Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 25th Jan 2007 22:43 UTC
With holiday PC sales apparently unscathed by the lack of Windows Vista, Microsoft reported quarterly earnings Thursday that topped expectations and its own forecast. The software giant said it earned USD 2.63 billion, or 26 cents per share, on revenue of USD 12.54 billion, for the three months ended December 31. That compares with earnings of USD 3.65 billion, or 34 cents per share, on revenue of USD 11.83 billion for the same quarter a year ago.
Thread beginning with comment 206132
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2005-07-06
Because breaking the law is better??
The problem is the problem is the *exclusivity* deal: remember this killed BeOS: they couldn't convince any PC seller to sell PC in dual boot configuration (well they could find one but he retracted after a Microsoft guy talked with them).
Microsoft could lower the price to everybody, or by a volume discount or increase the price to everybody I couldn't care less, but as a monopoly they shouldn't be allowed to offer exclusivity deals, that's all.
Recent Original Stories
Recent Comments
Headlines
Random Comments
Random Stories
Random OS Link
Member since:
2006-01-02
Right. After becoming a dominant monopoly player, let's stop offering low-priced deals to computer manufacturers. Increasing prices upon achieving dominancee will be the way to show them that we're an honest company!
What everyone fails to understand is that Microsoft does not raise prices on their products. They never lower prices on old products either. When these products came out on the market, they were far cheaper than their competitors and the prices just never changed after that. Microsoft won because they were good enough and cheap enough. Sure there was some strong-arm dealings for preloading, but that worked to lower prices. How much should a piece of software cost, in your opinion? I think $20-$50 at OEM is perfectly reasonable for a piece of software as complex as Windows. People have paid a lot more for far less.
It is true that the only people who can compete right now with the entrenched position Microsoft has are Free Software makers because switching from the dominant OS has real (high) costs due to network effects. But the cost is not unbearable and if the linux people stopped trying to tweak everything at every level of the stack in breaking ways for marginal gains, then we might see wider linux adoption. But right now, it's hard to make proprietary software on linux just due to the level of variation between installs. And not everyone who's making linux is really interested in fixing this (why should they be? they're making an OS for themselves, not for the masses.) I'm with kaiwai on this: the competitors just haven't provided the customer what they wanted. Except Apple, who just didn't price it low enough when they had a chance to cut Microsoft off before Windows became big.