Microsoft Stock Drops 11% In a Day 467
Taco Cowboy writes with news that Microsoft's stock price dropped over 11 percent yesterday. The selloff was the biggest since 2009, and during the day the price was down more than 12 percent at one point, making it the biggest single day drop since April, 2000. Analysts believe the drop was due primarily to the company missing its quarterly earnings projections in addition to taking a massive, $900 million write-down on unsold Surface RT tablets. "Microsoft’s decline is both a consequence of the changing dynamics of the tech world and the incredible surge in its stock price this year. Shares in the maker of Windows had rallied nearly 30% this year, leaving both the broader stock market and the technology sector in the dust. It was, it seemed, Steve Ballmer’s year. Until Friday. The sell off was sparked by fears over the declines of the PC market. Gartner data show PC shipments fell for the fifth consecutive quarter in Q2, this time tanking 10.9% to 76 million units. Being the world’s largest software company, 'over 80% of its revenue and nearly all of its profits continue to be derived by its ubiquitous Windows OS, its server business (Windows Server), and the business division (Office),' according to UBS. And indeed that decline in the PC industry is hurting the company’s bottom line."
Re:Metro UI (Score:5, Informative)
If Surface RT is selling so well, why then the price drop? Why the write-off? Why doesn't anyone I know have a Surface RT?
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Metro UI (Score:5, Informative)
What "reports"? Surface RT sales being weak is reported all over the internet. Literally nobody is saying it is selling well at all, including Microsoft themselves.
Re:Windows Phone sales (Score:5, Informative)
Windows Phone has 4% global share. 85% of that is from Nokia. Nokia's margins on Windows Phones is -14%. That means it is not mathematically possible for Windows Phone to be returning a profit to the average builder. Nokia can't keep this up forever. Other builders don't sell enough units to make it worthwhile to continue to produce units. All of Windows Phone ecosystem sells about as many smartphones as Coolpad. Have you heard of them? No. Nobody talks about Coolpad, but everybody talks about Windows Phone and Nokia.
One fun person to read about these with is Tomi Ahonen [blogs.com].
Re:Metro UI (Score:2, Informative)
QuickSilver [blacktree.com] is your answer. I go a couple of steps further, since I am a very light spotlight user, I remap spotlight to CTRL-OPT-Spacebar, and then map QuickSilver to Cmd-Spacebar, and I don't look back. I'm a keyboard junkie - I also use Cmd-Tab and Cmd-` (the tilde key above the Tab) to move between apps and move between windows of the current app, respectively. Shift will reverse the order on those last two. I also rarely use Expose, and map my F keys to be real F keys. On my MBP I use the Func key to control the brightness and audio if needed.
Personally, Apple made wrong choices with Spotlight. It is both too powerful, and not powerful enough. I have over 10TB of internal disk space, mostly full, and as I develop software, we're talking millions of files of all types, along with a Gb of mail over many years. Spotlight is next to useless systemwide, although it works well enough within Mail. Maybe the real problem is its integration with Finder. Since I'm adept with shell commands, I've never bothered looking any further.
Other than that - the UI works well enough, stays out of my way, and with QuickSilver, I haven't had to change how I work with OS X since the Panther days.
Re:Metro UI (Score:5, Informative)
I do a lot of business traveling in Europe on trains, and just about all the passengers are fiddling with some electronic gadget or another. Business folks? Lenovo ThinkPads. Cooler business folks? MacBooks. Regular folks? Andriod tablets and iPads. Folks not wanting to be left out of the gadget party? Samsung Galaxy phones.
I have never seen a Microsoft Surface of any breed or color.
Of course, your mileage may vary. But I would have expected to have seen at least one. The only one I have ever seen, has been in a store.
Re:Metro UI (Score:2, Informative)
It's obsolete because it has a weaker CPU, a weaker GPU, less RAM and a lower resolution screen than the Nexus 7. It was also released later and costs significantly more.
Re:Metro UI (Score:4, Informative)
- Listen to users before releasing Win8, not wait until Win8.1 to start "listening"
Microsoft is only pretending to listen with Win 8.1. It's still 95% the same train wreck Metro interface.
Re:Metro UI (Score:0, Informative)
Ahh, you mean like how the iPhone stole from the Palm Treo, HP iPaq and LG Prada.
Re:Up 19.6% on the year (Score:4, Informative)
Yay. Same price as it was in 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012. (Split adjusted)
Great investment!
https://www.google.com/finance?q=msft&ei=iyXrUYjTG8LBqAHJnwE [google.com]
Re:Metro UI (Score:3, Informative)