I’m not so sure that Microsoft’s fundamentals are strong. Where is the worldwide boost in PC sales mainly happening? In netbooks, where Microsoft can least afford to have it happen.

There is a fundamental shift happening in the marketplace, that is steadily undermining the position of companies that depend on selling proprietary software as their business model.

Not sure I follow. BizTalk has a tiny user base; I don't know why MS doesn't just kill it. All MS's online services are substandard and they lose huge amounts of money.
An office service pack is certainly necessary, but doesn't make any revenue. It is actually just a cost.
Windows 7 may or may not be good, jury is still out. If they rush it out the door, then will just get a black eye like Vista did.

The major attack against windows server department has not happened yet.

Second wave netbook is going to take it cost.

Apple has a strong cheep product ie Ipods. IBM had strong cheep product Linux Servers. I am sorry MS lacks this so is basically dead man walking.

All that FUD about apple is pointless. That apple can sell items more expensive than MS and get away with it in current times more shows the defects in MS products.

Exchange Server 2010 might be the biggest flop of all times. Cost does not compete with kolab features it don't compete with kolab. Only reason why Exchange is it integration with MS Office. More companies not using MS Office less market for it. Harder the times less businesses can justify having MS Office.

Samba is also planing to have a ADS server running on Linux before end of year. This kinda takes out one of MS biggest network advantages.

Sorry competition is going to get worse.

I think Joe is an inverted analyst. But then again that must be only when running low on cash. Flip flop flip flop - eh Joe?

Then again, nothing particularly new with the ol'e "yes i know, it sucks now... yes i know i talked doom 2 days ago... but Microsoft's products in the pipeline are hot hot hot! Our Cairo/Longhorn/Azure/Whatever technologies will simply blooooow the competition away"

As for Apple's fundament crumbling because it drained off 1600 retail employees?

HELLOOOOO Netbooks are killing Windows, Office and it's dumbass OEMs. Even knucklehead Joe said so in an earlier article. Would that not be a... fundamental issue?

"The foundation is solid."

Not if you were looking at the same report as I was. From what I saw their client division is crumbling. They are getting less profitable and their revenues are dropping for the first time ever.

Meanwhile virtually everyone else in the business is recording record highs. Oracle is so strong they can afford to buy Sun. They are going to threaten the other foundation that you claim is strong.

Even Apple is now going after Microsoft's traditional stomping ground. Watch profit margins drop there in the next few quarters.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/04/24/snow_leopard_server_to_offer_low_cost_secure_mobile_access_to_iphone.html

Windows Server : $29,238
OSX Server : $3,749

Ironically it is Linux attacking on the desktop and Apple on the server. Who would have predicted that 3 years ago?

I would have agreed with Joe, except that Steve Ballmer himself is rattling his patent sabres and filing patent lawsuits, the sure mark of a company that believes that it is going down.

Of course, Ballmer may be wrong about Microsoft's future, and Joe may be right. In that case, the wrong person is CEO of Microsoft.

Which indeed may be true. Bill Gates treated his end-users as kings and queens and smart people. Ballmer treats them as criminals and idiots.

"Apple ended fiscal 2008 with 247 retail stores and 15,900 employees, with the number dropping by 300 going into the holiday quarter, which typically is when retailers bulk up staff. The 10Q list 14,000 retail employees, for a net loss of 1,600 over three months. Store total was 252 at the end of fiscal second quarter."

Those are not people but "full time equivalents" which are a reflection of hours worked not actual bodies. Looking at it from that perspective it is quite normal for the number of hours worked by existing staff to be lower in Q3 then spike up during the holidays followed by a steep drop after.

"Apple ended fiscal 2008 with 247 retail stores and 15,900 employees, with the number dropping by 300 going into the holiday quarter, which typically is when retailers bulk up staff. The 10Q list 14,000 retail employees, for a net loss of 1,600 over three months. Store total was 252 at the end of fiscal second quarter."

Those are not people but "full time equivalents" which are a reflection of hours worked not actual bodies. Looking at it from that perspective it is quite normal for the number of hours worked by existing staff to be lower in Q3 then spike up during the holidays followed by a steep drop after.

"Apple ended fiscal 2008 with 247 retail stores and 15,900 employees, with the number dropping by 300 going into the holiday quarter, which typically is when retailers bulk up staff. The 10Q list 14,000 retail employees, for a net loss of 1,600 over three months. Store total was 252 at the end of fiscal second quarter."

Those are not people but "full time equivalents" which are a reflection of hours worked not actual bodies. Looking at it from that perspective it is quite normal for the number of hours worked by existing staff to be lower in Q3 then spike up during the holidays followed by a steep drop after.

Cunt Fuckers fuck cunts and go fucking to fucking cunt hell cunts. cunt shit fuck cunt.

Joe said, "Last week's morbid Microsoft fiscal third-quarter earnings call offers a sense of just how bad times are yet ahead."

You have no idea. Most people think we have a few more quarters of negative growth before things begin to turn around (say, in 2010). But there is a second wave of mortgage defaults coming, and a second wave of credit default swaps to exercise.

You think we had a sh*tload of "toxic assets" in the banking system? You ain't seen nothin' yet! There's another load of toxic assets every bit as big that hasn't been accounted for yet. It will deal our economy another massive body blow.

So what we're looking at is a 'W'-shaped recovery. We will see a mild recovery over the next 12 months or so, followed by another huge downturn that will carry us into 2012. A lot of hurt still lies ahead.

I can see it now...Ballmer & Gates standing there in a crooked baseball caps,baggy shirts,baggy pants..quoting from the of the skits on the TV show "In Living Color"....Mo Money....Mo Money...Mo Money...LOL

Title of Joe's article is: "Don't Count Microsoft Out Just Yet"

Actually agreed, M$ is not going away yet. But when this Depression ends, expect to see a smaller M$ with less desktop and business market share. Vista as a product, and Seven as its extension, has done a lot of damage to the M$ Brand. Apple has taken away most of the North American high end laptop business from OEM's and M$. And now come the netbooks, where the real problem is for M$. Even though M$ can twist OEM's arms and get them to put XP on most store netbooks in the USA, it still hurts their bottom line, think 32%. When the second wave of ARM netbooks come in, then we wil see the first major drop in revenue that cannot be replaced at the end of the depression for M$. The only question is, will M$ continue to dominate the desktop OS as it always had, or will it lose how much market share? Mostly we see a lot of erosion of M$ desktop strength in European countries lately with Linux Netbooks selling there at 40%. Even if M$ should be able to port Windows to the ARM, there is no profit in doing so, which will still hurt them greatly.

One thing I think Microsoft fails to understand is that the NT kernel & MS's Business model is outdated...You can try and patch Windows till the cows came home and this isn't gonna help...They have had 14 years to try and Windows secure...You can't keep Re-Gift wrapping the same old garbage...And not to expect a consumer backlash...I think the whole Vista nightmare has opened Pandora's box for Redmond...Then there is the whole Windows 7 Crippleware Edition...Who's bright Idea was this ?....The Microsoft Corporation is their own worst enemy !!!

Joe says:
"I'll make a prediction: The global economic crisis will briefly slow Windows 7 deployments only to later accelerate them."
----------------------------------------------------
And here Joe is right. Because Windows 7 deployments depend largely on the power of the M$ money hold on OEM's pre-installs. 7even just like Vista, which it is, will by and large, not have the drivers to run on older XP computers, so 7even, just like Vi$ta, which is what 7even is, will only be bought on new computers as a rule. And hardware sales, which is what Vista/7even depends on, will only really pick up when the economy improves. But in the meantime, cheap will sell, you know, netbooks and then ARM netbooks. Expect enough users to continue the abandonment of M$ Winders to alternatives to accelerate somewhat during this recession. And maybe, with ARM, that process might just snowball a bit or more.
--------------------------------------------------
Why wait for MSN/WindowsLIVE/Kumo, or Vi$ta/7even renaming scam to pay for the same old product again? The name was changes to 7even because Vi$ta is a failed product as far as most users are concerned, just like M$ has done with so many other products like their search.

Isn't it time to try out the free alternatives at
distrowatch.com/ GNU/Linux is malware free compared to the viral target windows. You and yours business have nothing to lose by switching today.

Joe says:
"I'll make a prediction: The global economic crisis will briefly slow Windows 7 deployments only to later accelerate them."
----------------------------------------------------
And I will make some more predictions:

1. The global economic crisis will briefly slow Windows 7 deployments only to later accelerate them. But only if M$ keep its monopoly over the OEM's on pre-installs. Netbooks threaten this monopoly.

2. Competition from GNU/Linux will force the price of windows and office to continue to decrease.

3. Windows Seven, which is just Vista SP2b renamed, will not do any better than Vista before it.

4. M$ will be forced to release a new version of XP.

5. M$ will continue to lose Market Share, but at an greatly accelerated rate once ARM hits the stores. In fact, in Europe this is already happening with Intel based netbooks with a 40% Linux selling rate.

6. Software prices in general, not just M$ software, will become commodities. As such prices on 3rd party software will decline as well that must compete with gpl or open source free software.

Well, Chips, your arguments are most certainly very well thought-out and nicely expressed.

But you gotta hand it to munt. I think that munt's description of Microsoft's business practices and software products is 100% dead-on accurate.

To get back on topic ever so briefly - XPM is presumably targeted to address problems with applications that don't play ball with Vista/7.

From my experience these apps are also apps that:

.) integrate with office as they are LOB apps
.) if not LOB then specialised vertical market apps that require hardware integration - dongles, graphics card, serial ports, etc...

Both of these things add a mountain of technical and licensing complexity to XPM.

On top of that - again with the business network hat on - will the machines be on the domain as well? Will they need to be patched with WSUS as well (hard to do if they aren't always running or never reboot but only suspend/resume)? If on the domain will users need to log on twice, have login scripts run twice (otherwise how will corp-app-x get to the network drives)? If the nic's aren't bridged will it not screw up anything that uses active directory sites like DFS, etc? Even worse if the app integrates with outlook will users have two big fat PSTs sitting of the same data sitting on the hdd, or chew the exchange server to bits in online mode?

Is it possible that i've thought about the ramifications more than Microsoft or are we missing something or did Washington state have a firesale on crack pipes?

I mean seriously that solution is as whacked as having corporate Mac workstations with xp vms - either you have a central application delivery solution that works with Macs such as Citrix or all your apps are Mac compatible or you just don't use Macs! Feel free to replace the word Mac with Vista or 7 in the last sentence and it still holds true.

" Mac sales and market share are declining
Microsoft marketing is boosting Windows PC sales
Success of the $300 million marketing campaign "

Joe, I know that these quoted comments are based on the NPD figures from a couple of months ago... but don't you think it's about time you wrote about the disparity between them and the Gartner/IDC figures?

Because according to Gartner and IDC the Mac with it's "simply too high" pricing actually GAINED market share. The Windows PC sales boost amounted to a 7% drop in sales.Are these figures the measure of that $300 million campaign?

@joe
Is it a slow news week? Why are you not writing stuff this week? If you are on holidays let us know cause im coming here and there has been no change or little change or new stories for a week. Please joe tell us, have you gotten in the bad books with Microsoft?
Where are the blogs you are paid to blog about. lol.

XP Mode in Windows 7 is a scam
It won't do what you think

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/975/1051975/xp-mode-windows-scam

"IF YOU HAVEN'T been stuck in a cave lately, you will undoubtedly have heard that Windows Vista SP2.1, aka Windows 7, will have an 'XP mode'. Before you jump up and down for joy, you should know that it won't do what you think it will, it is a scam.

Microsoft is conducting a very carefully crafted PR campaign to make Windows 7 seem less broken than the Broken OS (Vista / Me II), but it isn't. It gives long lead previews to people it knows will kiss up and not criticize the OS in order to create 'good buzz'. Sadly, with regard to Microsoft's Windows 7, the PC industry press is abdicating its responsibility to report objectively about a vendor's product, and the public is, well, dumb as rocks.

The real reason for offering it only on the business oriented versions of Vista is that it won't actually do what you think it will, it too will be broken. XPM will run XP in a VM under Windows 7, which will use VirtualPC technology to simulate a PC, and that is the key to why it will be so broken when it shows up."

Which indeed may be true. Bill Gates treated his end-users as kings and queens and smart people. Ballmer treats them as criminals and idiots.