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Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

dcurt.is

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Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#51

Post by joshAg »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #33
joshAg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consoles are sold at a loss, so that more people will buy the console (licensing fees are proportional to the size of the audience/consumer base). Even the PS3 when it first came out at $600 was a loss leader; if i'm remembering right for the PS3, the cost of the hardware was something close to $1000. Companies expect to make that money back through 1st party game sales and licensing fees from 3rd party developers fo…

That doesn't explain the loss at all. The 360 is liely not costing more to build at this point in its lifecycle and all the games are actively paying their royalties. The Xbox is profitable. The problem is the other businesses lumped in with them.

i don't disagree; i stupidly answered the question poster asked (how could microsoft not make a profit selling xboxes) instead of the question s/he meant to ask (why did the entire bu lose money).

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#52

Post by tobtoh »

jarrett wrote: post #48

"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. An…

You've never used Lotus Notes then ... you have no idea what non-intuitive counter-productive UI is until you use Notes.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#53

Post by Smudge »

latch wrote: post #49
zacharycohn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 succ…

Welcome to consumer electronics. Comparatively speaking, Microsoft has fared quite well.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#54

Post by Smudge »

mletterle wrote: post #50
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.

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-...

As far as I know, they have yet to disclose the full developer story around WP8. We can certainly speculate, but I doubt they'll do anything too disruptive or they'll risk losing the small amount of market they've worked so hard to gain.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#55

Post by InclinedPlane »

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…

Exactly. Microsoft has been sitting on the smartphone market. For. A. Decade. And they took that commanding lead and had their lunch eaten overnight by iPhone and Android. It took them NEARLY FOUR YEARS to respond to the iPhone with Windows Phone 7.

Yes, WinMo 7 is a good product as far as platforms go, but it may not be good enough to catch up. They still have a lot of catch up to do with the marketplace and the ecosystem and with courting developers and manufacturers to their cause. They need to be making dramatic plays at this point, but they're not. When MS needed to bootstrap the XBOX gaming ecosystem they went out and straight up bought gaming companies, bringing Halo (one of the most popular game franchises in history) to their platform. When Sony needed to rescue the PS3 from a poor game library they bought media molecule and made Little Big Planet an exclusive title, among other purchases they made. Both companies also did a lot more to encourage developers to make games for their platforms. WinMo needs to make the same sort of efforts, but they haven't.

Meanwhile, look at the state of hardware. The best Windows Phone you can buy is 2 to 3 generations behind the state of the art relative to the iPhone or Android. You can't expect to push single core WVGA phones into a market where 300+ dpi screens, dual core CPUs, and a gig of ram is rapidly becoming the norm.

Even if we were to accept the notion that Windows Phone was the best mobile OS on the market the overall experience of using a Windows Phone (which is heavily influenced by the apps and games available, the speed and quality of the hardware, the quality of the screen, etc.) is not even remotely the best. Similarly, while Google and Apple have been adding new capabilities, better performance, and new features to their phones by leaps and bounds with each release, the Windows Phone has comparatively stagnated.

And there's every indication that each one of those gaps will continue to grow wider over time. Microsoft managed to catch up just barely by putting forth a concerted effort, but if it takes such a diving-catch sort of effort to continue to catch up at every step in the future then they will invariably miss on a few occasions and fall behind for good.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#56

Post by harshreality »

MartinCron wrote: post #38
bgilroy26 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>value investors Just following your logic here, value investors bank on the market's eventual rationality? Or is it rather that a company who is undervalued for no real reason today might be overvalued for no real reason tomorrow?

I don't remember who first said it, but it's worth repeating, "the market can stay stupid longer than you can stay solvent"

John Maynard Keynes. s/stupid/irrational/

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#57

Post by InclinedPlane »

dcurtis wrote: post #35
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…

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…

Correctly? Hardly. They've executed competently on some aspects. But if they hope to be a serious competitor they have to do better.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#58

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Smudge wrote: post #53
latch wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 succ…

Welcome to consumer electronics. Comparatively speaking, Microsoft has fared quite well.

Comparatively speaking, Apple has done much better in consumer electronics.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#59

Post by jpadkins »

keeperofdakeys wrote: post #45
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.

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

we are talking about Balmer and his reign, which includes then entire winmo era.
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