Microsoft Earnings Report Fiscal Q1 2011

[zed]

With some things it's a whole generation ahead of both IOS and Android.

like what?

With some things, it still has to catch up. But do note that many of the shortcomings that people like to parrot are due in the first major update in the spring of '11. How many OS revisions did it take Apple before they were able to implement copy and paste? Which one will get Flash first?

as you say spring '11 they may have what the competition has today. Sure wp7 is most likely vastly superior to iphone1.0 but the thing is its competing against iphone 4.0 (+ next year 5.0) i.e. by the spring '11 the competition will have moved further on. Its like seeing specs for ipad competitors and saying they look great compared to the ipad (+ they do!),
http://www.ipadkiller.net/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/20/lg_tablet/
And then u see they actually ship next year, i.e. whilst they may wipe the floor with the ipad spec wise, when they come out they'll be competing against the ipad 2.0

btw we may see flash apps on the iphone sooner than you think
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20015954-264.html

 

[mrcorbo]

like what?

as you say spring '11 they may have what the competition has today. Sure wp7 is most likely vastly superior to iphone1.0 but the thing is its competing against iphone 4.0 (+ next year 5.0) i.e. by the spring '11 the competition will have moved further on. Its like seeing specs for ipad competitors and saying they look great compared to the ipad (+ they do!),
http://www.ipadkiller.net/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/20/lg_tablet/
And then u see they actually ship next year, i.e. whilst they may wipe the floor with the ipad spec wise, when they come out they'll be competing against the ipad 2.0

btw we may see flash apps on the iphone sooner than you think
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20015954-264.html

I realize that I'm being a bit pedantic here, but the chart you embedded is actually out of date on something and while not outright wrong not totally right in a couple of others WRT WP7.

Specifically:

Multitasking is actually in WP7, but is only allowed for first-party Apps. This could change at any time if MS is able to find a way to guarantee that performance isn't impacted by 3rd party apps running in the background. Of course, this may never happen.

Removable Storage is actually physically possible on at least a couple of the launch phones. The phones do have microSD slots and replacing the storage card has been made to work, though not at all consistently. There is a slight contrast here with the Iphone whose storage physically cannot be upgraded. The question is, is this something that the OS could or would be patched to allow or is the presence and support for microSD slots on these phones just something that has been enabled by MS in order to make it easier for their hardware partners to adapt existing designs to WP7. The latter seems very plausible, IMO, though this doesn't preclude the former from also being true.

WP7 has an official 3rd-party Twitter app.

The XBOX Live support on WP7 > the XBOX Live support on either other phone. They don't just lack integration as is the usual with 3rd-party vs 1st-party, they are missing fundamental functionality. This way this is represented on the chart seerms misleading to me.

Also, I would add another category that PC World omitted - "Multiple Form Factors". IMO it is an advantage shared by both WP7 and Android that there are multiple hardware choices to choose from. This is to me at least as important as some of the features that actually made the chart.

I just wanted to point these out because this chart is hardly an objective analysis of those 3 platforms. That having been said, depending on what one feels is important, the things I mentioned may not negate the basic premise that chart is putting forward. WP7 is overall behind both Android and Iphone. How far behind is subjective enough to require more than "X's" and checkboxes to assess.

IMO, MS are close enough to make this a race to innovate between the three. Which would be a very good thing for consumers, IMO. I believe the smartphone market is poised to see massive growth going forward and MS still has time to gain a foothold in the market. They are definitely on the clock, though, as every new customer that purchases one of the competition's devices is one more customer likely to be locked-in to that platform going forward as they purchase platform-specific content.

 

[NavNucST3]

Microsoft's stock price is less than half of what it was in 1999 (I know, that's when I first joined the company), even accounting for stock splits.
1999 full year revenue: $19 billion. 1999 Full year net profit: $7.7 billion.
2010 full year revenue: $62 billion. 2010 Full year net profit: $18.7 billion.
11 year profit growth: 140%
11 year revenue growth: 220%
11 year stock growth: more than -50%

Trust me, it makes some of us very sad...

If enough of us band together maybe we can get the guy in charge to make use of his rhodium parachute. But it is never even a thought in shareholder meetings...well...more than a fleeting thought...Looking at MSFT during Gates' years and the charts for the Ballmer years and ... At least my MSFT dividends are buying more shares until such time I feel sufficiently liquid that I kill the reinvest and start pulling the money down into the bank account. Thats more than a handful of years away however.

 

[Gubbi]

In general I moderately dislike Microsoft, I hate Apple.

I only hate Microsoft for not pushing PC gaming and I think it's an incredibly bad policy which will significantly contribute in their loss of market share in consumer PCs (and in due time this will start eating into their cash cow market in the corporate environment).

The problem with PC gaming has been the countless permutations of hardware configurations we have seen with the rise of the GPU. We might see a revival of PC gaming with the integration of small GPUs on CPU dies. This will define the lowest common denominator performance-wise and might give publishers a wider target to aim at. Consoles are much better in this regard though, since you have a defined hardware standard instead of a de facto one.

Microsoft earnings in the corporate segment is almost entirely dependent on the Office application suite and various back office products (Exchange). PC gaming, living or dying, has zero impact on this revenue stream. I can't see anybody challenging MS in this segment in the near future (10+ years).

The segment where there is most room for improvement is in the server segment. Linux/BSD (in various forms) are killing them in small webservers and Oracle is killing them in big iron DBMS.

Regarding stock price: Comparing current stock prices to stock prices in 1999 is pointless. All tech stocks were overpriced in 1999. With a P/E of around 12.50 the stock price is only slightly undervalued today.

Cheers

 

[aselto]

If enough of us band together maybe we can get the guy in charge to make use of his rhodium parachute. But it is never even a thought in shareholder meetings...well...more than a fleeting thought...Looking at MSFT during Gates' years and the charts for the Ballmer years and ... At least my MSFT dividends are buying more shares until such time I feel sufficiently liquid that I kill the reinvest and start pulling the money down into the bank account. Thats more than a handful of years away however.

What is Ballmer doing wrong specifically? He managed to sustain huge profitability during hard economy, the Microsoft & Windows brand images are greatly improved since Gates stepped down (MS is no longer the evil empire and Windows is considered a good OS for once). It doesn't sound like a lousy job to me at all.

So, his main fault is that he doesn't seem to foresee emerging markets in which software giant should be active and should be ahead of competition. Sometimes MS manages to win back the market they were late on (netbooks), though more often it can mean long and costly battle with established competition (Apple and Android on smart phones and tablet). Is it why MS shares have been flat?

 

[MfA]

PC gaming, living or dying, has zero impact on this revenue stream. I can't see anybody challenging MS in this segment in the near future (10+ years).

25% of incoming college students in the US gets an Apple laptop ... without PC gaming I could have seen it being 50+.

Linux would not be where it was if not for the familiarity of young people working their way up ... the consumer side matters.

 

[AzBat]

(MS is no longer the evil empire and Windows is considered a good OS for once).

Huh, where have I been when this happened? I hear about those complaints as much now as then. Personally I don't think perception has changed much. The only bright spot is Xbox, but then again the whole RROD fiasco kept it from being too successful. We'll see how Kinect does to bolster their image, but it wouldn't surprise if it doesn't do any good either. Microsoft is just one of those companies people love to hate. I can't seem that image changing a whole lot for the better.

Tommy McClain

 

[mrcorbo]

25% of incoming college students in the US gets an Apple laptop ... without PC gaming I could have seen it being 50+.

Linux would not be where it was if not for the familiarity of young people working their way up ... the consumer side matters.

Aren't you completely discounting the Apple tax? I think the price premium would have a much bigger impact than the presence or lack of games on the platform.

 

[scently]

Huh, where have I been when this happened? I hear about those complaints as much now as then. Personally I don't think perception has changed much. The only bright spot is Xbox, but then again the whole RROD fiasco kept it from being too successful. We'll see how Kinect does to bolster their image, but it wouldn't surprise if it doesn't do any good either. Microsoft is just one of those companies people love to hate. I can't seem that image changing a whole lot for the better.

Tommy McClain

Indeed. Though having been using the WP7, I have to say that I am impressed by the OS, its so smooth and very Apple-like. I t is not the type of experience that I expect from MS. It is very different from all the other mobile OS in the market. And they are listening to the consumers for further improvement.

 

[eastmen]

Indeed. Though having been using the WP7, I have to say that I am impressed by the OS, its so smooth and very Apple-like. I t is not the type of experience that I expect from MS. It is very different from all the other mobile OS in the market. And they are listening to the consumers for further improvement.

To me its very ms like. Which is a good thing. I really don't like apple os's they are very ineficent .

Anyway I have to disagree with alot of MS hate in this thread. They make quality products . Just alot of them lack the advertising that apple or google throw at them.

My friend came up to me the other day and started talking about netbooks and how awsome it was that apple made a netbook. I said to him thats great. i've had a netbook now for over a year that i bring with me to class so I don't need to lug around a big laptop. He looked at me and said what do you mean. Apple just came out with it , its new. I had to explain to him that the apple air isn't the first netbook and that there have been linux and window netbooks for a long time. He just didn't get the idea that apple wasn't the one who invented it.

Now alot of products that ms have made have been good or better than the rival product.

Take zune for example. The 30/80/120 gig units are better than the apple products they compete again. Song sharing , wireless syncing , larger screens for video , better podcast support (at least at the time) and vastly better performing software on windows machines. But at that point apple was advertising ipods all the time and people didn't think mp3 player they thought ipod .

MS just needs to get out ahead with advertising and they need to stop canceling great projects. An ipad is okay. But i don't see the need for it. It wont replace my netbook or laptop and i guess its okay for surfing or watching vids in bed , but my 42inch tv in the bedroom has a htc attached. But the courier would be perfect for school work and work. I could bring it with me to class and take physical notes and use it at work for inventory as it would be much better and smaller than even hte netbook i use for inventory and other things. But for some reason its gone ? Why .... everyone who aw it was excited about it , but ms canceled it. It makes no sense .

The other problem with ms seems to be intergration. Windows 7 phone should be thier mobile platform including tablets , but all the leaks i see sugest that tablets are running win 7. They should also intergrate win 7 phone into windows 7 kinda like how live is in windows. I just don't see them making things that fit together

 

[corduroygt]

Take zune for example. The 30/80/120 gig units are better than the apple products they compete again. Song sharing , wireless syncing , larger screens for video , better podcast support (at least at the time) and vastly better performing software on windows machines. But at that point apple was advertising ipods all the time and people didn't think mp3 player they thought ipod .

If you're talking about the non-touchscreen zunes, this is false. I had those and the build quality, battery life, and the look and feel of them were inferior to ipods. The software worked fine though, no complaints about that. It was a fine device given a chance, what was really stupid though is that the Zune library wasn't integrated into the WMP library and it had to have software installed They should have just made the next version of WMP the Zune software since it was much better. Add the lack of USB disk mode and most importantly that people didn't want to lose their iTunes DRM songs that they paid for when switching, so they just replaced their ipods with another one, dooming the Zune.

The touchscreen zunes were very nice though, but by that time, the app store had taken off, Apple yet again foiling Microsoft in the mobile arena.

 

[scently]

To me its very ms like. Which is a good thing. I really don't like apple os's they are very ineficent .

Anyway I have to disagree with alot of MS hate in this thread. They make quality products . Just alot of them lack the advertising that apple or google throw at them.

My friend came up to me the other day and started talking about netbooks and how awsome it was that apple made a netbook. I said to him thats great. i've had a netbook now for over a year that i bring with me to class so I don't need to lug around a big laptop. He looked at me and said what do you mean. Apple just came out with it , its new. I had to explain to him that the apple air isn't the first netbook and that there have been linux and window netbooks for a long time. He just didn't get the idea that apple wasn't the one who invented it.

Now alot of products that ms have made have been good or better than the rival product.

Take zune for example. The 30/80/120 gig units are better than the apple products they compete again. Song sharing , wireless syncing , larger screens for video , better podcast support (at least at the time) and vastly better performing software on windows machines. But at that point apple was advertising ipods all the time and people didn't think mp3 player they thought ipod .

MS just needs to get out ahead with advertising and they need to stop canceling great projects. An ipad is okay. But i don't see the need for it. It wont replace my netbook or laptop and i guess its okay for surfing or watching vids in bed , but my 42inch tv in the bedroom has a htc attached. But the courier would be perfect for school work and work. I could bring it with me to class and take physical notes and use it at work for inventory as it would be much better and smaller than even hte netbook i use for inventory and other things. But for some reason its gone ? Why .... everyone who aw it was excited about it , but ms canceled it. It makes no sense .

The other problem with ms seems to be intergration. Windows 7 phone should be thier mobile platform including tablets , but all the leaks i see sugest that tablets are running win 7. They should also intergrate win 7 phone into windows 7 kinda like how live is in windows. I just don't see them making things that fit together

Yeah, WP7 interface on a tablet would be awesome actually.

 

[wco81]

Funny, MS products don't sell as well because they don't advertise enough?

That's what a lot of people said for years about Macs versus Windows.

 

[bkilian]

they need to sack ballmer!

honestly since hes been in charge MS have gone downhill.
A perfect example
but win phone 7 OS
It launches and has less features than its competetion (ios + android)
10 years ago this wouldnt of happened

the less said about kin the better

I wouldn't say WP7 has _less_ features than its competition, just _different_ features. And I was on the Kin team, I could say a lot about it. I won't though, suffice to say that there are a lot of reasons it failed, and not all of them can be laid in front of Microsoft.

Kin as a physical product was certainly a non-starter, but that had more to do with requiring a smartphone plan (for the Data use) for a non-smartphone than the product itself.

Kin however lives on and is a major part of WP7. But some things were done to reduce the data plan costs required. For example, resolution of images that can be automatically synced to the cloud or posted to facebook etc. have been limited in size greatly. But other than data useage reductions and some minor tweaks, Kin basically lives on in WP7.

As to WP7, it all depends on what you want. With some things it's a whole generation ahead of both IOS and Android. With some things, it still has to catch up. But do note that many of the shortcomings that people like to parrot are due in the first major update in the spring of '11. How many OS revisions did it take Apple before they were able to implement copy and paste? Which one will get Flash first?

There's going to be advantages and disadvantages between the 3 platforms. So a blanket statement that it has less features is a bit nonsensical when neither IOS nor Android have some of the features that will be available on WP7 by default. Now, whether those features are relevant to someone or not will determine which platform they go for.

So in a sense you could quite legitimately say that both IOS and Android are lacking in features compared to WP7. But it'd be far more correct to just say that each platform has features unique to itself or which it doesn't share with both or one of the other platforms.

Regards,
SB

The Kin parts of WP7 were grabbed as concepts wholesale when the WP org rebooted a couple of years ago. I really like the WP7 interface since it caters to how I use a phone. I really hate the array of apps on my iPod Touch. The homescreen is not just useless, it's worse than useless, compared to WP7 which makes the homescreen very useful for me.

 

[RobertR1]

I really hate the array of apps on my iPod Touch. The homescreen is not just useless, it's worse than useless, compared to WP7 which makes the homescreen very useful for me.

The iphone is borderline useless for productivity unless you jailbreak it. Apps like Lockinfo, notifier, sbssettings and others are a must. I don't really know how people use the iphone in a heavy business enviornment. Having to slide to unlock all the time just makes be cringe. With Lockinfo, I only unlock my phone when I need to for browsing for specific apps. For business needs, all my emails, calendar, missed calls and texts can be addressed at the lock screen.

Looking forward to testing a W7 phone device once Verizon gets them (corp contract). Although from what I can tell, WP7 is still more catered towards the iphone crowd. Hopefully by then, the software updates will improve on the productivity end by the time Verizone launches their phones.

 

[eastmen]

Funny, MS products don't sell as well because they don't advertise enough?

That's what a lot of people said for years about Macs versus Windows.

I have to disagree with this. Apple products were allways all over the place. In 90% of movies in the 90s and early 2000s they were using macs. Ethan Hunt in mission impossible didn't log onto a windows 95/98 laptop he logged into an apple laptop. Its the same in the majority of movies and tv shows. Its only lately that ms has started advertising . Win 7 is the first windows product since 95 to get this much advertising.

 

[dobwal]

The iphone is borderline useless for productivity unless you jailbreak it. Apps like Lockinfo, notifier, sbssettings and others are a must. I don't really know how people use the iphone in a heavy business enviornment. Having to slide to unlock all the time just makes be cringe. With Lockinfo, I only unlock my phone when I need to for browsing for specific apps. For business needs, all my emails, calendar, missed calls and texts can be addressed at the lock screen.

Looking forward to testing a W7 phone device once Verizon gets them (corp contract). Although from what I can tell, WP7 is still more catered towards the iphone crowd. Hopefully by then, the software updates will improve on the productivity end by the time Verizone launches their phones.

Apple's intention wasn't to try to make a Apple version of the Black Berry, its intention was to make a phone version of a Ipod. 80% of people aren't buying "smart" phones, they are buying "fun" phones. Productivity for actual business use comes secondary to productivity for useless entertainment.

Even Android based phones seem lean towards entertainment then business productivity. This is not because of the OS but the manufacturers and their custom UIs. My Samsung Captivate does movies, music and games really well, but my email is slow as molasses, gps was half broken at purchase and the phone lacks visual voicemail (something I really miss about my iphone).