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  • commenter
    zs450
    Jul 29 08:49 AM
    What Does Microsoft's Bizarre Leadership Claim Really Mean? [view article]
    All I have to say for the Vista haters....

    www.mojaveexperiment.c.../     Reply
  • commenter
    Boulder
    Biker
    Jul 29 08:32 AM
    Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News [view article]
    Sure took Russo a long ass time to go.... Reply
  • commenter
    Partners in
    Grime
    Jul 28 04:25 PM
    My Website
    What Does Microsoft's Bizarre Leadership Claim Really Mean? [view article]
    Ballmer wants Microsoft to be more like Apple and Apple creates suspense by not saying what they're doing, so Ballmer emulates that by saying cryptic stuff that no one knows what he means.
    ;)     Reply
  • commenter
    Tom B
    Jul 28 03:23 PM
    What Does Microsoft's Bizarre Leadership Claim Really Mean? [view article]
    "I am waiting for the opportunity to unload my shares, but Ballmer has no interest in his investors or customers"

    I hope you don't have a big number. Do it some year you need a tax loss.

    "Trying to buy a bigger loser in Yahoo is an even dumber move."

    Say what you will, I use several Yahoo services willingly: Mail; Yahoo; Finance; My Yahoo; and, by far the best, Flickr. I use NO MSFT products VOLUNTARILY. I use a bunch at work, where you have no choice, but I wouldn't spend money on Vista; or on Powerpoint, which is a distant second to Keynote, IMHO; or on a Zune. People have mocked me for saying it, but I predict better earnings growth over the next 12 months for Yahoo than MSFT.     Reply
  • commenter
    LAD
    Jul 28 02:28 PM
    What Does Microsoft's Bizarre Leadership Claim Really Mean? [view article]
    A second to comment by Tom B. A leader who allows a product like Vista to get in the hands of even a beta test group of consumers should be fired immediately. The quality of Vista is incomprehensible. They probably don't have a quality assurance manager - if they do the position should be vacant. I am waiting for the opportunity to unload my shares, but Ballmer has no interest in his investors or customers, so I may have to hold till they become an inheritance for my 2 year old grandson (at age 25). Trying to buy a bigger loser in Yahoo is an even dumber move. Notice how slow and unavailable Yahoo has been lately. Must be distracted workers, unmanaged. Yahoo probably doesn't have a quality assurance manager either, if so, hopefully it has become vacant.
    40+ years in systems development and operations management focused on software quality gives me the responsibility to express my opinion, if not the right.

    Larry     Reply
  • commenter
    Tom B
    Jul 28 10:49 AM
    What Does Microsoft's Bizarre Leadership Claim Really Mean? [view article]
    Gee, I saw your title and I thought MSFT was going to claim they had leadership.

    I think leadership wouldn't much matter at this point, anyway. All their engineers must have been pulling all nighters-- on networked World of Warcraft-- to have come up with the abortion known as Vista. All the various complaints from users are all real and valid and, yet, don't even get to the root of the problem. All MSFT's competitors have solid, fast, secure UNIX-based OS's (Apple; LINUX companies); MSFT hasn't even made the upgrade to UNIX. And I don't think it's even in the works for Win7!     Reply
  • commenter
    croflags
    Jul 28 10:16 AM
    What Does Microsoft's Bizarre Leadership Claim Really Mean? [view article]
    As Steve says, don't get too excited about MSFT
    the stock isn't going any where for another 2 years, making it
    almost 12 years now.
    As a very frustrated stockholder, I ask the other stockholders,
    why is this clueless b##stard still in charge??????????????/     Reply
  • commenter
    WACG
    Jul 28 09:47 AM
    What Does Microsoft's Bizarre Leadership Claim Really Mean? [view article]
    Ballmer's blatherings is starting to remind me of Hitler's ravings in his bunker just before the end. All sorts of imaginary military assets were being ordered to "save the day". IMO, MSFT is destined to become another "GM" - not tomorrow but within most of our lifetimes - too moribund and anal retentive Reply
  • commenter
    David Lentz
    Jul 27 12:04 PM
    Microsoft: In Need of Focus [view article]
    Buying failing stocks for the dividend yield would lead one to buying banking stocks or investing in REITs. Not my cuppa tea. Reply
  • commenter
    David Lentz
    Jul 27 12:02 PM
    Microsoft: In Need of Focus [view article]
    Actually, no, the potential washing away of their base and the lack of any products that actually appeal to me (remember, I'm a Mac fanboy) offset the likely-to-be steady stream of big dividends. The dividend yield is the ONLY reason I can see for anyone to buy Microsoft.

    If I'm looking for growth, AAPL strikes me as a much better buy than MSFT.

    I think that Microsoft's growth years, back when they could bulldoze their competitors by any number of tactics, even good execution, are in their distant past, and are extremely unlikely to ever return. Certainly not under the guidance of Steve Ballmer, and probably not even if Bill gates were to return. Some new rising star at Microsoft would have to take the helm, and much of the talent there is jumping ship these days.

    Once upon a time, I actually owned a pretty good position in Microsoft (sold it upon the roll-out of Windows 95, as I though the market was saturated and their growth prospects limited -- so I can clearly be grossly wrong, or at least guilty of miserable timing), but during this millennium, their flame has noticeably flickered.

    I don't believe that "focus" (as in cutting the non-performing business units) will help them much, but it would ratchet up the stream of net cash pouring into the Redmond money bins. What they need a LOT more than "focus" is "vision" or "imagination"... whatever it takes to create/enter new markets successfully. The last time they successfully entered/created a new market was when they created an apps suit (a.k.a. Office) -- all of the many attempts to recreate that success since then have failed.

    If we look at their most recent major campaign, the attempt to take over the games industry, it was based on their acquisition of Bungie to get Halo, and then build a business unit around it, with a proprietary console, the Xbox. They added other titles, some more successful than others, but never managed to push the competition into the sea, despite running the business at a loss for many years, supported by the profits from Office and Windows. Indeed, it might be the case that their competitive threat only spurred Nintendo to greater heights, and produce the Wii. The Wii is an example of a company that looked at their bread-and-butter business, and created something different, walked away from ever-increasing clock speeds, pixel densities, etc, and instead took an entirely different direction, making a product that was solidly profitable (yet much cheaper in cost) than the competition, and basing its appeal on large-scale body movement interfaces. That vision is being reqarded by a significant expension of their marketplace (now many retirement homes or non-gaming adults are buying PS3s or Xboxes?). THAT's vision and creativity!

    Consider what might have been if Microsoft merely pushed games software, and not wasted fortunes on their hardware endeavors. The games business unit would have been a profit generator on par with their Windows and Office segments, certainly eclipsing their server-oriented software business unit. Can you imagine the revenue from a Wii version of Halo (even with degraded graphics)? They could have dominated the games software industry.

    Some would have us believe that this can still be accomplished, but they have wasted too much time. Bungie has bought their freedom, the Wii is upon the industry, gobbling market share at a ferociouos rate, and Microsoft is slowly being pushed back into the sea themselves on the games front, and even in the home and educational PC markets. There was a time when such a strategy might have worked, but that time is long past. Milking the dividend stream is all that remains for the investing community.     Reply
  • commenter
    thedonald11
    Jul 27 10:18 AM
    My Website
    Microsoft: In Need of Focus [view article]
    So David, Does the "good dividend play" then make you a buyer of MSFT ? Reply
  • commenter
    David Lentz
    Jul 26 11:08 AM
    Microsoft: In Need of Focus [view article]
    "Ballmer is a marketing guy, put in charge of a high tech company with a monopoly. That is a deadly combination."

    This struck me as incredibly insightful, until I remembered that this would also fit Apple just as well (settle down, I'm a Mac fanboy, I can say these things).

    Steve Jobs is basically a marketing guy (par excellence), and Apple has a definite tinge of monopoly about it, what with the proprietary nature of its products.

    So let me make one small adjustment to the statement:

    Ballmer is an incompetent marketing guy, put in charge of a high tech company with a monopoly. That is a deadly combination.

    There. I think that fits a bit better.

    It will take quite a while for the Company that Bill Built to run through all that cash, especially while their corporate monopoly keeps rolling in the dough, year after year.

    But if we look a bit closer, we see a failed internet strategy, a failed video game strategy (look at the cash flow of their games business and call it anything else, if you dare), and a distinct inability for the company in innovate. Yes, they managed to steamroller the competition when the industry was taking its first feeble steps, but once the personal compter business matured, they were unable to squash competitors the way they could when the PC world was new. So there is a weakness that can be exploited.

    Looking ahead, I can envision (perhaps more wishing than seeing with clarity) a future in which competitors hollow out Microsoft's non-corporate markets, and make inroads into the corporate markets in small but significant ways.

    The stage is then set for some event to cause corporations to defect en masse to alternative platforms (which might not even be PCs, but perhaps cellphones talking to mainframes or cloud resources), gutting the nice annual returns that Microsoft harvests from its captive corporate customer base and tearing a gaping hole in the Redmond Titanic cash machine. THAT will be when the cash gushes out of Microsoft like a ruptured oil tanker.

    Until then it's probably a good dividend play, as Ballmer will be forced to pay significant cash dividends to pacify growling shareholders.     Reply
  • commenter
    OldMacHand
    Jul 25 09:56 PM
    Microsoft: In Need of Focus [view article]
    "Instance the CD; monetize the IP? What hogwash!" It's market speak.

    Ballmer is a marketing guy, put in charge of a high tech company with a monopoly. That is a deadly combination.

    I worked for a company like that, high tech with marketing guys in charge. It had a monopoly on copying and these marketing exec's thought they were very smart because the money just rolled. But they never understood the technology. With all the cash, they bought up lots of high tech start ups, funded world class research labs which enabled them to get into all sorts of side products that never made money. Even though the labs acquired companies gave them a 20 year head start they mismanaged the digital transition because of their ignorance of the technology and lost their monopoly. So from a high flier in the 60's and 70's they almost went under, stock now has gone nowhere in the last 10 years or more.

    For another example, think of how the marketing CEO almost ran Apple out of existence.

    The monopoly postpones the inevitable but Ballmer is following the script and will do the same to Microsoft.     Reply
  • commenter
    yohoho
    Jul 25 08:13 PM
    My Website
    Microsoft: In Need of Focus [view article]
    "but you have to wonder about the returns here"

    Personally, I love the long-term approach that Ballmer and Co. are taking. Its REFRESHING and I wish more American businesses would/could do it.

    If you're curious about the IRR, which is what you are worried about... go re-listen to Chris Liddell's presentation before the closing Q&A. He showed a slide or two that made a TON of sense.     Reply
  • commenter
    Rokjok777
    Jul 25 05:36 PM
    Microsoft: In Need of Focus [view article]
    MSFT views everything as a potential "platform" play. That means it takes years to assemble all the pieces, but if/when they win, it's huge. In ads, they want to become the one-stop shop for all the needs of an advertiser. Not just ad words, not just display, not just mobile, etc. If you hook that to their enterprise presence (desktop, apps, server, and now enterprise search with FAST), the potential is enormous. GOOG? nowhere to be found in the enterprise. They installed their search appliance at a few enterprises, crawled the network, then "Oops!" if you searched for "executive compensation" it spit out all the execs comp packages. No enterprise permissioning or control. Not ready for prime time. Ad to that the complete lack of support and it's hard to see how GOOG gets anything done in the enterprise in the next decade or so. And what are enterprises? Advertisers, duh. If MSFT can pull off this link, could be very good for them. Reply

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