Thank god they're investors and not CEOs.
Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface
21–30 of 78 posts
Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface
#22With Amazon and Google finding some success in diversifying their offerings, one must posit if this is what companies need to do to remain competitive and sustain. Leaders lead!
Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface
#23Probably not. This is about the myopic quarter to quarter focus on profits by the market, the stock market in the last 30 years has been increasingly unable to to focus on the long game - if it does generate income or profit by the next quarter, its rubbish. This attitude has wormed its way all through the economy, its part of why its hard to get a company to promote from within - they expect their employees to come…
I'm not too convinced this is due to short term thinking: if you're a short-term investor you still benefit from a company using a long term strategy because you can just sell the stock.
Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface
#24Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface
#25Listen, I'm no fan of Microsoft, but those investors better keep their hands of the ergonomic keyboard product line, or I'll... I'll... probably have to stockpile them? Seriously though, the ergo 4000 is the best keyboard I've ever owned and I'd hate to see it gone by the hand of somebody who just doesn't care enough.
Wait...they're messing with the 4000?
Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface
#26Well Microsoft got XBOX wrong two times in a row. So no surprises here. Only the first XBOX was good console IMO. XBone and 360 were disappointments [1].
Surface is also one of the products Microsoft almost got right - there was real interest on windows on ARM at the time. But full windows.
And Bing - well its only advantage over google is the turned off content filter.
[1] Owned 360 for 5 years, played 5 hours on it.
Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface
#27"Morfit is a 37-year-old activist investor whose employer, the private hedge fund ValueAct, acquired a 0.8 percent stake in Microsoft in August. That was enough to put Morfit on the board."
Slightly OT, but how does owning < 1% of a company's shares qualify for a board seat? Can someone who knows about these things enlighten me?
Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface
#28Probably not. This is about the myopic quarter to quarter focus on profits by the market, the stock market in the last 30 years has been increasingly unable to to focus on the long game - if it does generate income or profit by the next quarter, its rubbish. This attitude has wormed its way all through the economy, its part of why its hard to get a company to promote from within - they expect their employees to come…
> This is about the myopic quarter to quarter focus on profits by the market, the stock market in the last 30 years has been increasingly unable to to focus on the long game - if it does generate income or profit by the next quarter, its rubbish.
I've seen this sentiment about the market like, forever. Yes, I've been investing in the market for 30 years.
But I seriously doubt that investors are so stupid. If they were pushing up stock prices based on quarterly results and the long game be damned, then where are all the smart investors shorting those companies? Are you making money on shorts?
And, why are there companies like Amazon with enormous P/E's? Clearly, investors are playing the long game with them.
Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface
#29I wonder if they could sell Xbox to Lenovo for $huge. I don't think consoles are going to do very well this time -- mobile gaming killed the market for 'people who will tolerate lower spec hardware because it's convenient', and IIRC the PS3/360 were better relative to $2k PCs when launched than the PS4/Xbone are today relative to $2k PCs. The PS3/360 have been pretty mediocre for years, so the PS4/Xbone are going to get mediocre in a couple of years, so there's a long period of ugh ahead.
Media convergence is the only reason to keep the Xbone business, but if Microsoft focuses on Enterprise (or at least "work"), that doesn't matter, either.
Re: Investors want Microsoft’s new CEO to kill Xbox, Bing and Surface
#30Well Microsoft got XBOX wrong two times in a row. So no surprises here. Only the first XBOX was good console IMO. XBone and 360 were disappointments [1]. Surface is also one of the products Microsoft almost got right - there was real interest on windows on ARM at the time. But full windows. And Bing - well its only advantage over google is the turned off content filter. [1] Owned 360 for 5 years, played 5 hours on it…
How can you say xbone is a disappointment? I have a jar of mayo that's been around longer than that device. Give it a year or two, sheesh.