Microsoft has yet another bad quarter, the stock is down 8%.

[Spectrum90]

Software is eating the world, but even so the biggest software company in the world is declining.

Should Nadella be fired?

 

[Chintan Gohel]

Software is eating the world, but even so the biggest software company in the world is declining.

Should Nadella be fired?

And yet their revenues for most other departments have increased by small to significant margins.
Azure is up, office is up, search is up, surface is up, xbox is up.

 

[DEATH INC]

Not quite. They did a lot of restructuring and expected a decline until later in the year.

 

[Sedp23]

They barely released any phones that quarter tho

Sent from mTalk

 

[RumoredNow]

They just gave the latest OS version away free... No upgrade money this cycle for desktop. It's calculated.

 

[ArtificiallyYours]

So, you posted this just to propose someone getting fired?

Okay there master of edge.

 

[Cleavitt76]

I think you don't understand how the stock market works.

First MS is not "declining". They made billions of dollars in profit and 20+ billion in revenue this past quarter. In business terms, making profit is growing, which is the opposite of declining.

The stock market's reaction to things often does not reflect the health of the company. Many times it is in total contrast to the health of the company. For example, if MS has a "good" quarter (I would say billions in profits could be considered "good"), but the market expected an amazing quarter, then the stock will drop when the actual earnings are released. If MS has a solid quarter, but it's down a couple of percent compared to the same quarter last year (which is heavily influenced by the global economy), then their stock will probably drop as well. However, if a company is actually in serious trouble and starts selling off assets and laying off their workforce, the stock will probably jump after those announcements.

The point is, you have to look at the overall trends and not cherry pick a single day (or even month). Personally, I think the market overreacted (very common) yesterday. I like what MS is doing for the most part and I think it will continue to pay off down the road. MS has been trending upwards for most of the last year and I expect that to continue. Yesterday was a good opportunity to buy some MS stock.

 

[Spectrum90]

I think you don't understand how the stock market works.

First MS is not "declining". They made billions of dollars in profit and 20+ billion in revenue this past quarter. In business terms, making profit is growing, which is the opposite of declining.

The quarter was awful, revenue and profits were down.
Microsoft is not benefiting from the deep penetration of tech and software in almost every industry and in people's lives. On the contrary, Microsoft is declining as more innovative companies beat them in almost every product category and promising tech trend.

 

[ArtificiallyYours]

I think they explained it well and you just refuse to understand...

 

[Spectrum90]

I think they explained it well and you just refuse to understand...

OK, I'm going to explain it with apples:

Microsoft Revenue for the last three fiscal years in millions:
FY16* $90.000
FY15 $93.580
FY14 $86.833

Excluding the Nokia hardware business:
FY16* ~$87.000
FY15 ~$86.000
FY14 ~$86.500

And these numbers are still inflated by Surface and XBOX.

In a context of strong growth of the tech industry, Microsoft has been a total disaster as a software company. Windows phone is dead. Windows is dying. Azure is insignificant. Bing and other Internet properties never took off. Office is stagnant. Only the Server software did a bit better.

The future doesn't look brighter. Microsoft is a minor player in the most promising tech trends.

 

[Cleavitt76]

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Your own numbers from the last few years are within a few percent of each other and in fact higher than most of the previous years. Is this supposed to support your argument or convince us that you don't know basic math?

Windows Phone has market share problems. We can all agree on that.

Windows still has well over 90% of the market share for general purpose desktop OS. By what standard is that "dying?" The Windows 10 upgrade is free so it's obvious that revenue is going to fall in that category. Windows OEM licenses are down 2% despite the general PC hardware market being down several percent.

MS Azure is the second largest cloud provider (Amazon is first) and the largest SaaS cloud provider. How is that "insignificant?"

"Azure income grew 120% in constant currency with utilization of Azure process and Azure SQL database dramatically doubling year-over-year"

Bing and other Internet properties don't really need to be money makers (this isn't Google, MS isn't an advertising company), but...

"Search advertising income (excluding traffic acquisition costs) grew 18% in constant currency with proceeded benefit from Windows 10 use."

Office being "stagnant" means that it still generates a crap ton of money like it always has. Meanwhile, Office 365, it's replacement...

"Office 365 revenue growth of 63% in constant currency."

And since you mentioned surface and Xbox...

"Surface income expanded 61% in constant currency driven by Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book."
"Xbox Live month to month dynamic users grew 26% year-over-year to 46 million."

Sorry, but I'm not seeing evidence of doom and gloom here. I see a quarter that was decent, but not spectacular and it seems to be part of the normal ebb and flow of companies, markets, and world economies. I feel like you are going out of your way to see things in a negative light.

 

[anon(8532178)]

What about apple? Only dependent on iphone sales osx and mac are somewhat failures. Every company has problems and failures.

Posted via the Windows Central App for Android (5x or V10)

 

[mrpuny]

OMG! Apple yr/yr revenue down 13 % (earnings change left as an exercise to the reader). iPhone unit sales down 16%, iPad unit sales down 19%, Mac unit sales down 12% (all y-o-y). Should Tim Cook be fired?http://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-q2-earnings-iphone-ipad-mac-sales-195535171.html

 

[RumoredNow]

Sensing Ironic Sarcasm... Approving...

 

[fdalbor]

We are all doomed, the end of the world is just around the corner. Tech has destroyed the moral fiber of the world. Oh yea, and its raining outside.

 

[Spectrum90]

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Your own numbers from the last few years are within a few percent of each other and in fact higher than most of the previous years. Is this supposed to support your argument or convince us that you don't know basic math?

Windows Phone has market share problems. We can all agree on that.

Windows still has well over 90% of the market share for general purpose desktop OS. By what standard is that "dying?" The Windows 10 upgrade is free so it's obvious that revenue is going to fall in that category. Windows OEM licenses are down 2% despite the general PC hardware market being down several percent.

MS Azure is the second largest cloud provider (Amazon is first) and the largest SaaS cloud provider. How is that "insignificant?"

"Azure income grew 120% in constant currency with utilization of Azure process and Azure SQL database dramatically doubling year-over-year"

Bing and other Internet properties don't really need to be money makers (this isn't Google, MS isn't an advertising company), but...

"Search advertising income (excluding traffic acquisition costs) grew 18% in constant currency with proceeded benefit from Windows 10 use."

Office being "stagnant" means that it still generates a crap ton of money like it always has. Meanwhile, Office 365, it's replacement...

"Office 365 revenue growth of 63% in constant currency."

And since you mentioned surface and Xbox...

"Surface income expanded 61% in constant currency driven by Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book."
"Xbox Live month to month dynamic users grew 26% year-over-year to 46 million."

Sorry, but I'm not seeing evidence of doom and gloom here. I see a quarter that was decent, but not spectacular and it seems to be part of the normal ebb and flow of companies, markets, and world economies. I feel like you are going out of your way to see things in a negative light.

Microsoft failure in mobile is far beyond Windows Phone. The usage time of Microsoft software in mobile platforms is very low. Microsoft is completely irrelevant in mobile.

Windows has big market share in PCs because Apple only participates in the high-end segment, which dominates. An affordable Mac would destroy Windows. An affordable laptop running Google's converged OS could do it too.

Azure is a distant second, fighting for the leftovers with Google and other small players. Fast growth is easy for small players, but with that scale a doubt Azure is making any money.

Microsoft would love to be and advertising company but they have failed in all their attempt. In fact, as the search business grows faster in mobile, Bings becomes even more irrelevant.

Microsoft SaaS business is mostly Office365. The amazing growth of the SaaS business is not caused by a new innovative product, it's just the old same Office licence payed monthly instead of a one-time payment.

Surface is a huge failure and sales numbers seems to indicate that the Surface Book landed flat. In fact, the iPad Pro has been outselling the Surface line since its inception.
Microsoft failure in this segment in which it has an evident advantage says a lot about poor execution. I don't know how Panay kept his job after the Surface Pro 4, Surface Book and Lumia 950 fiasco, three products that weren't ready for the public.

Microsoft is not improving with Nadella.

 

[Spectrum90]

OMG! Apple yr/yr revenue down 13 % (earnings change left as an exercise to the reader). iPhone unit sales down 16%, iPad unit sales down 19%, Mac unit sales down 12% (all y-o-y). Should Tim Cook be fired?http://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-q2-earnings-iphone-ipad-mac-sales-195535171.html

Apple FYQ2 revenue for the last few years:

2016 $50.6 billion.
2015 $58 billion.
2014 $45.6 billion.
2013 $43.6 billion.

The primary cause of Apple's lower revenue in the last quarter was the huge success of the iPhone 6 in FY15. It's too early to know if the iPhone growth cycle ended, however, that's bound to happen and Apple has to find new sources of revenue.

 

[kaktus1389]

Microsoft failure in mobile is far beyond Windows Phone. The usage time of Microsoft software in mobile platforms is very low. Microsoft is completely irrelevant in mobile.

Windows has big market share in PCs because Apple only participates in the high-end segment, which dominates. An affordable Mac would destroy Windows. An affordable laptop running Google's converged OS could do it too.

Azure is a distant second, fighting for the leftovers with Google and other small players. Fast growth is easy for small players, but with that scale a doubt Azure is making any money.

Microsoft would love to be and advertising company but they have failed in all their attempt. In fact, as the search business grows faster in mobile, Bings becomes even more irrelevant.

Microsoft SaaS business is mostly Office365. The amazing growth of the SaaS business is not caused by a new innovative product, it's just the old same Office licence payed monthly instead of a one-time payment.

Surface is a huge failure and sales numbers seems to indicate that the Surface Book landed flat. In fact, the iPad Pro has been outselling the Surface line since its inception.
Microsoft failure in this segment in which it has an evident advantage says a lot about poor execution. I don't know how Panay kept his job after the Surface Pro 4, Surface Book and Lumia 950 fiasco, three products that weren't ready for the public.

Microsoft is not improving with Nadella.

I would just like to know if you can hate Microsoft even more than you do?

Hm, which one was the first OS used in public? Was it Apple's? Was it Google's? Nope, I believe it was Microsoft's.

Apple pencil is so much different from Surface Pen, that it has to cost 100 $. I think yoou can actually use it on real paper, with some imagination, of course.

Samsung's and Apple's devices are very different in it's names. I mean Samsung S6 and iPhone 6S are really creative names for phones, totally different from each other. Oh no, Microsoft's phone brand name is actually copied from Samsung and Apple, flagship is named Lumia 950 XL.

Hell, how can you not confuse between Microsoft's, Samsung's and Apple's devices, with all of those companies copying it's names from apple? It already happened to me a few times.

Also I failed to see how MacBook Air is better than Surface Pro 4 or Surface Book, specs-wise. It must be because I am just too dumb to understand that people buying Apple products are actually doing a very good job, paying more just for the brand name itself than for the device.

I apologize for not understanding what Apple really is, I am just out of the real intellectuals' league.

 

[jmshub]

Microsoft failure in mobile is far beyond Windows Phone. The usage time of Microsoft software in mobile platforms is very low. Microsoft is completely irrelevant in mobile.

Windows has big market share in PCs because Apple only participates in the high-end segment, which dominates. An affordable Mac would destroy Windows. An affordable laptop running Google's converged OS could do it too.

This arguing point may have been valid 10 years ago, but Apple has slowly chipped the price off Macbooks while premium Windows powered PCS routinely hit or exceed the Apple price point. A Mac Mini is a full powered desktop PC in a small form factor starting at a reasonable $500. The simplicity of iPads and Android tablets are a larger threat to Windows than OSX or ChromeOS (in it's current state).

Azure is a distant second, fighting for the leftovers with Google and other small players. Fast growth is easy for small players, but with that scale a doubt Azure is making any money.

Microsoft would love to be and advertising company but they have failed in all their attempt. In fact, as the search business grows faster in mobile, Bings becomes even more irrelevant.

Microsoft SaaS business is mostly Office365. The amazing growth of the SaaS business is not caused by a new innovative product, it's just the old same Office licence payed monthly instead of a one-time payment.

While Azure is second place to Amazon AWS, it's hardly fighting for table scraps. And product diversity protects Microsoft.Not being reliant on "just Windows" helps Microsoft survive when PC sales go flat or fall, as they have for years.

I don't think Microsoft has any intentions to become an ad company. They aren't Google. Buying aQuantive was a bad move when it was done, and I'd argue that it was Balmer's biggest blunder.

Bing won't rival Google for search marketshare, but they still power Siri and of course, Cortana. So, being a backend provider for popular mobile apps is still a big deal.

Surface is a huge failure and sales numbers seems to indicate that the Surface Book landed flat. In fact, the iPad Pro has been outselling the Surface line since its inception.
Microsoft failure in this segment in which it has an evident advantage says a lot about poor execution. I don't know how Panay kept his job after the Surface Pro 4, Surface Book and Lumia 950 fiasco, three products that weren't ready for the public.

Surface has had problems at launch, but they weren't all Microsoft's fault, there was an Intel issue that was keeping these things from sleeping properly. Surface's big problem is cost. A Surface Book is a great looking product, but that is a very expensive device that will need replaced in a few years.

Meanwhile, the iPad in general has been falling in marketshare for some time as well. Apple certainly isn't waiving the iPad Pro as a major win in their column either.

I don't want to come across as a Microsoft apologist or a ******, I think they could be executing certain things much better than they currently are, but your thread comes across as a Chicken Little, sky-is-falling, Microsoft-can-do-no-right rant against them.

 

[Spectrum90]

This arguing point may have been valid 10 years ago, but Apple has slowly chipped the price off Macbooks while premium Windows powered PCS routinely hit or exceed the Apple price point. A Mac Mini is a full powered desktop PC in a small form factor starting at a reasonable $500. The simplicity of iPads and Android tablets are a larger threat to Windows than OSX or ChromeOS (in it's current state).

Who buys desktop PCs these days?. The ASP of Macs is ~$1200. The ASP of Windows PC must be quite low, maybe $300-$400?

While Azure is second place to Amazon AWS, it's hardly fighting for table scraps. And product diversity protects Microsoft.Not being reliant on "just Windows" helps Microsoft survive when PC sales go flat or fall, as they have for years.

Microsoft biggest business is server software. A big part of on-premise server software will be replaced by cloud services with much lower margins. Azure is the future of Microsoft, they need a big piece of the cloud. Windows is more like a side project.

I don't think Microsoft has any intentions to become an ad company. They aren't Google. Buying aQuantive was a bad move when it was done, and I'd argue that it was Balmer's biggest blunder.

Microsoft tried to build an advertising business but failed. They even tried to put ads in Excel and buy yahoo for $40 billion.
Advertising is a great business, Google is bigger than Microsoft in terms of market cap, Facebook is getting close.

Bing won't rival Google for search marketshare, but they still power Siri and of course, Cortana. So, being a backend provider for popular mobile apps is still a big deal.

I don't think a search engine is that useful for AI. Bing is just a fallback that returns search results when AI fails.

Surface has had problems at launch, but they weren't all Microsoft's fault, there was an Intel issue that was keeping these things from sleeping properly. Surface's big problem is cost. A Surface Book is a great looking product, but that is a very expensive device that will need replaced in a few years.

Of course It's Microsoft's fault, they choose their suppliers and decide when the products are ready for the public.