I would ask is that stock ticker symbols come with a super-script that tells you what percentage of the upper management has an MBA. (or used to be in real-estate / used car sales)