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Is Microsoft in trouble?

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Re: Is Microsoft in trouble?

#81

Post by [deleted] »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #38
mjfern wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your points above: a) In Microsoft's 2010 fiscal year (which has ended), its Entertainment and Devices Division (which includes the Xbox 360) generated $8.5 billion in revenues and just $679 million in operating income. Considering Microsoft's consolidated operating income in 2010 was $24 billion, this $679 million only accounts for about 3% of Microsoft's profits. And in any event the Xbox 360, the PS3, and the W…

Regarding point a, the Entertainment and Devices division included Live, which they are heavily investing in, thus giving out a loss. The true profit of the XBox is much higher than $679 million. And what do you mean by 'Windows Phone 7 is not market ready, and it's already mid-October' ? They're launching in 2 days in Europe and in 3 weeks in the US. Also, from your linked article you write that Verizon won't be bri…

[deleted]

Re: Is Microsoft in trouble?

#82

Post by kenjackson »

rbanffy wrote: post #64
kenjackson wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We disagree about a lot, but this is one thing that I do agree with. On both counts... Sharepoint doesn't seem to be very good software. But the competition is even worse. If some bright YC company that gets enterprise could come and do stellar document management, they'd easily have a $100M company. With potential for a $1B+ company.

I think it's only the perceived competition that's worse. I have deployed and helped deploy a great deal of intranets and websites based on Plone (I worked with "bare" Zope before) and it's delightful to use, manage, develop for and operate. True it doesn't have a billion+ dollar company behind it like Sharepoint, Documentum, Oracle's whatever-it's-called, but I think it's a feature rather than a bug. > If some brigh…

Plone 3 was horrible, but I've heard better things about Plone 4. Post when you get started on it. I have a list of features that you'll need to get in the door of most enterprises, and a list of new features that will get you $10M in licenses your first year, virtually guaranteed.

Re: Is Microsoft in trouble?

#83

Post by btilly »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #72
cryptoz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And what do you mean by 'Windows Phone 7 is not market ready, and it's already mid-October' ? I'm not sure what the OP meant by that, but here are some guesses: 1. If your friend emails you his address and you want to see the Bing Map to the location, you have to find a pen and paper to write it down. Then you have to open the Maps application and manually type it in . This is because there's no copy+paste. 2. The…

1 is patently false. See here http://www.mykindofphone.com/bring-on-bing-for-windows-phone... >For example, if someone sends you an address in an email, the phone will pick that up and turn it into a link. Click on that and you are in Bing maps Also, Copy paste in coming at the beginning of next year. 2. JavaScript is fast enough. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgvphQx9MY8 There's no HTML5 though but I fail to se…

The "no HTML5" is a biggie. A lot of websites have come to rely on having WebKit based browsers on smart phones, and so their mobile content uses HTML5 features that Windows Phone 7 does not support. So you have to fall back to a really crappy experience.

Re: Is Microsoft in trouble?

#84

Post by Someone »

code_duck wrote: post #65
lionhearted wrote: post #57

I'll never bet against a company with huge, established, consistent revenues and a strong research culture. That combination gives a large chance of being able to bring breakthrough technology to market.

Why can they not finish projects like the Courier tablet they were showing around? Or, even better, release something innovative before someone else has proven the market. It's been years, and they are just barely getting around to addressing the iPhone. They let Apple take off running with the iPad, and Microsoft still offers no comparable hardware or software... and it's not clear at all when they will.

1. They weren't showing a tablet, they were showing an idea. Nobody can build that thing at a reasonable price with technology that is available in the next two years.

2. IMO, they are making a long bet on C# and .Net that may pay of huge. C# in particular is a bit to programming languages what Apple is to computing devices: nothing really new, but really nicely packaged. Having said that, their focus on backwards compatibility doesn't help in keeping things nice. For example, .Net has how at least 3 XML serialization technologies, all with their own set of problems.

Re: Is Microsoft in trouble?

#85

Post by cscheid »

bediger wrote: post #80
lionhearted wrote: post #57

I'll never bet against a company with huge, established, consistent revenues and a strong research culture. That combination gives a large chance of being able to bring breakthrough technology to market.

You mean like Xerox, or the old AT&T (pre-SBC takeover)? Xerox has PARC, and AT&T had Bell Labs. Xerox is still in business, still making copiers, but where's AT&T? Bought by SBC, that's where.

(disclaimer: I work there) Actually, the AT&T research labs are alive and well:

http://www.research.att.com

Also, Bell Labs went to Lucent when AT&T split, not because of SBC.

Re: Is Microsoft in trouble?

#86

Post by potatolicious »

mjfern wrote: post #16
potatolicious wrote: post #8

> "In video game consoles, the Xbox 360 is trailing far behind the Nintendo Wii in market share, despite the fact that the Wii is using older generation technology (VGChartz, 2010)." I was with them until here. The Xbox 360 has claimed a gigantic share of the market starting from nothing just a few short years ago. Compared to Nintendo, whose sales of the Wii have slowed to a relative crawl, and whose mobile gaming m…

Good points, but let me offer a few counterpoints: - All three consoles started from nothing just a few short years ago, and in fact the XBox 360 had a year head start on the PS3 and the Wii (launching at the end of 2005 versus end of 2006 for the PS3 and Wii.) - According to VG Chartz, the Wii has sold 8.97 million consoles from Jan-Oct 2010, while the Xbox 360 has sold 6.8 million and the PS3 has sold 7.1 million.…

> "Yes, XBox 360 sales faired much better over the summer, but we will have to wait and see if this indicates a sustainable trend or a blip."

True, but I firmly believe this trend will be further cemented by Kinect. The amount of marketing and public awareness of the product is incredible (and damn well better be given how much marketing force MS is applying), and having used it myself I firmly believe this will be a bigger hit than the Wii. Sales compared to the Wii will be tempered by the higher price point, but overall public opinion will go towards it - and IMHO that's going to cause a sizable drop in Wii sales.

> "In the fiscal year 2010, Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division (which includes the Xbox 360) generated $8.5 billion in revenues and just $679 million in operating income. Considering Microsoft's consolidated operating income in 2010 was $24 billion, this $679 million represents only about 3% of Microsoft's profits."

Agreed. It's unlikely (if not outright ridiculous) that the Xbox will ever be a primary revenue driver for MS to the same tune that Windows and Office are. Even if MS owned the entire console market it still wouldn't be the case.

My point though, was that as far as their consumer products go, the Xbox team is the only one demonstrating any appreciable success - building products that are not only well respected in-industry, but outright loved by their customers. That's a level of success, vision, and loyalty that MS has never shown anywhere else in the consumer space. They've also demonstrated a willingness to toss out things that don't work and start anew (see: the new Dashboard UI that replaced the Blade UI). Heck, they're the only MS product out there that shows any real focus on the user experience - Windows is a damned joke in that regard. The success of the Xbox holds a lot of key concepts that the rest of MS must adopt it it wants to survive in the consumer space (and that includes home computing /w Windows)

> "Ultimately, the Xbox 360, the PS3, and the Wii may be irrelevant given the emergence of connected televisions, thin devices, and cloud-based gaming."

Possible, but IMHO unlikely. Consumers are very price sensitive to commodity items, and TVs are just that. Current connected TVs offer an incredibly poor user experience (I have one), and I don't see it getting much better anytime soon.

Software is not a demonstrable strength of the likes of Samsung, Sony, etc, and the level of hardware required to give a proper user experience adds significant cost to the set - something that IMHO consumers will select against.

Re: Is Microsoft in trouble?

#87

Post by sriramk »

mjfern wrote: post #52
sriramk wrote: post #32

As someone who works on Windows Azure, this got under my skin a bit :). In particular, I thought this was slightly lazy writing (W.r.t Azure) "I suspect it’s not performing well" and "Put simply, it’s hard to imagine that Microsoft is aggressively developing or marketing Azure, since cloud computing offerings directly threaten Microsoft’s revenues and profitability in the PC market, especially its Windows and Office…

Sorry, that wasn't my attention. I tried to research Azure online, looking for hard numbers on its performance in the cloud computing market (e.g., # of companies using Azure, adoption rates, etc.), but I was unable to find any concrete data. In fact, I struggled to even find a thorough review of Azure. Can you please point me to some data and/or reviews so I can incorporate this information properly into any future…

Some quick links

- Back in June, we announced 10K paying customers (6 months post launch)[1]. If you're looking for some 'big names', eBay, Dell, Fujitsu and HP are going to be using the Azure Appliance [2]. This is of course apart from internal teams like the Bing Twitter stuff. There's a neat Pivot visualization of case studies and partners here [3]

- Review - I'm not sure what you're looking for. Searching for 'Windows Azure review' brings up a lot of hits. I've written a book on it and so have others. There are tons of blogs dedicated to it (azurejournal.com for example). What exactly are you looking for?

My intent with this isn't to sound like some marketing droid.:)

[1] http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-passes-the-100... [2] http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/07/microsoft_cloud_com... [3] http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/evidence/

Re: Is Microsoft in trouble?

#88

Post by code_duck »

Someone wrote: post #84
code_duck wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can they not finish projects like the Courier tablet they were showing around? Or, even better, release something innovative before someone else has proven the market. It's been years, and they are just barely getting around to addressing the iPhone. They let Apple take off running with the iPad, and Microsoft still offers no comparable hardware or software... and it's not clear at all when they will.

1. They weren't showing a tablet, they were showing an idea. Nobody can build that thing at a reasonable price with technology that is available in the next two years. 2. IMO, they are making a long bet on C# and .Net that may pay of huge. C# in particular is a bit to programming languages what Apple is to computing devices: nothing really new, but really nicely packaged. Having said that, their focus on backwards co…

Well, while they were showing an idea, Apple was selling 5 million tablets. I don't see why the idea is impractical, though - it was basically two iPads stuck together with a hinge.

They have done well with their version of Java. It's generally well regarded.

Re: Is Microsoft in trouble?

#89

Post by Someone »

code_duck wrote: post #88
Someone wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. They weren't showing a tablet, they were showing an idea. Nobody can build that thing at a reasonable price with technology that is available in the next two years. 2. IMO, they are making a long bet on C# and .Net that may pay of huge. C# in particular is a bit to programming languages what Apple is to computing devices: nothing really new, but really nicely packaged. Having said that, their focus on backwards co…

Well, while they were showing an idea, Apple was selling 5 million tablets. I don't see why the idea is impractical, though - it was basically two iPads stuck together with a hinge. They have done well with their version of Java. It's generally well regarded.

I do not see how one would combine 'two iPads with a hinge' with 'for a reasonable price', even if it were 7" iPads. That hinge complicates the engineering a lot; the easy choice would be to have batteries in one half and CPU in the other, but I fear that might lead to asymmetry in weight and/or volume of the device.

Re: Is Microsoft in trouble?

#90

Post by latch »

redrobot5050 wrote: post #69
latch wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly look quite fondly on trending, and yes, xbox is trending in the right direction. But I still think calling it "wildly profitable" is silly. Having conceded that its trending positively, in this specific business, you're only as good as your last console. Nintendo is probably the only company that can lean heavily on its brand to get it through a poor hardware iteration (its brand and its so-far good-as-gol…

Keep in mind Nintendo is the only gaming company that sells hardware that turns a profit (Sony and MS lose money on console sales, or at least did on launch) and is actively trying to grow the market (and depending on who you believe, doing an incredible job of it) The mere fact that both Sony and MS now sell hardware that imitates the Wii's functionality should tell you this isn't a poor hardware iteration.

I wasn't talking about the Wii.
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