Word: pc
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...Revenue for the company's fiscal third quarter, which ended on March 31, fell 6% to $13.65 billion. Operating income was $4.4 billion, so Microsoft's software businesses still produces tremendous margins. The company blamed the weakness in the global PC and server markets for most of its troubles. The only really good news Microsoft had is that the latest versions of its flagship product, called Windows 7, will launch on time next year. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
...would be expected, Microsoft's largest business, its PC software operation, suffered a 15% decline in revenue to $3.4 billion. The division still made an operating profit of $2.5 billion. There are very few large businesses in the world with a margin that large. The company's server and tools division and business software operation had similarly impressive operating numbers...
...large and that makes it a captive of the economy. Microsoft is not going to outperform the trends in global technology spending by a great deal, and it will rarely do much worse. What will happen is that Microsoft will remain the dominant force in business, server, and PC software for years. The company's products are too ubiquitous and too well-designed to be easily replaced. Microsoft will have competition, but that competition will not transform the software industry overnight because Microsoft's products are the glue that holds together a very large portion of the technology used...
...phone unit sales will be down in 2009. What is even more puzzling is that large handset companies don't just make smart phones; they make a lot of cheap phones for people in emerging markets and consumers who don't want a handset that acts as a TV, PC, personal assistant, and objects d'art. Apple and RIMM are doing remarkably well selling products into the high end of the market...
This is where the Apple envy comes in. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996 and resurrected it, his centrist, controlling approach looked crazy to many outsiders. The PC business had boomed, after all, in part because the software (that is, the operating system) was separated from the hardware. "PC compatibility" meant that anyone could build a box that ran Microsoft's Windows operating system, and that initially made many companies enormously successful, from Compaq to Dell. But it also created a race to the bottom as hardware makers were forced to continually offer consumers more bells and whistles...