back to article Microsoft reports low Q1 earnings on sluggish PC sales

Microsoft had an unremarkable quarter during the three months ending September 30, with a soft PC market contributing to low earnings in advance of a raft of highly anticipated Redmond product launches that will begin later this year and continue through 2013. On Thursday, the software giant posted a profit of $4.47bn on …

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  1. Paul 129
    Devil

    Yup, good luck with that!

    New version reception.

    Apple: Chatter about new stuff

    Linux: Mutter about changed stuff

    MS: Fear about new stuff, and what we loose this time.

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: Yup, good luck with that!

      This time it will be slightly different.

      The release of each new version of WIndows starting from 3.0 (with the exemption of the transition of 3.10 to 3.11) has required a bigger, better and fatter machine. This is the first time when this is not the case.

      This breaks this never ending upgrade spiral and makes everyone in the PC racket cower in fear of it going right. Not that they will be any better if it goes wrong too.

      As a "Windows Free for 15 years" household owner I can only say - pass me the popcorn please.

      1. fandom

        Re: Yup, good luck with that!

        I would say that Windows 7 rund in Vista machines better than Vista ever did

  2. Goat Jam
    Windows

    A licence to extort money

    "On Thursday, the software giant posted a profit of $4.47bn on revenues of $16bn for Q1 of its fiscal 2013 – not great compared to the $5.74bn profit it brought in during the same period the previous year"

    I know the world of mega corporations and high finance is something that we mortals will never be able to comprehend but to me I would think that most companies could only dream of making more than 25% profit on their earnings.

    If they can do that in a bad year and with all their loss making businesses dragging them down then I can only imagine what margins they are making when they force the majority of PC buyers to purchase incremental upgrades of their products whether they want them or not.

    If they took away their non performing stuff and just reported their Win + Office figures their profit results would probably be seen as truly outrageous. No wonder they stopped reporting that stuff some time back.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A licence to extort money

      They are a software company (primarily at least.) Profits are going to be higher on the turnover because there aren't a lot of expensive components to make their product. Red Hat, for instance, make something like 20% profit on turnover for the last results I could find.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Before long...

    Bama will declare we are in an economic depression... right AFTER the election!

  4. HairyFool
    FAIL

    Not much hope there then

    "Looking forward, however, everything depends on a successful launch of Windows 8"

    Oh dear!

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