Microsoft Posts First Quarterly Loss Ever 327
HangingChad writes "Microsoft's announcement of a late October release date for Windows 8 was eclipsed by its earnings report, in which the computer giant posted its first-ever quarterly loss since going public in 1986. The loss stems from Microsoft's continued struggles with the online services division."
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Informative)
NSFW
"the loss stems from..." (Score:5, Informative)
"The loss stems from Microsoft's continued struggles with the online services division."
That's a flat-out deception! The loss stems from the fact that they made a 6 billion dollar write-off. The summary makes it seem like their online division is just naturally bleeding billions.
Millions, maybe, but not billions.
Re:Loss due to 8 billion write down. (Score:4, Informative)
Indeed. They made an investment that didn't pan out several years ago, and now they're writing it off in a lump sum that's hitting them this quarter. That means that the biggest contributor to their quarterly loss was a one-time event that is already over and will not have any bearing on future profits or losses. This is not the proverbial writing on the wall yet.
Re:Yay! (Score:1, Informative)
As many other people have pointed out to you in other articles, Microsoft makes bad acquisitions every year. The underlying losses are as significant as they seem.
This apologist attitude is dangerous to investors and Microsoft employees alike.
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Informative)
You're joking, right? Last fiscal year they had net income of $23 billion and the previous quarter they made they made about $21 billion in revenue and net income of $6.6 billion.
Re:Yay! (Score:1, Informative)
Gay porn alert, /.tters! Do not click, well, unless that's your thing.
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Informative)
I probably shouldn't respond to an AC... but oh well.
I actually read TFA and it said they lost $6B due to a bad acquisition and that's why the quarterly profits were where they were. I made a deduction from that article that it isn't going to affect Microsoft in any way really and posted a reply to the 'finally they're going down' comment.
I'm not what you'd call a fan of Microsoft in any way, I use their products because I have to.
Basically what happened is a bug hit Microsoft's windshield , and Microsoft will flick on the wipers and be on their merry way.
Re:Another Shitty Summary. (Score:5, Informative)
But don't let that stop the speculation about how "Microsoft" is doing great.
Re:Yay! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Mod Up: Informative (Score:2, Informative)
It's not from their "continued struggles", it's from a single acquisition 5 years ago.
Why do we keep hearing this tired apology over and over again? Aquantive was worth $6.2 billion on the day it was bought then slowly bled bit by bit until it was worth zero. What bled away was its "good will" (aka expected income) as it became increasingly apparent that Microsoft was unable to leverage Aquantive's auction model in the same way that Google had leveraged Applied Semantics.
Re:Yay! (Score:2, Informative)
And the $6.2B was a write down from a 2007 acquisition.
Taking the loss now is intended to make things look better once Windows 8 has launched. They've shuffled numbers before to mask slow uptake, like combining their Mac software numbers with Xbox 360 to fluff up the later.
Re:28% Windows market share (Score:0, Informative)
76 million Android activations/ quarter
For fuck's sake! Google doesn't make money on Android activations.
AC stupid as always (Score:4, Informative)
Who says anything about making money? Guess AC doesn't know what market share means.
Re:28% Windows market share (Score:5, Informative)
Re:28% Windows market share (Score:5, Informative)
Also iOS and Android are growing fast due to new kit the people previously didn't own - they are not replacing Windows in most cases. MS's install base is rather impressive compared to iOS and Android so even at their current growth rate (which they can't maintain indefinitely - there will be a saturation point in the market somewhere) it'll be much time before they come close to eclipsing Windows.
I'm happy for you to put Microsoft down, but I recommend not using obviously flawed statistics as it just looks like desperation (when such desperation is probably not required).
Re:Yay! (Score:3, Informative)
I wish I knew what NSFW meant before opening the link :'(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_safe_for_work
Re:Yay! (Score:3, Informative)
This sounds more like it was a major once-off write-off of a loss-making division (a "me-too" attempt at online advertising to try compete with Google - hell, I didn't even know Microsoft had such a division until I read this), rather than necessarily an indicator of poor cash flow. So I wouldn't be ringing that death knell quite yet. The way Apple's going with their increasingly patent-troll-based business model, we might yet want to see strong competition between all the major players rather than consolidation.
Re:AC stupid as always (Score:2, Informative)