Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

dcurt.is

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 122 posts

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#41

Post by aik »

mrb wrote: post #30

"Microsoft's execution in mobile has been excellent". This could not be farther from reality. Microsoft has consistently lost money in the mobile market, to a point they are ashamed of it, and don't even give sale figures for the Windows Phone OS anymore. Profits from this business unit is reported in the "Entertainment and Devices" unit, which has turned a loss this quarter, again, of $229M. The only argument the au…

Look at recent US (and global) adoption rates of Windows Phone [1]. It's increasing, and with Nokia and their Lumia phones it is bound to continue. WP7 is a good OS, and more and more developers are backing it, and consumer satisfaction is excellent, and more and more people are starting to realize all this.

"Market research company Kantar WorldPanel has revealed in the last 12 weeks to mid-April Windows Phone has shown strong growth in the 7 major markets they monitor on the strength of Nokia’s offerings.

In 5 of the 7 markets (Germany, Britain, Italy, France and United States) Windows Phone market share is now in the 3-4% range, up from less than 2% in January 2012. In Germany Windows Phone market share more than doubled year on year to 6%.

In contrast RIM saw its US market share collapse to just 3% from 9% a year earlier, suggesting Windows Phone may have matched or even passed RIM’s market share in USA.

Kantar has predicted in January Windows Phone market share may hit 10% in Europe in the second half of 2012, and it seems to me with more Windows Phones being announced all the time that this may very well be achievable."

[1] http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/WmPowerUser/~3/Uofacrd8iKQ/

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#42

Post by jpadkins »

Smudge wrote: post #36
dcurtis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really an issue that you can take an extreme on. Even in relative "failure," Microsoft has executed correctly in mobile. Actually, their execution has been way better than I would have expected. It is losing money, sure, but short term losses are not important when you're talking about entering a market as large as the mobile phone market after the existing players are firmly entrenched. The traditional me…

Yep. Microsoft sold the Xbox at a loss and didn't turn a profit from it until 2008 - 6 years after it first edged its way into the market. By that metric, it's way too soon to call Microsoft's mobile execution a failure.

Their first smart phone was windows mobile 2003. They been at it 9 years, 1 reboot and 2% market share. (longer if you count their pda days).

it's pretty much a failure.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#43

Post by fleitz »

mrb wrote: post #30

"Microsoft's execution in mobile has been excellent". This could not be farther from reality. Microsoft has consistently lost money in the mobile market, to a point they are ashamed of it, and don't even give sale figures for the Windows Phone OS anymore. Profits from this business unit is reported in the "Entertainment and Devices" unit, which has turned a loss this quarter, again, of $229M. The only argument the au…

Can you give us a realistic game plan that starts with the iPhone launch & WinMo6 and ends better? After iPhone excellent execution gets you failure, that's just the current state of the market.

They've made awesome deals with companies like HTC, even convincing HTC to pay them $15 for every Android phone they sell, etc.

They've pretty much got Nokia on lockdown almost exclusively WinPhone7.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#44

Post by zacharycohn »

jpadkins wrote: post #42
Smudge wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Microsoft sold the Xbox at a loss and didn't turn a profit from it until 2008 - 6 years after it first edged its way into the market. By that metric, it's way too soon to call Microsoft's mobile execution a failure.

Their first smart phone was windows mobile 2003. They been at it 9 years, 1 reboot and 2% market share. (longer if you count their pda days). it's pretty much a failure.

They executed well on the XBox and didn't need to reboot.

They misstepped with WinMo. Then they rebooted. Start your count over again.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#45

Post by keeperofdakeys »

jpadkins wrote: post #42
Smudge wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Microsoft sold the Xbox at a loss and didn't turn a profit from it until 2008 - 6 years after it first edged its way into the market. By that metric, it's way too soon to call Microsoft's mobile execution a failure.

Their first smart phone was windows mobile 2003. They been at it 9 years, 1 reboot and 2% market share. (longer if you count their pda days). it's pretty much a failure.

Everyone is referring to WP7, since they effectively 're-entered'.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#46

Post by Smudge »

jpadkins wrote: post #42
Smudge wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Microsoft sold the Xbox at a loss and didn't turn a profit from it until 2008 - 6 years after it first edged its way into the market. By that metric, it's way too soon to call Microsoft's mobile execution a failure.

Their first smart phone was windows mobile 2003. They been at it 9 years, 1 reboot and 2% market share. (longer if you count their pda days). it's pretty much a failure.

If you consider the Windows Phone line to be merely the next iteration of Windows Mobile, then, yes, thus far it has been a complete failure.

But I don't think that's a very holistic viewpoint. Despite how terrible Windows Mobile was, it had a good hold of the market until the iPhone came along. It wasn't really a "failure" until it started declining in 2008. Microsoft's response, Windows Phone 7, was a complete reboot of their mobile line, and we have yet to see how it will perform in the long run.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#47

Post by sauravc »

dean wrote: post #6

The stock market is all about the future, not the past. A lot of people see Microsoft's future as being less profitable than its past. That's why people belittle it. Microsoft makes a ton of money, no one will deny that, but they make less money than they used to. It's funny how the OP shows the financial numbers for one quarter and says the "the trend here is clear". You can't determine a trend on one quarter, you h…

Good points, but I think this one is inaccurate:

"Microsoft makes a ton of money, no one will deny that, but they make less money than they used to."

Actually they make a lot more money now than since Ballmer took over as CEO.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#48

Post by jarrett »

"Microsoft makes an endless quantity of software that is alluring to big businesses, like Office, SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint, etc..."

Let me offer some perspective on this. I worked for a number of years as a programmer at a large (read: "enterprise-scale") entity. Being in closer physical proximity to the general workforce than our IT department, I was often the go-to guy when employees needed tech support.

And one thing I learned is that Microsoft's overcomplicated software saps countless hours of productivity from organizations. I shudder to imagine the salary dollars that go to waste every day as people search for a certain button in the Outlook interface, fiddle with Word's quirky indentation logic, try to set up mail forwarding in Exchange, and panic over the "lost" (actually hidden) rows in their Excel workbooks.

If I were running a BigCo, I'd avoid exposing my regular employees to MS products. If my DBAs wanted to use SQL Server, ok, no problem. When it comes to software that is purely internal to the tech department, I'd trust their decision. But if I would never force my marketing department to do all their mail and calendaring with Outlook, unless of course I were willing to accept the inevitable productivity hit.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#49

Post by latch »

zacharycohn wrote: post #44
jpadkins wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their first smart phone was windows mobile 2003. They been at it 9 years, 1 reboot and 2% market share. (longer if you count their pda days). it's pretty much a failure.

They executed well on the XBox and didn't need to reboot. They misstepped with WinMo. Then they rebooted. Start your count over again.

No, they didn't. Over the course of its life, the XBox brand is still billions in the red. It only started turning up a relatively small profit a year or two ago. It has a long way to go before anyone should consider it successful.

The problem with consoles is that there's no brand loyalty (except for Nintendo). It only takes 1 bad console for an established player to vanish, and 1 good console for a newcomer to succeed.

Xbox live might be changing that, but it's still waayyy too early to call it either a success or failure. Though, certainly financially, it's been a small disaster so far.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#50

Post by mletterle »

jpadkins wrote: post #42
Smudge wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Microsoft sold the Xbox at a loss and didn't turn a profit from it until 2008 - 6 years after it first edged its way into the market. By that metric, it's way too soon to call Microsoft's mobile execution a failure.

Their first smart phone was windows mobile 2003. They been at it 9 years, 1 reboot and 2% market share. (longer if you count their pda days). it's pretty much a failure.

Everyone on this thread has to realize that they're effectively rebooting with Windows Phone 8 later this year again.[1] Maybe not to the degree of WinMo -> WP7, but it's certainly another disruptive (to the app devs) refresh.

[1]http://www.winsupersite.com/article/networking/time-running-...

Post reply on HN