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Microsoft Reports Record Revenue
jones_supa sends this AFP report:
"Microsoft soared to record revenues in the last quarter, confounding Wall Street forecasts on the back of strong demand for Xbox consoles, Surface tablets and Internet cloud services. The U.S.-based technology titan reported net income of $6.56 billion on revenue that hit a record high of $24.52 billion in the quarter that ended December 31. ... Sales of Surface tablets more than doubled from the previous quarter to hit $893 million, and Microsoft sold 7.4 million Xbox videogame consoles, with 3.9 million of those being new-generation Xbox One.
Bing's share of the Internet search market grew to 18.2 percent while its share of the online search ad market grew about a third, according to Microsoft. Meanwhile, money made from selling Windows software to computer makers slid by three percent due to continue soft demand by consumers for personal computers, according to Microsoft."
Imagine what these numbers would be if they actually knew what the fuck they were doing.
Nuff said.
Microsoft has had some rough times both because they missed the boat on the Mobile Revolution and because they _royally_ fucked up by trying to turn the desktop into Metro. Their heart was in the right place by trying to make one unified interface to help them in the mobile business, but it's just an epic fail. It would have been so easy to do it right, too - make Metro the default on touch-enabled interfaces, but make it easy to disable it and make the desktop the default on non touch devices.
But I think they will ultimately be successful because they're the best software development company in the world. That's controversial (though it shouldn't be) but they are. They have the money, the culture, and the people to write very good software when they don't make otherwise bad decisions (like Metro Everywhere). That's why I bought an Xbox One instead of a PS4, not because I hate Sony but because Microsoft is fundamentally a better software company and I expect more and better features from them.
Same thing in the mobile market - Windows Phone is very nice technically and their development tools are leaps and bounds ahead of anyone else's. This doesn't assure them success but it's something only a fool would dismiss.
So this means the price of their software is gonna come down... right? :P
Now can Slashdot please stop treating the Surface like Fox News treats Benghazi?
Looks like for microsoft to preserve profitability it may have to continue to branch out of its core competency, windows. Perhaps it's following in Apples footsteps in a sense, branching away from personal computing to consumer electronics.
That billion dollar write-off on the Surface tablets doesn't seem so bad now does it...
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
I pay you a dollar for every 90 cents you give me !!
Surface COGS: 935 m
Revenue 850 m
Meanwhile, money made from selling Windows software to computer makers slid by three percent due to continue soft demand by consumers for personal computers
Yes, I too have been both softly demanding and loudly demanding a personal computer OS from Microsoft, yet all they want to push is some tablet OS unsuited for business work on a personal computer.
At least they aren't acting surprised about their choice.
Nobody wants Windows 8. The Metro UI is crap. The ribbon UI is crap. Microsoft are crap. Bring back program manager!
Hope they don't announce big profit now and come back a few months later with a big charge for something else. Sort of like Bush would not include war costs in regular budget and always ask for emergency appropriations for a war that had been going on for years.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The year of the death of the linux desktop :-(
It's always good to hear that the world's largest software firm has a higher revenue than the world's largest advertisement firm.
Regardless of whether it is MS or not.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
We have recently purchased a Surface to test with some LIMS software we use, which currently runs fine on W7. We were told it wouldn't run on 8. It has been discovered that it does in fact run on 8 and runs fine on our Surface. We are going to to test using Surface tablets running 8.1 in our environment. So far so good.
Are we running this on iPads or Android tablets? No.
Why?
Because the software in question, along with pretty much everything else we use is designed to run on either Windows or Linux.
I could draw a conclusion here that Surface tablets will make in roads into the Enterprise for exactly this reason. Yes, yes, I know there are thousands of iPads in Enterprises right now, with all manner of executive and administrative staffers trying to look important at work with their tablet, while busily updating their FB status. However, I feel that because of MS's entrenched position in the Enterprise the Surface is more of a "work" device than an iPad or Android tablet.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I'd forgotten briefly that in order to be a "real nerd" and post here you have to hate microsoft for no particular reason.
All of the royalties made from the Android phones are what made them rich. Lord knows it's not Microsoft phones or tablets.
One specific criticism is that Microsoft priced the Surface Pro too high and placed too harsh restrictions on users of the regular Surface and other Windows RT devices in general. For example, Windows RT doesn't allow developers to recompile their desktop apps for use with, say, a Surface with the Type Cover connected. Only three desktop apps for RT are allowed: File Explorer, IE, and Office.
We have recently purchased a Surface to test with some LIMS software we use, which currently runs fine on W7. We were told it wouldn't run on 8. It has been discovered that it does in fact run on 8 and runs fine on our Surface.
Windows 7 supports only the Win32 API; Windows RT 8 and Windows RT 8.1 support only the new WinRT API. It is impossible for one program to run on both Windows 7 PCs and Surface RT unless it is written in an interpreted language and runs in an interpreter available for both platforms. By Surface did you mean Surface Pro, which supports both Win32 and WinRT applications?
They would have been able to buy their own country if Windows 8 wasn't such a disaster.
I would have thought the biggest push-back you'd get on this would be that their software is insecure. Strangely, people are not piling on there. I'm sure somebody will, and here's the rebuttal: The Internet and security are bolt-ons to Windows, which is a bolt-on do DOS. Anybody in the industry will tell you that bolt-ons are hard. You'd never do a bolt-on unless you had no choice. Due to their massive installed base and the need to maintain backward compatability... they had no choice. So yes, they are pretty good developers. They had a massive anchor around their neck in the form of bolt-ons. Apple and others just throw legacy under the bus, which makes it easier. This is also why Metro sucks, because it's all part of MS's attempt to implement things that suck about other companies, instead of doing what they were doing right. Nobody noticed what they were doing right until they stopped doing it.
They do know what they are doing. The cost of licenses went up by a good chunk of change (think 20% or so.) Because most businesses rely on MS for day to day use, that additional 20% in license revenue definitely didn't hurt revenue gains.
I find it extremely hard to believe that a company whom has failed on so many fronts can post a "record revenue". Let's face it; Windows Phone, Vista, Metro, Xbox One -- all have been either utter failures or fell seriously short of expected sales. If a company can produce "record revenue" from a year like that, then management has problems bigger than just Ballmer.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
10 bucks was 50 years ago real money, now it's not even enough to tip somebody...
Taking in money doesn't necessarily mean anything unless you can actually make money.
Smell something? Hokus! Pokus!
That reads almost too much like a sales pitch/shill post.
Ars Technica posted a pitch-perfect headline demonstrating how a Slashdot geek responds to good news from Microsoft:
Beleaguered Microsoft posts record revenue for Q2 2014
Calling the poster a shill is the easy way out. Personally, I'd like to see more clear-headed --- hard-headed thinking --- around here.
Taking in money doesn't necessarily mean anything unless you can actually make money.
$6.66 billion net. $24.52 billion gross.
Hence why I didn't call him a shill.
Who do you think you're kidding?
Microsoft's fortune has little to do with Xbox, Bing, Windows Phone, or Windows 8. It has everything to do with secret patent agreements and patent litigation.
Like a leach, both Microsoft and Apple have decided to become a tax on every Android phone. They litigate through proxies most of the time because it prevents counter-suits.
Hmm...
I have heard from reliable sources that .Net is easier to develop in than Java.
However, Java has a much big set of libraries, is cross platform, and has a very effective Just-in-Time complier (that compiles frequently used code into native machine code based on the current run time profile) that comes free. It also can effectively use large quantities of memory and multiple cores. So in practice, Java is better suited to large enterprise applications than .Net - especially as .Net does not run on Linux which is what most servers use (in fact many more devices run Linux than all other operating systems combined).
So with Java you can develop on Linux, and run the resulting program on far more platforms than .Net can.
So for enterprise development: Java is King, not .Net!
Remember this one from November?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/11/06/2135236/microsoft-makes-an-astonishing-2-billion-per-year-from-android-patent-royalties
Undoubtedly, Microsoft's accountants would challenge that statement. OTOH, it is apparently good advice never to take a percentage of the profit when dealing with Hollywood, since no movie has ever made a profit...Ever.
It's all the win XP extension licences for the ATM's
How much from software patents on Android I wonder?
Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, if the women don't get you the whiskey must
Come on, anti-Microsoft guys! The FUDs not working anymore or there's not enough of it. Let's generate some more Surface FUD now, and keep it up, you slackers!
Let the trolling begin.
Instead of everything coming up with losses, everything comes up with "profits"... even though everything has lost money...
Remember this one from November?
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/13/11/06/2135236/microsoft-makes-an-astonishing-2-billion-per-year-from-android-patent-royalties
Undoubtedly, Microsoft's accountants would challenge that statement. OTOH, it is apparently good advice never to take a percentage of the profit when dealing with Hollywood, since no movie has ever made a profit...Ever.
Even if story true, that is $2B per year, $0.5B per quarter. MS just posted revenue of $24.5B for the quarter. Just their Surface "failure" revenue alone is almost double the Android revenue even if Android revenue claim in story is true.
I think Microsoft has floundered with Steve Ballmer. You have success stories like XBox but then failures like Zune and Vista and now Windows 8. Yes, the Surface has improved its sales but yet everyone agree's Microsoft is losing money on ever Surface sold. So does more sales really matter? Has Microsoft become the Tesla of Tablets? Microsoft has so dramatically disconnected from its PC makers by making the Surface that I have to wonder if its hurt or helped Microsoft by doing its own Tablet? Microsoft in my opinion does not have to be a Apple to be a success and yet it always seems to be chasing what Apple has. If Microsoft would spend more energy fixing Windows 8 and listening to its customers, and stop trying to re invent what was not broken. They would have a much more solid PC future right now.
Not in a corporate environment you sure as hell don't!
Classic Shell supports group policy now.
Unless it's native, you don't modify core OS behavior in a corporate environment that's not officially supported.
Officially supported by whom? I was under the impression that Classic Shell was supported by the Classic Shell team, and it used public APIs supported by Microsoft.
A shell game.
The one that shocked me was FoxIt Reader's interface. I thought FoxIt was all about taking down the corporate giant (Adobe) with a leaner, smarter, more secure product. Now I feel like I am interacting with a piece of paper. Someone literally stuck a fork in FoxIt -- it is so done.
I come here for the love
Supposedly they've been losing sales to OpenOffice and LibreOffice and Windows 8 has not been well received. And suddenly they have a record earnings report.
Something doesn't add up especially since the two product lines (ie, Office and Windows OS) are supposedly their big money makers.
Maybe the accounting guys are trying to give Ballmer a positive send-off.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/1102/
So, does this mean they sold two tablets this year? :)
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
And what proportion of that was from Micro$oft tax on android 'phone vendors etc.?
Considering you get a three figure daily income with a worldwide feature.
Put a cap on market capitalization of NASDAQ companies.
Casteism
Post 1: Microsoft SUX!
/.
Reply: They have [insert some huge number here] percent of the market share for desktops.
Reply: Microsoft SUX! Windows 8 is EPIC FAIL! Windoze fone it SUX too.
Reply: I use visual studio, I like it.
Reply: Microsoft SUX! Visual Studio is for N00BS! You're an idiot! C# is CRAP.
Reply: I work for a [pick one of Fortune 500 company, Medium Sized Company, Small Company] We have MS desktops and servers, plus Linux, and some iOS devices. Each of these platforms has pro's and con's and is applicable to specific problems.
Reply: Microsoft SUX! You're too stupid to live.
There I just saved you a whole bunch of time reading all these posts. Funny, but this thread sounds just like:
Post 1: Global Warming is real and we have ten years to save the planet.
Reply: Uh, we've been hearing that we have 10 years to save the planet for the last 30 years, and it has been getting colder the last 15.
Reply: You're a clueless, unintelligent idiot. 138% of scientists agree that Global Warming is real.
OR A DOZEN OTHER TOPICS DEBATED WEEKLY HERE ON
Murphy was an optimist
Something just isn't right.
I use my Surface everywhere I used to use a laptop and almost everywhere I used an iPad. My mini is still my primary (over priced Kindle). Some of what I use the Surface for when on the road: Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere pro, the pen is great for Photoshop work!!! Visual Studio for work related dev Eclipse (on Windows) for Java work related stuff (jBoss for test deployment) Rubymine for personal projects, deploying to Amazon Ubuntu in a VMWare instance for test deployments What can your tablet do?