Microsoft reports record first-quarter revenue of $18.53 billion

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2013/oct13/10-24fy14q1earningspr.aspx

by coloneltcb • 13 years ago

244 235 13 years ago

microsoft.com

recuter3• 13 years ago

Headlines from Dec 18th, 2009: "BlackBerry shipments break record in Q3, RIM profits jump 59 percent".

Also known as the Wile E. Coyote Syndrome.

jbooth• 13 years ago

If I remember correctly, that was around when they released blackberry storm and had a real shot at being a triumvirate along with iOS and Android.

tedunangst• 13 years ago

You could literally post this comment every time every company from Google to Netflix have record revenue.

Also known as the even a broken clock is right twice a day syndrome. :)

recuter3• 13 years ago

Not at all. RIM was screwed when the iPhone was announced, and despite dismissing it publicly (just like Microsoft did) they knew that internally but did nothing.

That lack of leadership sealed their fate.

Google and Netflix are firing on all cylinders not placating Wall Street with short term profit surges.

bsaul2• 13 years ago

don't know why your comment was downvoted, i find it extremely relevant. i also remember how, a couple of years ago, blackberry announced a rise in profits, and how some blogger explained how that was the end of their product cycle and that they were only improving profits from a soon to be extinct product ( with nothing to replace it).

microsoft is not as deep in a mess, yet it's really good to be aware of the fact that sometimes rising profits means you're milking the last drops from the cow.

devx2• 13 years ago

Windows revenue is (finally) down. I say finally only because many people wouldn't believe this would happen, even a few quarters ago. That could be quite a problem for Microsoft over the next few years. Right now they are offsetting that with enterprise deals, but do they really think that's safe for them? RIM did, too.

tanzam753• 13 years ago

Windows revenue is (finally) down. I say finally only because many people wouldn't believe this would happen, even a few quarters ago. Right now they are offsetting that with enterprise deals, but do they really think that's safe for them? RIM did, too.

If anyone is surprised by this, then that person has not been reading Microsoft's financial statements.

Windows revenues were also down year-over-year in Q4 of fiscal 2013, and in Q3 of fiscal 2013, and in Q1 of fiscal 2013. (Non-GAAP in all cases, to back out the effect of revenue deferrals.)

As for RIM, I don't see what it has to do with Microsoft. RIM didn't have platform lock-in -- all they had was email.

In contrast, analysts estimate that IBM still derives 40% of its profits from mainframes. ("Estimate" because IBM plays accounting games to minimize the contribution of mainframes.)

marcosdumay3• 13 years ago

Yep, and now that it's happening, it's a cloudy number because MS cut the price when changing from 7 to 8.

Well, the price cut is another symptom of decreasing market appeal. But it does make the number less useful.

JPKab• 13 years ago

They will continue to milk the enterprise cow, but eventually even they will dry up.

Refefer• 13 years ago

But will it? The value of enterprise solutions are often times validated by consistency: it's nice to have a megalithic company with a proven track record of hitting their SLA. Personally, I don't use Microsoft (or Apple for that matter) products at all. However, I would be hard pressed to come up with alternative company which provides practically all the necessities for the technological infrastructure of a company. Google is certainly trying but hasn't quite gotten there yet. There's something very comforting knowing that a product purchased to day will be supported the full length of its contract.

outside12343• 13 years ago

I know everyone here wants to believe that but their percentage of penetration in enterprises continues to rise and the breadth of their offerings as well.

They are growing more cows and expanding their offerings to other herds (see Java support, node.js support, Linux support, ...).

seanmcdirmid• 13 years ago

I know everyone here wants to believe that

Factually speaking, some of us here don't want to believe that, especially if we work for Microsoft.

pradn• 13 years ago

Businesses will stop needing software to make them more productive? When will this happen?

Or are you saying that Microsoft's products will be overtaken by others?

camus2• 13 years ago

Businesses will stop needing windows and windows servers eventually.

specialp• 13 years ago

We are a Apple/Linux shop here with a couple of hundred employees. We use Active Directory (switched from LDAP) and we have the Macs on load sets. We recently outsourced our email to Google. It is not as easy as with Windows.

Microsoft has a good thing going in enterprise as their boxes are much easier to manage en masse and it works well together. I do not think they are threatened as much by cloud services like Gmail, Google Docs as much as people think. They simply say to their entrenched enterprise customers in which things are working for them "We offer cloud Exchange and cloud Office" I think MS has the enterprise community on lock and they are moving in the direction to transition them to online services.

jusben13693• 13 years ago

This is impressive. They blew through their numbers. They're showing that they can offset a slowdown in the core cash-cow via other product lines. Search revenue increase was particularly impressive.

barista8• 13 years ago

Impressed by the diversity of revenue streams for Microsoft. Wonder how a one trick pony like Google will be able to handle this should it run into pressure from competitors in future.

jotm• 13 years ago

I dunno, they could be the first to come out with a CarOS and get government contracts (automate bus routes, trucks maybe, later individual cars). Self driving cars is right up there with EVs for future revenue sources...

InclinedPlane3• 13 years ago

It's funny really. Microsoft has lots of revenue streams despite being clueless about a lot of things (in many ways they are in lots of markets they don't truly understand). But to some degree it doesn't matter, at least for now, because they keep trying and they do learn from their mistakes.

Google, on the other hand, is extremely bizarre. They have excellent engineers and they have a ton of high-impact applications and services. But they are utterly clueless when it comes to dealing with customers, so they have yet to significantly diversify beyond their revenue models from a decade ago. Google has at least 3 separate multi-billion dollar businesses locked away within their company (in addition to search/ads) but they still don't know how to make use of them or bring them to maturity.

It's stuff like this that makes you appreciate the companies that get everything right.

MaysonL• 13 years ago

Except for the fact that their (non-GAAP) operating income fell 3% (YOY). Falling profit on rising revenue is a red flag, no?

barista8• 13 years ago

Not an accounting major so a genuine question: Why is non-GAAP operating income a better indicator than net profits?

HelloMcFly• 13 years ago

Falling profit on rising revenue indicates shrinking margins, which should be an outcome of a capitalist marketplace.

gesman• 13 years ago

MSFT's todo list to boost revenues:

1. Accelerate Ballmer booting out process. Why's he still there?

2. Boost Cloud.

3. Boost enterprise services and everythings.

4. Stop wasting resources on stupid consumer widgets department.

aabalkan• 13 years ago

Stock price just hit after hours $35.63 (up 5%), good news for Microsoft employees indeed.

ChuckMcM4• 13 years ago

Nice boost in their search revenue, if your wondering why Google's CPCs are going down, that is why. Microsoft has gotten serious about exploiting their search engine tech and that is having an effect [1]. Unlike 'recuter' I don't think this is their "Blackberry Moment" :-)

Google is smearing the smartphone market, at the expense of Apple's cash engine, Microsoft is smearing the Search market at the expense of Google's cash engine and Linux is smearing the operating system market at the expense of Microsoft's cash engine. Seems like there is a lot of pressure to diversify.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/24/pricing-engine-adwords-bing...

drzaiusapelord• 13 years ago

Linux is smearing the operating system market at the expense of Microsoft's cash engine

Is this true? I don't see too many Enterprise shops going "no more windows, exchange, and active directory. its ubuntu, postfix, and ldap all the way!"

Linux certainly has killed commercial unixes, but MS Server products never got popular for web and other areas Linux is traditionally strong in. The fabled year of the linux desktop never happened.

MS still leads with many enterprise products. For all the hand-wringing over surface and bing, MS is swimming in money on the enterprise side.

nickbauman• 13 years ago

"the linux desktop never happened." Correct. Because it happened on the phone.

shmerl3• 13 years ago

The fabled year of the linux desktop never happened.

In the past. But now, MS desktop deteriorates and that process will only grow with Linux finally getting more traction. Valve's push for Linux gaming is one of key factors which will reduce MS grip on the desktop.

kaspm• 13 years ago

This probably would have been better put as "*nix-based" operating systems. If you include MacOS, iOS and Android as nix-based, it's very much happening at both the consumer and the enterprise level.

sien2• 13 years ago

Perhaps what finished off 'the year of the Linux desktop' in the end was OSX.

It's incredible that the enterprise mail market is dominated by MS. How Linux didn't get that is beyond me.

ChuckMcM4• 13 years ago

Its true in two very interesting ways -

First it has nearly sealed off the 'cloud' from Microsoft. Sure there is Azure, and you can ask many VPS providers to put Windows into the box, but Linux system images dominate the 'cloud' OS space by a large margin. So a lot of what Microsoft used to sell as 'back office', aka an NT server for a small business running exchange and maybe Access is shifting over to gmail + AWS.

The other place its getting crushed is of course mobile phones. If it weren't for licensing revenues from patents the Android (and Linux kernel) would be doing more financial damage, as it is, the number of 'seats' which run the operating system of choice are running a Linux derivative. We've talked about how this is the 'post PC' era, and it is, and the Post PC, whether it is your Samsung 'smart TV' or your phone, predominantly doesn't pay Microsoft an OS tax.

So revenues that Microsoft used to get for OS installs are now time limited patent licenses.

kbenson2• 13 years ago

The fabled year of the linux desktop never happened.

That's partly because the desktop became more irrelevant, while mobile became more relevant, and linux dominates the mobile market. One could say that the it switched from being about "the year of the linux desktop" to "the year of the linux palmtop", and that already happened.

Of course, depending on your point of view, that may just be double speak to obscure original point, which to varying degrees it most certainly is.

tomphoolery• 13 years ago

Who said it was "a year"? I thought I read "the age of the Linux desktop". That would imply much longer than a year, which would IMO be a lot more accurate.

Regardless of what it actually is, my point is that I don't believe we will see the kind of overwhelmingly quick adoption of Ubuntu or other flavors of Linux until somebody makes a laptop or desktop computer that runs Ubuntu, does everything a Mac/Windows machine can do (and I mean EVERYTHING...the only reason I'm not running Linux all the time is because the best DAWs and audio plug-ins are for Mac or Windows), and somehow also markets it to be a cool computer to have. That's the only way they're going to beat Apple at this, by being better.

But that's not going to happen. What will happen, I believe, is that over time, more and more people will gravitate to using Linux as they tire of the limited choice offered by Apple, Google and Microsoft. Hopefully, so many will that major software vendors will begin porting their stuff to Linux, at which time it will become more and more obvious for people to be using it. With Steam for Linux and SteamOS based on Linux, we've already seen some trickles of this in action. I think we'll see more gamers gravitate toward Linux when Steam for Linux gets more popular and if that succeeds, other industries will follow suit.

phaus2• 13 years ago

The fabled year of the Linux desktop never happened.

Maybe history will prove me wrong, but I've got a feeling that Valve isn't quite ready to stop batting 1000.

snambi• 13 years ago

Yes, still a lot of enterprises are stuck with outlook etc. But how many new companies are going for outlook. I heard even large companies are moving to gmail. Example : genentech( roche).

Most of us are forced to use outlook, because it is our corporate mail server. It is horrible, but our IT guys don't know anything else. Typiclly IT departments are run by who only know microsoft.

corresation• 13 years ago

Nice boost in their search revenue

From what to what? I see a "47% increase", but was that from $100 to $147, or $100,000,000 to $147,000,000?

jusben13693• 13 years ago

I think they're on track to do $2 bil this year for some context.

stonemetal• 13 years ago

I tried searching for it on bing :). The only thing that even had an estimate was http://searchengineland.com/microsoft-search-ad-revenue-esti...

Their guess was between 900 million and 1.8 billion, or large but they haven't a clue. 47% should be in the ballpark of a few hundred million.

kumarm2• 13 years ago

>Microsoft has gotten serious about exploiting their search engine tech and that is having an effect

If you ask a source like Yahoo who see's real data, you would know thats not true. If Bing is making an impact Yahoo would not be going out of way to avoid Bing.

CPC is down due to lower CPC's on Mobile. Isn't it public knowledge?

barista8• 13 years ago

This was probably a tactic by Marissa to push Microsoft to modify the terms of the contract to be more favorable. Remember she was not the one who signed it.

forwardslash• 13 years ago

What do you mean by 'avoid Bing'?

ChuckMcM4• 13 years ago

You realize that Yahoo is Bing right? Yahoo outsourced its native search engine to Microsoft a while ago and has served up results from them ever since.

CamperBob2• 13 years ago

Keep in mind that thanks to the patent system, Microsoft probably makes more on a per-smartphone basis than Google.

jamespo• 13 years ago

Probably not when you include ad revenue

curiousfiddler• 13 years ago

With so many people willing to give Linux a shot more than ever before, I think Ubuntu (or any well supported Linux dist) is really at that stage where there is a great chance for them to be commercially very successful. I really hope and wish someone really gets there.

recuter3• 13 years ago

Dell has gone private, HP has flat out called them a competitor.

Their online division giving Google some heat is all well and good but that Wintel thing is still their bread and butter - alienating all their hardware partners by doing Surface and buying Nokia is a big deal and a great gambit if it works out - but so far its failing and seems desperate. Their position is increasingly precarious.

I don't think they are doomed, I do think they have a very real crisis in leadership and focus.

zanny3• 13 years ago

I don't think pissing off their hardware vendors is really that big a deal. There is an echo chamber in HN towards unix in both Linux and Apple forms - your grandparents still expect to talk into Best Buy and buy something with Windows on it, because it runs their ISPs POS pop3 email app, or they have all their pictures in some proprietary picture catalog program and don't know how to take them out of it.

I guess the more alarming trend is how a lot of tech companies and governments are picking up LTS Ubuntu as a replacement for Windows XP workstations they have had for 10+ years.

sirkneeland• 13 years ago

Windows is only a quarter of MSFT's income. Not insignificant by any definition, but not bread and butter either...

seldo• 13 years ago

God, that graph in that article is so dumb it hurts. It appears to undermine their case, in fact. Actual graph:

http://cl.ly/image/1t2Y3d1B0A1y

Samuel_Michon2• 13 years ago

Google is smearing the smartphone market, at the expense of Apple's cash engine

That statement is not borne out by data. Apple’s iPhone revenues and market share have continued to rise since inception. Please remember that Apple was never the biggest phone manufacturer. In the last couple of years, iPhone (and in general, smartphone) growth has mainly come from people switching from feature phones. The rest came at the expense of Symbian, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry. The number of people switching from iPhone to Android is negligible on the whole.

In the last reported quarter by Apple, in which the iPhone offerings were awaiting a refresh, Apple sold 20% more iPhones compared to the same quarter last year. Unit sales reached an all-time high for the June quarter.

eball2• 13 years ago

So if Android didn't exist, Apple's profits wouldn't be higher?

arbuge• 13 years ago

Maybe now they'll have enough money to figure out a decent search ads account UI and offline editor like Google has. Currently they're almost as much of a pain as healthcare.gov.

dmak• 13 years ago

So since Apple isn't smearing anyone, does that mean they're the trend setters?

ma2rten• 13 years ago

I think Apple is smearing Microsoft by taking a portion of their desktop market.

devx2• 13 years ago

No way that's why Google's CPC is down. It's because on mobile it's a lot lower, and people are using mobiles more and more instead of PC's (measured in time spent on them).

levosmetalo• 13 years ago

The funny thing is that those "smeared cash engines" in all of the mentioned examples are at their all time peaks and growing. I wish someone would smear my business cash engine like that.

us0r• 13 years ago

Why are we comparing Microsoft to RIM?

RIM was a one trick pony. Microsoft has several billion dollar businesses.

epa2• 13 years ago

Don't forget these are un-audited and don't really give us much information other than what they want to show us.

tanzam753• 13 years ago

If they play games in Q1, then they'd simply take a hit in Q4. The annual report is audited, and the quarterly numbers have to add up to equal the annual numbers.

It wouldn't look good to play the Surface write-off trick twice in a row.

epa2• 13 years ago

I don't see your point. These numbers are quarterly growth numbers since the audited year end statements. It has nothing to do with their upcoming year end or future quarters. They tell us the positive things but don't show us anything related to expenses or actual revenue dollar amount increases/decreases.

outside12343• 13 years ago

There would be a beating of a high magnitude if these end up being false. If anything, if they were false, they would have only met numbers not gone and crushed them.

Zigurd• 13 years ago

If they want to translate the great performance some parts of Microsoft are having into a Google-like stock price they should break Microsoft up into business and consumer companies.

Critics of Microsoft are wrong to call it's enterprise business a dinosaur. There is no reason to think Microsoft won't continue to grow this business for decades to come.

But I would like to be able to own this as a pure play, not mixed up with XBOX. Let's call this company "Azure" and spin it off, like HP did with Agilent (which should have been called HP), and let the "devices and services" part screw around with reinventing itself.

paul_f• 13 years ago

For those of you who continue to predict the demise of MS, it might be worth mentioning that Microsoft has a quite broad range of products and they primarily sell to enterprise customers who are notoriously non-fickle.

mikelat2• 13 years ago

Microsoft's ventures are very much dependent on their operating system though, making the entire company like a house of cards. If their operating system monopoly ever goes, the entire company would collapse with it since they're so dependent on it. The only other successful product they have that isn't dependent on windows right now is xbox, and that's a very volatile market.

Google is similar in the fact that a lot of what they do depends on internet ad revenue.

twoodfin• 13 years ago

I don't think that's right. My guess is that the vast majority of iPads and iPhones used in the workplace are sync'ing mail via Exchange. While that could change, it won't be because Windows is no longer the dominant client OS.

PhrosTT• 13 years ago

Yes but Apple (or any the OS developer) is 10+ years behind MS in the enterprise architecture department; a market they'll probably never enter since they want margins on hardware.... not corporate bulk discount contracts.

I don't see how anybody can assail their stranglehold on the cubicle market.

clavalle3• 13 years ago

What? First, they have enough cash to weather quite a lot of financial upsets.

But to say they are dependent on their OS for revenue is silly.

SQL Server income is not dependent on the OS -- anything can talk to it. Their cloud solution is not dependent on their OS. Search. Even Lync and Office can be used with other operating systems.

Mikeb852• 13 years ago

I don't think anyone is seriously predicting their outright demise, only their loss of power to dictate the computing landscape.

While I have no doubt they'll survive another 20 or 30 years, they no longer have the power and mind-share they once had.

tonyplee• 13 years ago

Microsoft have been under government/competitors' anti-trust watches for the past 10 years.

Now with google/apple catching up, they probably can move a bit faster without consult lawyers in every single move.

On the other hand, with so much cash/profit, the employees/managers have no hurry to move too fast anyway. The share holders might not be too happy.

umeshunni• 13 years ago

$400M in Surface revenues. At even a generous $400 unit price, that's only 1M sold this quarter. Probably closer to 700K if you consider some of them being Surface 2 priced up to $900.

rsoto• 13 years ago

There are costs associated with each sale, not everything is revenue.

tanzam753• 13 years ago

There are costs associated with each sale, not everything is revenue.

"Costs associated with each sale" are irrelevant when considering revenue.

If you spend $400 to make a $500 sale, it's the same as if you spend $100 to make a $500 sale. Both are $500 in revenue. What's different is income, which is revenue minus costs.

MekaiGS• 13 years ago

Revenue is income before cost of goods sold.

dragonwriter• 13 years ago

Costs associated with sale mean not everything is profit, but are irrelevant to revenue.

veemjeem• 13 years ago

Unlike Apple who sells direct to consumer, it's likely that quite a few of those Surface units are still sitting on store shelves.

nkerkin• 13 years ago

Microsoft sell direct to consumer[1]. Every consumer electronics store I walk into has a bunch of Apple gear sitting on store shelves also.

[1] http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/html/pbPage....

300bps5• 13 years ago

I am a developer at an investment bank that passed the Level 1 Chartered Financial Analyst exam part of which explicitly tests you on your ability to read accounting statements. If you are a developer without similar training, please realize that you will probably sound as uninformed offering your commentary on this topic as would an equity analyst giving their opinion on pages of C code.

ejstronge• 13 years ago

It sounds like your background might allow you to offer a unique perspective - or at least temper the immediate conclusions a layman might have.

What do you think about the importance of this announcement, given your training?

megablast• 13 years ago

Feel free to offer your unique perspective. But we can still look at this from other avenues.

sbuccini• 13 years ago

It sounds like you can give some solid insight on this issue. Could you please state your position instead of simply mentioning that other people are unqualified to do so?

300bps5• 13 years ago

It sounds like you can give some solid insight on this issue.

No, I can't because I don't follow Microsoft as a stock. The analogy is that while I am able to program in Java, that doesn't mean I'm qualified to evaluate a particular code base written in Java without investing substantial time to research it. The analogy is not perfect of course - since most of the time people writing code aren't purposely trying to obfuscate it like people who write accounting statements are trying to do.

clavalle3• 13 years ago

I think much of the HN audience deals with the business side of the house enough to get their bearings on an revenue statement.

nilved• 13 years ago

This may be the most pompous comment on HN, a forum known for its pompous comments. Congratulations.

300bps5• 13 years ago

This may be the most pompous comment on HN

Who is more pompous? The people thinking they are intrinsically expert at financial analysis posting here or the person that points out how silly they sound?

Seriously, picture a real financial analyst with no computer background reading your Ruby code and drawing all kinds of nonsensical conclusions from it. You'd probably laugh your head off when they read a comment in the code and thought that it was a functional instruction. That's the type of things developers are doing here with their armchair financial analysis.

droneStrikes• 13 years ago

Then I absolutely want to know more about such things. Please do share some or anything you can, regarding, oh... I dunno... whatever sort of insights might escape the ordinary common man, equipped with a high-schooler's grasp of basic integer math.

I've heard these sort of claims before, coming from financially oriented colleagues. I hate it when they make these kinds of dismissive pronouncements. The worst thing you could ever do is plainly state that a thing is simply too complicated to be worth explaining.

If these arcane statements should be regarded as esoteric hieroglyphics by the uninitiated, at least tell us which one is the sun god?

Seriously, we're all pretty curious types around here, and even when the material is bone dry and stale as Soviet bread, we all enjoy learning. At least I know I do.

300bps5• 13 years ago

The worst thing you could ever do is plainly state that a thing is simply too complicated to be worth explaining.

After working in finance-related IT for 16 years, I signed up for the Level 1 CFA exam to take it in December of 2009. I've been in IT for 20 years but I thought, "How hard could this be?" I found out. I ended up studying for over 350 hours and was thankfully one of the 33% of people that passed the test when I took it. 67% of people that took the test failed it.

So I ask you - how much of those 350 hours of studying do you think I can squeeze in a Hacker News comment? Do you think you could teach a financial analyst how to analyze Java code in a Hacker News comment? Would you take the time to even try?

r00fus• 13 years ago

Demonstrate, don't declare. So please, leverage some of that CFA knowledge and give us your take on Microsoft's quarterly report.

Otherwise, your comment sounds suspiciously like conversational terrorism, specifically the first item on this list:

http://www.vandruff.com/art_converse.html

lemma2• 13 years ago

While being able to read a financial statement is a step in understanding a business, I feel this comment needs to be knocked down a few pegs, so...

As an actual CFA charterholder, I can tell you any analyst I work with would have laughed out loud at someone bragging about passing level 1. It means you have roughly an undergrad level understanding of finance.

300bps5• 13 years ago

As an actual CFA charterholder, I can tell you any analyst I work with would have laughed out loud at someone bragging about passing level 1

Can you tell me what IT certification tests you have passed? You may have missed the fact that I've been in IT for 20 years, remain in IT and will always be in IT.

I'm sure a native Spanish speaker wouldn't be too impressed with my ability to speak Spanish either. But I would hope they would have more class than to "laugh out loud" at a native English speaker putting forth significant effort at learning their language.

sytelus• 13 years ago

Great to know you are actually qualified. Can you highlight what point other people have been missing in reading these statements?

bane2• 13 years ago

After reading your comments in this thread, I can see your training doesn't seem to have given you any particularly useful insight into this subject either.

rch• 13 years ago

I switched my default search in chrome to bing when the new tab page changed. I've since fixed the tab page, but left the search provider alone for now to see what differences I notice over time. So far, it's OK, but fails to give me my geek-centered results for generically named things like orange and amber.

eddiegroves• 13 years ago

The enterprise and business division is turning into a juggernaut at Microsoft that shows no sign of slowing down. Unlike the Windows team, they have a clear focus and vision guiding them.

tomkin• 13 years ago

cough https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6263205 cough

spoiledtechie• 13 years ago

In other news, they still only pay 5% taxes due to offshore accounts.

mrb• 13 years ago

Note the keyword is "first-quarter". Usually for Microsoft the first quarter of the fiscal year is a little below other quarters. But this first quarter is still below what MS typically achieves the other 3 quarters of the year:

- 1st quarter of last year: $16.01 billion

- 2nd quarter of last year: $21.46 billion

- 3rd quarter of last year: $20.49 billion

- 4th quarter of last year: $19.90 billion

- 1st quarter of this year: $18.53 billion (the "record" one)

teamonkey2• 13 years ago

I assume that pattern is due to businesses not starting new purchasing orders until the start of the next financial year?

netpenthe2• 13 years ago

For those people doubting the future of MSFT, here is my take:

MSFT is both a tech company and a utility.

It has growth potential (phones, surface, search, xbox) but it is also completely essential for global business (servers, AD, SQL Server, Exchange, Sharepoint).

In that sense it is a utility. If you took out all the MSFT software in the world everything basically stops. Your electricity probably doesn't work, you probably can't get on a train to get to work and if you manage to get to work you can't login to anything.

People say "but my company has BYOD!" that might be true, but MSFT is still the infrastructure it is running on. You can bring your AAPL car but you're still driving on an MSFT road.

Theodores• 13 years ago

Here us the Google Trends graph showing the decline in the search terms 'Microsoft' and 'Windows':

http://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore?q=microsoft%2C+window...

For comparison there is the trend for 'iphone' and 'android'.

Sure Microsoft are doing loads of exciting things but people aren't typing 'Microsoft' or 'Windows' into the search engine box of Google as much as they used to. Make of that what you will.

ucha• 13 years ago

Well, if you search for "windows safe mode", that went down too and "windows [version] safe mode" is systematically in the top 5 suggestions after "windows [version]". That may mean that people search less for windows because it became more stable. Good news!

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=windows+safe+mode#q=w...

My point is that, yeah, getting conclusions from that is hard...

dschiptsov2• 13 years ago

Well, junk^Wfast-food chains also growing, so what? What is popular ins't even good in the most cases. Just a Bandwagon + Peer effects as it is in case of Java.

And, of course, defacto server-side OS is Linux. So-called Desktop will be theirs for a long long time, but not because the OS is of any good - it is meaningless a bloatware, but because of word.exe and excel.exe which it seems to be here forever.

As for their services, well, forcing sheeple to use IE and Bing by re-writing their browser's settings doesn't account for even for popularity. IE is crap compared to Chrome, and even some sheeple could see that, but most of them just doesn't know any better, so they got stuck with IE and Bing.

And to appreciate the absurdity, just look what is happening with all those Java apps, which are supposed to run everywhere, with each new release of Windows, which are supposed to be 100% backward-compatible.)

dagw• 13 years ago

defacto server-side OS is Linux

Is it? Sure it's fairly defacto for public facing web servers, but servers in general? Given how hugely popular Exchange, Active Directory, SQL Server and, to a lesser extent, Sharepoint is I imagine that Windows servers are pretty darn popular (or at least common). You just don't see them if all you're looking at is public facing web servers.

dschiptsov2• 13 years ago

Any of these inside FB, Google and most of startups? How many startups really develop anything for MS platform?

Well, really good tools like Go allows the same server-side code to be ran under Windows, the real question is what for?

skc• 13 years ago

The overwhelming need to poo poo these results in here is pretty disgusting though expected I suppose.

I'm interested in following those Surface numbers over the course of the next year. If they can get that revenue up to about a billion, they will have done very well. And I think they can do it.

Microsoft reports record first-quarter revenue of $18.53 billion

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