04.23.09
Microsoft’s Earnings Collapse (Down 32%), GNU/Linux a Major Cause
Summary: Serious disaster unleashed in Redmond today as net earnings drop by a third
AS ALWAYS, Microsoft is using its people in the press to hide the severity of this, but bloggers are not as stupid and obedient as Microsoft needs them to be. GNU/Linux has cracked Microsoft's margins and it shows. In the first quarter, Ars Technica wrote: “Client software felt the slump in PC sales, and was further harmed by the shift to netbooks; many of these run Linux, which helps Microsoft not at all.” CRN wrote: “Microsoft, like much of the IT industry, was caught off-guard by the rapid rise of the netbook category, but moved quickly to offer a netbook-specific version of XP Home to stem the tide of Linux on netbooks.”
“With such a sharp dive in profit, Microsoft may find it hard to justify keeping the current size of its workforce.”From the Microsoft-sympathetic press arrives mostly spin that excuses revenue drops.
With such a sharp dive in profit, Microsoft may find it hard to justify keeping the current size of its workforce. Rumours of further layoffs [1, 2] which Microsoft did not deny make more sense now, but the market closed shortly after these results were published, so it may take a day (or a few) to find out what Microsoft will do next. █
NotZed said,
April 23, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Funny how most of their competitors are doing so well isn’t it?
Yet everyone acknowledges they met their disastrous estimates like it’s just expected in this ‘economic climate’.
I noticed some random commenter on the techcrunch article got them to change their headline since it didn’t match the paid-off media’s.