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Microsoft reports record first-quarter revenue of $18.53 billion
- recuter 13y agoHeadlines from Dec 18th, 2009: "BlackBerry shipments break record in Q3, RIM profits jump 59 percent". Also known as the Wile E. Coyote Syndrome.
- jbooth 13y agoIf 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 13y agoYou 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. :)
- recuter 13y agoNot 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.
- curiousDog 13y agoYou're right about the lack of leadership. But as someone who has worked at both RIM and MSFT, they're vastly different. Moving out of the MSFT platform for example isn't exactly as simple as switching out a couple of servers and handing out new phones to employees. Also, there's innovation on the enterprise side of things (very cool stuff (on par with google) being done in Azure, SQL Server, Visual Studio, .NET, Dynamics CRM, Skype/Lync, Sharepoint etc.) which I think where most of the money will eventually come from (and the trends suggest that)
- bsaul 13y agodon'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.
- devx 13y agoWindows 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.
- tanzam75 13y 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.)
- marcosdumay 13y agoYep, 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.
- 300bps 13y agoI 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 13y agoIt 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 13y agoFeel free to offer your unique perspective. But we can still look at this from other avenues.
- sbuccini 13y agoIt 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?
- 300bps 13y agoIt 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.
- yesplorer 13y agoYour analogy is nonsense and speaks of the pomposity someone earlier mentioned: Microsoft presented only a summary level of revenue statement for a quarter indicating both GAAP and non-GAAP adjusted figures and you are telling us you need time to research to make a contribution here even though you've already said others are not qualified to contribute? By your analogy I will be surprised if I show a 15-line Java Class to a Java programmer and he tells me he needs to research it to make sense of it. By comparison, Microsoft presented a single Java Class [revenue statement] not a codebase[Financial Report] by the way: so far you haven't made any contribution to the discussion even though others have asked you nicely to.
- JPKab 13y agoThey will continue to milk the enterprise cow, but eventually even they will dry up.
- Refefer 13y agoBut 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.
- outside1234 13y agoI 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 13y 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 13y agoBusinesses 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 13y agoBusinesses will stop needing windows and windows servers eventually.
- jusben1369 13y agoThis 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.
- barista 13y agoImpressed 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 13y agoI 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...
- InclinedPlane 13y agoIt'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.
- mooreds 13y agoWhat are the three businesses you think Google has "locked up"?
- gesman 13y agoMSFT'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 13y agoStock price just hit after hours $35.63 (up 5%), good news for Microsoft employees indeed.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoNice 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/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/24/pricing-engine-adwords-bing...
- CamperBob2 13y agoKeep in mind that thanks to the patent system, Microsoft probably makes more on a per-smartphone basis than Google.
- drzaiusapelord 13y 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.
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- us0r 13y agoWhy are we comparing Microsoft to RIM? RIM was a one trick pony. Microsoft has several billion dollar businesses.
- epa 13y agoDon't forget these are un-audited and don't really give us much information other than what they want to show us.
- tanzam75 13y agoIf 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.
- epa 13y agoI 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.
- outside1234 13y agoThere 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 13y agoIf 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 13y agoFor 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.
- mikelat 13y agoMicrosoft'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 13y agoI 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 13y agoYes 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.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- jacal 13y agoXbox is not a success. It's consumer-popular. http://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-xbox-division-has-lost-nearly-3-billion-in-10-years http://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-xbox-division-h... They don't have one operating system like Apple. They blew up on cloud recently. Most consumer-people don't seem to grasp the nature and scale of the 'house of houses.' They have multiple billion dollar products and to try to FUD that it only takes one photon blast down a tube to destabilize anything or the whole thing hints at some naive notions on your part. It's a fully functional death star.
- umeshunni 13y 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 13y agoThere are costs associated with each sale, not everything is revenue.
- tanzam75 13y 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.
- teamonkey 13y agoI think the OP means that $400 is the retail price of a Surface, but the revenue listed in the report will be based on its wholesale price.
- MekaiGS 13y agoRevenue is income before cost of goods sold.
- dragonwriter 13y agoCosts associated with sale mean not everything is profit, but are irrelevant to revenue.
- veemjeem 13y agoUnlike Apple who sells direct to consumer, it's likely that quite a few of those Surface units are still sitting on store shelves.
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- rch 13y agoI 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.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- eddiegroves 13y agoThe 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 13y agocough https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6263205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6263205 cough
- spoiledtechie 13y agoIn other news, they still only pay 5% taxes due to offshore accounts.
- mrb 13y agoNote 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)
- teamonkey 13y agoI assume that pattern is due to businesses not starting new purchasing orders until the start of the next financial year?
- netpenthe 13y agoFor 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 13y agoHere 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+windows#q=microsoft%2C%20windows%2C%20android%2C%20iphone&cmpt=q 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 13y agoWell, 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=windows%20safe%20mode&cmpt=q http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=windows+safe+mode#q=w... My point is that, yeah, getting conclusions from that is hard...
- Mistykott 13y agoMicrosoft is boring. To watch, use or read about. Moving on.
- Mistykott 13y agoMicrosoft is boring. Even to read about. Moving on.
- dschiptsov 13y agoWell, 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 13y agodefacto 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.
- dschiptsov 13y agoAny 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?
- TheAnimus 13y agoI'm using SQL server, Server 2012 R2. We can't use public cloud. Need our own private hardware for legal reasons. The load isn't high, we have a high value per client, low client count business model. The ease at which I can have a private cloud. Data replication and clustering, full Hot-Hot style DR solution, hosting on MS technologies is great. I can get due diligence sign off from SQL Server which I could not for say Postgre, this would be due to the fact the replication component isn't vetted and considered secure/authoritative by my clients. Then I do the maths, once bizspark ends, the total cost for all these licenses is going to be about $30k per year. We hope to have revenues of about thirty times that by then. But better than all that. How long does it take to set up this replicating, elastic cloud, with replicated database? Not even a day. I couldn't do that with Oracle! Bizspark means right now that we don't have to worry about the costs compared to going VMware. Now in the world of startups whom have 100,000 users to make $10, then yes, the cost of these technologies is going to be hard to justify!
- skc 13y agoThe 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.