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

111–120 of 122 posts

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#111

Post by brudgers »

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…

Balmer's and Gate's 9% ownership stake allow Microsoft to be organized into a divisional structure along the lines of profit and cost centers. Wall Street can fuss and fume about Online Services or Entertainment and Devices quarter after quarter but Balmer is free to run them as the massive R&D organizations which they are (e.g. field testing of Kin, development and support of Metro, and social graph construction via Xbox Live).

Windows Phone 7 is a field test of the technologies which allow Windows on ARM to scale. Five years after the iPhone Microsoft has a competitive OS that scales and is robust enough for their enterprise customers.

Balmer understands that Microsoft's success in the consumer market segment comes from treating those relationships as B2B by providing long term support - my 8 year old laptop still gets OS updates - they sell on improvements not by breaking systems into obsolescence.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#112

Post by lawdawg »

aik wrote: post #41
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 sh…

A couple of things:

1. The "marketshare" that is referenced by Kantar is new sales marketshare, not overall marketshare. Its an important difference to point out.

2. Even with these gains in WP, iOS and Android are seeing similar absolute gains (e.g. in the 2-3% absolute marketshare growth). All WP is currently doing is taking a small piece of the symbian/BB pie

3. Given Microsoft's track record, the problem with WP is how long it takes for them to release a new product. Mango was what WP should have been initially, yet took a year to release. By the time WP8 is out, we will be looking at iOS6 and the Android version AFTER Jelly Bean.

Overall, I believe WP will not go away, but will stabilize at around 5-6% overall marketshare. The problem then is that given Microsofts development costs, they will continue to lose money. (Just look at Bing vs Google and even with 30% of US search shared, Bing loses billions of dollars a year)

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#113

Post by brown9-2 »

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…

This seems like a funny definition of "executing" that has nothing to do with a successful outcome.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#114

Post by adestefan »

throwaway63-90 wrote: post #76
snowwrestler wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be a while before that comes to pass. There aren't any significant competitors to Excel, Active Directory, or Exchange.

With Excel, I'm not sure. But if customers who are getting increasingly greater exposure to UNIX, through various channels, learn about UNIX alternatives to Active Directory and Exchange that work as well or better, but which cost less, it may well come to pass.

> learn about UNIX alternatives to Active Directory and Exchange

Can you name one, good alternative to Active Directory and Exchange that runs on a Unix platform?

As someone that spent almost a year trying to find an answer to that question I can tell you that there isn't one. These are the areas where Microsoft is still above and beyond anything else out there.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#115

Post by lihaoyi »

Drbble wrote: post #86
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…

Yeah MS business software is the worst, except for everything else.

After using Lotus Notes and Open Office, and trying to use Google Docs to make presentations and write reports, I have nothing bad to say about Microsoft Office anymore.

p.s. try inserting a nice video into a presentation made using Google Docs, and decide if you'll be happy showing said presentation to your clients.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#117

Post by basseq »

Microsoft makes a killing in the enterprise services market (aside: where, arguably, quality and user experience is less important than scaleability, end-to-end services, and feature set). The problem is that the latest round of technology (mobile, gaming, etc.) is not enterprise in the least. For an example of enterprise thinking failing in recent years, look no further than Research in Motion.

Businesses will always have their own set of problems and solutions. As Dustin points out, this is very profitable. But I think the line between enterprise and consumer software (and hardware) is blurring to the point that there's not a clear delineation. If you can't be attractive to the consumer market, you're going to start seeing other people eating your lunch in the consumer market (see also: rise of iDevices in corporate IT shops, entrants like Google and Dropbox, etc.).

Microsoft throws its legacy weight around, which counts for a lot. And they have some genuine good products, which counts for a little. But, IMO, their progress moving forward is more hindered than helped by Ballmer.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#118

Post by CubicleNinjas »

tallanvor wrote: post #96
CubicleNinjas wrote: post #70

"While Microsoft is no disruptive force in tech today, the truth is that it has never been." This is so false it is painful for me to read. I'm embarrassed for the author. "The company's core competency is a process it uses for entering and consuming existing industries. After it enters a market, it rides off the innovations of its competitors, uses its existing brand power and sheer size to tackle a large surface ar…

You're focused entirely on the consumer space, completely missing one of Dustin's big points. Where is Microsoft still doing big business? The Business Division, which is not only Office products like Word and Excel, but also SharePoint. They do huge business with SQL Server and Exchange, and products like Lync and Forefront are still growing. --Consumers could care less about those products, but obviously businesses…

You're completely correct.

I'm focused on the consumer, because I feel Microsoft wins enterprise by default. Who is the competition? Open source? I've been laughed out of Fortune 50 meetings for suggesting it. Small to Medium size software firms? They just don't integrate with Windows or Office as well. No one in the enterprise ever gets fired for choosing Microsoft. This is changing, but it will take years.

The problem is that the enterprise is a limited field. Once you sell to the Fortune 1,000 there isn't anywhere to go, outside of creating new products to resell to this group. This is why Microsoft feels like they are meandering, they need new revenue streams. This is also why they don't work so well in consumer products. Running after market leaders in hopes to find a revenue stream pisses off consumers.

Consumers are a different story. There are 7 billion individuals that don't have a procurement department. They buy smaller goods more often. There are entire industries that could be changed with one breakthrough product.

Comparing Microsoft and Apple is natural. Microsoft begs this comparison with its technology competitors by entering their markets and taunting them. They just do such a horrible job they don't feel like competitors.

MS Stores built as fancy luxury consumer hubs. Xbox 360, the billion+ dollar winner for MS last year, was born out of building hardware with software. The Nokia Lumia 700 is effectively the same mix of hardware and software (as Nokia was shadow taken over). The Zune was. Safari, Firefox, and Chrome lead the browser revolution, and all I see on TV now are IE commercials. Zune Marketplace. Windows Phone (the blackberry ripoff). Bing. Silverlight.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#119

Post by cma »

Steko wrote: post #26
lkrubner wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Their stock price is flat only if you don't include the dividends they've paid out." You have that backwards. If people think a company will pay out big dividends, then they bid up the price of the stock. That Microsoft's stock has remained mostly flat despite good dividend payments suggests that the stock would have plummeted without the dividend payments, and it will plummet if the dividend payments stop. A flat s…

"If people think a company will pay out big dividends, then they bid up the price of the stock." No not really and if they do then the price falls once the dividend is announced. This is basic math: Company is worth x dollars. Company gives away y dollars. Company is now worth x - y dollars. Felix Salmon explains it well here: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/03/19/apples-sens...

It doesn't fall when a dividend is announced but rather after it is paid out.

Re: Steve Ballmer's Microsoft

#120

Post by kevin_morrill »

etrain wrote: post #68

Forbes named "worst CEOs" based on one pretty clear criteria: These CEOs have failed to create value (or stopped creating value) for their shareholders over long periods, yet remain employed, and their companies remain pretty large. GE has underperformed the S&P by 40% since Immelt took over, Microsoft by 30%, Walmart by 40%, and while both Lampert and Chambers created value for a while, their companies have substant…

During Ballmer's tenure as CEO tripled revenues and more than doubled profits. It's one of the 5 most profitable companies in the world.
Post reply on HN