Microsoft: ignore PC sales slump 'chatter' Microsoft has downplayed "chatter" about a looming slowdown in PC sales hurting Windows 7 and its business in general. Executives have separately told Wall St investors that they shouldn't be worried about what they're hearing, and that Microsoft — which gets a third of its annual business from sales of Windows on PCs — is …
The only problem with the idea of Microsoft's "but we don't just make PCs work" spiel is that they have yet to make any money from anything that's not PCs. Servers only exist to make the PCs work. If you aren't adding PCs then in general you don't need to beef up your server fleet. *
Microsoft can sure sell XBoxen...but they don't make money here. Mobile phones, Internet, Zunes, or other such endeavours? Larf. Diversification is irrelevant if you “don’t get it” in any non-PC market so very badly that your repeated failure has become an international dinner-table joke.
Sorry Microsoft, but you only get one “The New Coke.” Repeated “new cokes” arent’ diversification. They’re sending good money after bad.
*Allow me to qualify this. You do tend to beef up just servers and not PCs, but rarely is it Windows that is involved. Normally when we are talking Servers Only we're talking Linux, Unix or big stonking Oracle/DB2 databases.
I do keep hearing good reports from people using Windows 7.
From the corporate PoV, the testing needed to be sure that Windows 7 isn't going to break anything the business depends on is non-trivial. We hear plenty about companies still using ancient versions of Internet Explorer.
Personally, I'm in two minds about upgrading to Windows 7. I'm not in any corporate software trap, and already use Linux on one machine.
I also see companies selling current software without, yet, "supporting" Windows 7.
On the whole, I don't think Microsoft is in trouble, yet. It's likely too early to see a corporate shift to Windows 7. But the longer it takes to start happening, the more reason there is to worry about Microsoft.
And, sometimes, it seems that everything they sell has to be called "Windows". How long before the company changes its name to match? The brand isn't "Microsoft" any more.
"Will Wall Street be sucked into its vortex too? Or will they finally tell him to take a running jump when MS turns in yet another miserable quarter?"
$4,82 billion in fourth quarter profits.
Up 48% from the same quarter last year.
$62.5 billion in revenues for the year. $19 billion in profits. Up 26% from last year.
... I know what my colleagues and friends are asking me about ... and they want alternatives to MS operating systems. The big question of the day is whether to put more money behind an Apple system, or put less dosh being a home build and put Ubuntu on it.
Now that people are waking up to wanting to get more bang for their buck, they're not happy with the cut down stuff that gets sold from the high street any more.
The most common thing that people are coming to me with is that they don't want to return to the old days of having to upgrade the OS every couple of years, and all the associated hassles with it. They are just honest to goodness fed up of Windows.
That's the proper path - less dosh, more Ubuntu. No more pesky upgrades there, eh?
And, having gotten fed up of Windows, they will be at home with the Linux "Windows" - Ubuntu.
No hassles there! Honest to goodness.
Surely MS will go tits up this time - no PC sales - orders non-existent - no revenue - the 5% Gang and the less than 1% Gang are closing in.
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