Earlier quoted context omitted.
Umm GE sells pharmaceuticals and has a large healthcare division. Apple tried and failed to enter B2B, recently.
You get my point thought regardless of the example, Oracle doesn't make phones, and Samsung doesn't make game consoles. Here is a quote from Jobs: People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. And can you give an example and cite how Apple tried and failed to e…
The Ballmer Days Are Over
201–210 of 218 posts
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and increasing earnings per share generally increases stock price. In theory you only buy shares back when you believe that they are worth more than they are trading for. If this is true, it will increase the intrinsic value of the company and should increase its price per share. If it is not true, then management is incapable of evaluating their own business and shareholders should demand that all non-essential…
Buying back shares doesn't raise the stock price because it doesn't change the underlying fundamentals. If the stock goes up after a buyback, it only stays up if there was a reason other than a share buyback.
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Judging by source of revenue, Microsoft's an enterprise software vendor, Apple is a consumer electronics company, and Google is an advertising company. They're Microsoft's biggest rivals in terms of media hype, and they all make mutually competing products, but they're not a fair basis of comparison in terms of stock value. How have Oracle and SAP done?
...but they're not a fair basis of comparison in terms of stock value. How have Oracle and SAP done? Let's compare with a whole platoon of major tech companies that were big a decade ago: ADBE: +73.40% HPQ: +47.36% IBM: +48.65% MSFT: -27.03% ORCL: +109.06% SAP: +70.15% YHOO: +70.57% You'll note that MSFT sticks out like a sore thumb. In their defense, MSFT also has been paying dividends, which some of the comparison…
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#204>> In fact, the acquisition by most accounts sounded more like a move by Ballmer to buy something that others may have wanted to own — just for the sake of others not owning it. This struck me because I'm presently reading Stephen Levy's In the Plex , in which he reports at great lengths about why Google decided not to purchase Skype when eBay had it up for sale: mainly owing to Skype's peer-to-peer technology not be…
If you look at Microsoft's words and actions in regards to their competitors, they are clearly completely clueless. In fact, "Microsoft people" are often completely blind to everything not made by Microsoft. Reading HN you may never know, but if you've met actual .NET stack developers, or MSCE's or anyone else similar, and you'll find people who make websites and don't know what apache is. Or they'll dismiss open sou…
Clearly they have a clue. They realize that it's perfectly feasible to deploy large-scale applications using only the Microsoft stack. There's even a lot of evidence it might be the most efficient way to do it.
Personally, I try to avoid using Microsoft technologies - but I wouldn't be surprised if, making the switch, life suddenly became a lot simpler.
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
You get my point thought regardless of the example, Oracle doesn't make phones, and Samsung doesn't make game consoles. Here is a quote from Jobs: People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. And can you give an example and cite how Apple tried and failed to e…
XServe and WebObjects.
WebObjects, meh, if that's the biggest fault you can point out in Apple then they're doing fine.
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Buying back shares doesn't raise the stock price because it doesn't change the underlying fundamentals. If the stock goes up after a buyback, it only stays up if there was a reason other than a share buyback.
If you don't overpay for the shares, your enterprise value should be the same or slightly higher. So market cap should be flat to slightly higher but there are fewer shares outstanding so price per share would go up. When buybacks don't increase share price, by definition market cap must be decreasing.
If you yourself had a a market cap of $25 including the $5 in your wallet, giving away that $5 would lower you market cap to $20.
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, the shares disappear. A company cannot own itself, at least not directly. If a company had 3 million shares outstanding, then buys back 1 million shares, there would then be 2 million shares.
So do the remaining shares own more of the company?
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even so, it wasn't enough. Shareholders of MS stock realized a 25% return due to dividends over the last 6 years, nearly half of it due to that one $3 per share dividend. In contrast, Google shareholders realized a 177% investment gain, Amazon shareholders a 370% gain, and Apple shareholders a 900% gain. This would be fine if Microsoft were in a different industry than these guys, but they're not. If anything Microso…
Past performance is no indication of future performance. Looking back, buying Microsoft in 2000 with a P/E of 60 was a stupid thing to do. But, that says nothing about buying it today with a P/E of 10. IMO, Microsoft is a great value play and but nothing to write home about, however Apple (16x) is slightly over priced and Google (20x) is stupidly overpriced.
Given the expected substantial growth of per-capita wealth throughout parts of the developing world (e.g. much of Asia especially China, parts of India, much of South America, parts of Eastern Europe, etc.) and the consequent expansion of the population of the affluent, developed world the potential future market in the computer software/hardware/services industries is likely to be enormous. The companies that manage to cement themselves firmly into the future mainstream mechanisms for people to buy physical and digital goods online as well as the mechanisms for obtaining access to the online world will be well seated to collect substantial revenues from that expanded market. And Apple, Google, and Amazon are much better situated and seemingly much more capable of capitalizing on new forms of markets than Microsoft is. I believe all of that is, to varying extents, reflected in their respective stock prices, and I think it's a very valid view of the state of those companies.
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
what products does Apple put out there for businesses That's the beauty of it - they don't have to target businesses, because businesses buy their shit anyway. doesn't really compete against .NET Apple doesn't have to compete against .NET - Microsoft shot itself in the foot years ago by not building a Unix and by not taking advantage of the open-source ecosystem. You may say what you want about .NET, but go to any so…
I don't care for MS, but I do grudgingly respect .NET from everything I have seen. And while it is hip to use Apple and run RoR, Django, Erlang, or any other next big language and stack, .NET is huge in the corporate world where the stack is decided based upon politics and who plays golf with who instead of by the developers. And yes, Apple doesn't compete with .NET, that was sort of my point. They different products…
It isn't just the hipsters that are deploying to Linux, it's the big guys too, like the London Stock Exchange.
Re: The Ballmer Days Are Over
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't care for MS, but I do grudgingly respect .NET from everything I have seen. And while it is hip to use Apple and run RoR, Django, Erlang, or any other next big language and stack, .NET is huge in the corporate world where the stack is decided based upon politics and who plays golf with who instead of by the developers. And yes, Apple doesn't compete with .NET, that was sort of my point. They different products…
These alternative platforms for software development are actually eroding Microsoft's market share. It isn't just the hipsters that are deploying to Linux, it's the big guys too, like the London Stock Exchange.
where is the data about that ?