Particularly heinous for the Skype purchase: it's amazingly buggy. It's gotten shinier over the years, but they still payed 8.5 billion for a POS.
The Ballmer Days Are Over
41–50 of 218 posts
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why's it silly? He's buying a commodity business (thats what VOIP is) for 32x earnings. There's a reason M&A is often referred to as a winner's curse -- because winning the bidding typically means overpaying. The synergies execs often talk about almost -always- fail to be realized. Shareholders of Microsoft would have been much better off if the company just bought back $8.5bn in stock. A dividend would have been out…
Having Windows users be able to call each other and every other Skype user right out of the box could be pretty interesting.
Skype already has enough market share that bundling with Windows is not likely to generate enough growth to justify the purchase alone.
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#43Hardly, here's why: If you can link the phone with desktop
applications you have a hit that neither Apple or Google can duplicate. Think of you desktop as a server for your phone.
Who better to coordinate the operating systems of the two
than Microsoft. If that's what he is thinking, I can't wait
to watch the dog fight between the three of them.
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#44Hardly, here's why: If you can link the phone with desktop applications you have a hit that neither Apple or Google can duplicate. Think of you desktop as a server for your phone. Who better to coordinate the operating systems of the two than Microsoft. If that's what he is thinking, I can't wait to watch the dog fight between the three of them.
Let's give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is in their plans. It's 2011, what the heck have they been waiting so long for?
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why's it silly? He's buying a commodity business (thats what VOIP is) for 32x earnings. There's a reason M&A is often referred to as a winner's curse -- because winning the bidding typically means overpaying. The synergies execs often talk about almost -always- fail to be realized. Shareholders of Microsoft would have been much better off if the company just bought back $8.5bn in stock. A dividend would have been out…
Having Windows users be able to call each other and every other Skype user right out of the box could be pretty interesting.
You mean instead of those out-of-the-box Windows users having to just go to www.skype.com? It's pretty easy to install.
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#46The same board that approved this deal would be responsible for appointing a new CEO.
Exactly - a lot of this rant about how the board should sack Ballmer presumes that the board knows better.
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#47Windows Mobile 6.5 was a powerhouse of a product. Pre-2007 most U.S. buyers of smart phones chose between BlackBerry and Windows Mobile 6.5. Both were small screened devices with a hardware keyboard — with exception to the few HTC devices with stylus based touch screens. Palm was struggling at the time and Windows Mobile was the dominate player in consumer minds, BlackBerry was the beast in boardrooms.
This seems off to me. Am I the only one who doesn't remember "Windows Mobile was the dominate player in consumer minds" in 2006?
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#48Hardly, here's why: If you can link the phone with desktop applications you have a hit that neither Apple or Google can duplicate. Think of you desktop as a server for your phone. Who better to coordinate the operating systems of the two than Microsoft. If that's what he is thinking, I can't wait to watch the dog fight between the three of them.
But the desktop doesn't have long left as "a server for your phone"; servers are about to take over.
I predict that this time next year all major mobile operating systems will have some form of cloud sync
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why's it silly? He's buying a commodity business (thats what VOIP is) for 32x earnings. There's a reason M&A is often referred to as a winner's curse -- because winning the bidding typically means overpaying. The synergies execs often talk about almost -always- fail to be realized. Shareholders of Microsoft would have been much better off if the company just bought back $8.5bn in stock. A dividend would have been out…
Having Windows users be able to call each other and every other Skype user right out of the box could be pretty interesting.
Windows users could do this already without Microsoft owning Skype. Users who aren't able to install Skype on their own, probably won't use it anyway.
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#50So this is just shareholder activism at its finest. A lot of M$ share holders are upset at the Skype deal and with the returns on the stock since Ballmer took over. Nothing new here, just that Microsoft lead by Ballmer has underperformed the market. I keep waiting for these folks to say who they think should be running Microsoft but that doesn't come up a lot.
Inside Microsoft, many hope it will be Steven Sinofsky.