

Eroding Windows sales is hurting the stock price at Microsoft









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By Smilin on 4/29/2011 11:34:15 AM , Rating: 4

Windows and Office are both huge cash cows but MSFT would still be a completely profitable company without them.

Apple has solidified an iron grip on it's markets but would nearly go bankrupt if it lost them. I see no signs of this happening anytime soon but all things change. Android is mostly eating up non-Apple marketshare as well as growing the market as a whole.

Google is more worrisome. There is search advertising but that's it. They cannot seem to get any second cash cow off the ground and frankly the tiny bites from bing are starting to have an effect. Android drives search advertising but otherwise generates no profit and the thing will remain a litigation time-bomb for a while yet.

I thought Google TV was a winner: Innovative product and it got in early in the market. Now it seems Google doing what Google does (stealing intellectual property) backfired with the major networks. Xbox is beginning to look like a winner in the IPTV space and MSFT will earn profit on it, not *just* added search traffic.



By KoolAidMan1 on 4/30/2011 3:21:53 AM , Rating: 2
Incorrect. Software carries insanely high profit margins. Without Windows and Office being sold to businesses all over the world, Microsoft's net profit would be ridiculously low. The profit from their hardware, even taking the Kinect into account, really hasn't amounted to much over the last five years of the XBox 360's lifespan.

Microsoft is software sales, end of story. Lose Windows and Office and they lose the main thing that keeps them afloat. It is what pays for all of their loss leaders.


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