Microsoft fails x3 and yet their stock goes up?

[Red Storm]

There's two ways of looking at things, from the perspective of the company or the perspective of tech enthusiasts. When we here at Anandtech - a tech enthusiast website - say "Microsoft fails..." obviously we aren't talking about their bottom line. Our judgement isn't made based on money, we base it on the hardware/software/features/stability/etc of whatever it is we're discussing.

If I say Windows RT fails and someone replies "MS' stock price is up" that doesn't really change the fact that RT fails. If we were on a MS share holder forum then it'd be different.

 

[hans007]

the stock market is a giant bubble and probably should be worth half what it is right now.

tesla barely makes money and is worth 1/6th of ford etc.

linkedin is worth 20 billion dollars for the virtually nothing they do

 

[sunzt]

linkedin is worth 20 billion dollars for the virtually nothing they do

You'd be surprised how engaged some companies are in LinkedIn. Gotten leads and interviews from it myself.

As a social network, LinkedIn is probably the most useful because it focuses on business networking.

 

[phucheneh]

Microsoft will recant all the dumb stuff they've said about the new xbox. I would pretty much guarantee it; way too much backlash, especially when Sony has announced that they will not be having the same nazi features (but they'll probably squeeze some others in).

And then, upon Microsoft's release of the news that they will not be shafting their players quite so badly...their stock will drop.

 

[baydude]

You'd be surprised how engaged some companies are in LinkedIn. Gotten leads and interviews from it myself.

As a social network, LinkedIn is probably the most useful because it focuses on business networking.

LinkedIn's model for generating revenue is unlike many of the other social networks, where they rely mainly on ads to generate revenue. LinkedIn's model has three main revenue generating business lines.. through Business Recruitment accounts, User base Premium accounts, and Job Ads. This is why their stock price is over $160 when Facebook is less than $30.

 

[zinfamous]

You'd be surprised how engaged some companies are in LinkedIn. Gotten leads and interviews from it myself.

As a social network, LinkedIn is probably the most useful because it focuses on business networking.

Yet, it allows membership for people like my aunt, who lists her "profession" as "Domestic Queen."

 

[holden j caufield]

MS will settle in and become like IBM, still around but quiet.

IBM dropped out of most hardware because the margins are so small. But I think they are the #1 managed services and rake in 10s of billions this way.

 

[Dominato3r]

Windows 8, Windows RT, XBone.

I can't remember a big company screwing the pooch so badly three times in a row.

Yet over the last year MS stock went from 21 to 35?

Because Windows isn't their highest earning division anymore. It's not even their second highest. XBox One isn't even out yet.

 

[rh71]

if you could understand the market you'd be rich by now. That's why it's called gambling and not investing.

 

[ImpulsE69]

IBM dropped out of most hard because the margins are so small. But I think they are the #1 managed services and rake in 10s of billions this way.

And sadly, I work with some of them on a daily basis, and...yea..let's just say..not the cream of the crop.

 

[Deeko]

Financial reports, the stock market, and general understanding of how companies work seems to be beyond you, OP.

 

[rockyct]

Nintendo is probably the most gamer friendly console out there and it's struggling to even match the sales of the Wii and it's a $300 console. The revised 360 will probably outsell the XB1 this fall, but at least we're talking $500 vs. $200 or less.

I think in general why the stock price has gone up is because Microsoft has become more of a solid player in the "post-PC era" where they had been written off a couple years ago. The main issues with Windows 8 will mostly be resolved with Windows Blue, and surprisingly it appears like they'll end up in third place with WP8 over BBM.

Also, XB1 is a loss leader. Xbox has always been a money sink for them. Frankly, them quitting would probably be the best financial thing for the company in the short term but they'd basically give up on the living room being a future source of revenue. WinRT almost doesn't matter with Haswell as people will still buy Windows tablets, they just don't need them to be ARM based anymore to get good battery life. Win8 sales are down, but not by much, and Blue will get them back on track with businesses.

 

[baydude]

Nintendo is probably the most gamer friendly console out there and it's struggling to even match the sales of the Wii and it's a $300 console. The revised 360 will probably outsell the XB1 this fall, but at least we're talking $500 vs. $200 or less.

I think in general why the stock price has gone up is because Microsoft has become more of a solid player in the "post-PC era" where they had been written off a couple years ago. The main issues with Windows 8 will mostly be resolved with Windows Blue, and surprisingly it appears like they'll end up in third place with WP8 over BBM.

Also, XB1 is a loss leader. Xbox has always been a money sink for them. Frankly, them quitting would probably be the best financial thing for the company in the short term but they'd basically give up on the living room being a future source of revenue. WinRT almost doesn't matter with Haswell as people will still buy Windows tablets, they just don't need them to be ARM based anymore to get good battery life. Win8 sales are down, but not by much, and Blue will get them back on track with businesses.

You forgot to mention their cloud offering such as Office365 and Azure.

 

[Oyeve]

IBM dropped out of most hardware because the margins are so small. But I think they are the #1 managed services and rake in 10s of billions this way.

Exactly. Around, relevant and making $$$.

 

[OverVolt]

X Bone is a helluva alot better name than xbox one.

 

[OverVolt]

LinkedIn's model for generating revenue is unlike many of the other social networks, where they rely mainly on ads to generate revenue. LinkedIn's model has three main revenue generating business lines.. through Business Recruitment accounts, User base Premium accounts, and Job Ads. This is why their stock price is over $160 when Facebook is less than $30.

And its PE ratio is 500+

Excellent time to invest. Growth might be a tad "priced in" though.

Got to admit its a little better than FB's 2,300+ PE.

 

[Train]

IBM dropped out of most hardware because the margins are so small. But I think they are the #1 managed services and rake in 10s of billions this way.

IBM is apparently in the process of acquiring SoftLayer.

 

[OverVolt]

You'd be surprised how engaged some companies are in LinkedIn. Gotten leads and interviews from it myself.

As a social network, LinkedIn is probably the most useful because it focuses on business networking.

First thing a new worker on wall street would do after getting a job through linkin is allocate some of the portfolio to it! :awe: Or keep suggesting it over and over again as an analyst, etc. Whose bread I eat his song I sing so they say. I think some loyalty bias plays into its beloved status on wall street.

I agree with the "Why is Tesla 1/5th the value of Ford" and "linkedin is worth 20 billion dollars for the virtually nothing they do" mentality but I give due credit to momentum like that. I don't think there will be a crash anytime soon but its really just the bag holding game. The analytic's just make me laugh if FB/linkin is growing or shrinking users, revenue etc. when its PE is 500-2000, all that matters is who is buying/selling the stock, it might as well be tulip bulbs who cares so long as people are trading it.

FB popped when it appeared in George Soro's holdings and has been tapering off since. He was playing a dead cat bounce IMO. Had nothing to do with revenue/earnings. Thats the only thing stocks like that are good for, hype, and momentum plays.

 

[Vdubchaos]

the stock market is a giant bubble and probably should be worth half what it is right now.

tesla barely makes money and is worth 1/6th of ford etc.

linkedin is worth 20 billion dollars for the virtually nothing they do

This is exactly what I think.

Stock market is the biggest pile of BS one can find on this planet.

Mandatory Stock Market post

Wall Street Monkey Business


Once upon a time in a village in China, a man announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10.


The villagers seeing there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them.
The man bought thousands at $10, but, as the supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their efforts.
The man further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they
started catching monkeys again.


Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to their farms. The offer rate increased
to $25 and the supply of monkeys became so little that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!


The man now announced that he would buy monkeys at $50! However, since he had to go to the city on some
business, his assistant would now act as buyer, on his behalf.


In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers: 'Look at all these monkeys in the big cage that the man
has collected. I will sell them to you at $35 and when he returns from the city, you can sell them back to him for $50.'


The villagers squeezed together their savings and bought all the monkeys.


Then they never saw the man or his assistant again, only now the monkeys were everywhere!


Welcome to WALL STREET.

 

[darkewaffle]

That is one godawful metaphor.

 

[Lonyo]

Nintendo is probably the most gamer friendly console out there and it's struggling to even match the sales of the Wii and it's a $300 console. The revised 360 will probably outsell the XB1 this fall, but at least we're talking $500 vs. $200 or less.

I think in general why the stock price has gone up is because Microsoft has become more of a solid player in the "post-PC era" where they had been written off a couple years ago. The main issues with Windows 8 will mostly be resolved with Windows Blue, and surprisingly it appears like they'll end up in third place with WP8 over BBM.

Also, XB1 is a loss leader. Xbox has always been a money sink for them. Frankly, them quitting would probably be the best financial thing for the company in the short term but they'd basically give up on the living room being a future source of revenue. WinRT almost doesn't matter with Haswell as people will still buy Windows tablets, they just don't need them to be ARM based anymore to get good battery life. Win8 sales are down, but not by much, and Blue will get them back on track with businesses.

Everything MS has is pretty much based on the future direction they see things going, which is good in many ways.
Always on connected multi-purpose living room box.
Tablet focused OS.
Cloud services, both end user and business.

They are "failures" in the current environment, but move forward to v2, 3 or 4 of each, when they have been improved, and who knows.
Meanwhile they are still making lots of profits with things as they are now, as "failures".

It should be pretty obvious to most people that most MS products are forward focused right now, for once, and because of that, they aren't quite right, like the whole UMPC crapfest, or old PDAs/tablets, which were too early and pretty crappy.

If you don't believe that integration and always on and tablets/portable devices are the future, you're living in another world. MS is just doing things slightly too early compared to the maturity of their internal projects. e.g. Xbox One might be too soon, and Windows 8 wasn't close to a perfect product, although the idea makes sense.

 

[OverVolt]

Everything MS has is pretty much based on the future direction they see things going, which is good in many ways.
Always on connected multi-purpose living room box.
Tablet focused OS.
Cloud services, both end user and business.

They are "failures" in the current environment, but move forward to v2, 3 or 4 of each, when they have been improved, and who knows.
Meanwhile they are still making lots of profits with things as they are now, as "failures".

It should be pretty obvious to most people that most MS products are forward focused right now, for once, and because of that, they aren't quite right, like the whole UMPC crapfest, or old PDAs/tablets, which were too early and pretty crappy.

If you don't believe that integration and always on and tablets/portable devices are the future, you're living in another world. MS is just doing things slightly too early compared to the maturity of their internal projects. e.g. Xbox One might be too soon, and Windows 8 wasn't close to a perfect product, although the idea makes sense.

Its technology convergence theory and I think its impossible to converge the desktop onto anything else, be it phone, or touch screen pads/phones etc. You might check your email or download apps on a tablet but you aren't going to sit down at your tablet at the end of the month and pay your bills, write letters, make resumes, etc. on your tablet.

If anything what we have seen is a bunch of divergence lately. People get TV but get it several different ways (netflix, HBO, cable, OTA, etc). People check email/messages/call but do it several different ways (wireless phone, desktop, tablet, skype, VOIP home/mobile phone etc.). People play the same games, but do it several different ways. (Steam vs consoles vs buy physically)

Trying to converge everything into one... we'll see how it goes but I think its a mistake personally. Microsoft is going super all in on this strategy. They are integrating the new word and office to be more cloud-like. Like you'll have your one "Windows Live ID" to login and hop on word, watch movies, store files, play xbox, login to windows etc. Seems to be what they want, I think its a pipe dream. They aren't in a position to congregate everyone like that. They aren't well known in media, everyone is using fragmented versions of OS's, fragmented versions of word, etc. They want to be like Apple with a 1-2 year upgrade cycle and almost full compliance at a time when people are going 5 years without buying a new PC. People still bitch they can't open .docx... Apparently we are all supposed to be using touch screen windows 8, there is a huge disconnect of reality vs what Microsoft wants.

I've got Vista, Win7, Win8 as of late, and I pretty much try my best to make them work like XP did. Start menu app anyone? Have any of you used Windows 8 much? Its on a laptop, I dread using it. I've actually got the newest version of word 365, etc. It looks funky when you load it on a desktop because its made for a touch screen. People are probably hammering away on their 3 year old KEYBOARDS about how great all this new stuff is while running windows XP/vista/7.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I try to too, because at the end of the day, if that 1 thing fails, then everything fails, and no matter how you try to spin it, it will fail at some point.

 

[darkewaffle]

It's not diverging in that people now have more devices to accomplish a task, but rather converging in that each of these devices are slowly evolving towards the same end (or maybe towards 'each other').

Phones started as phones. Then they could text (aka instant message). Then they could browse the net (aka surf). And are now evolving to be able to accomplish gaming and varying levels of productivity and content creation all in one.

Tablets started as "computers you could write on" and are now expanding as a gaming, productivity and communication mediums.

Desktop computers (and more specific to this idea, laptops) are the baseline for performance and capability really, but are expanding their usage model with touch interfaces, improved portability, and smaller and more attractive chassis.

They're all slowly starting to overlap and accomplish the same tasks. Currently, a venn diagram of computing of cameras/phones/laptops/tablets/desktops/consoles would probably look like a jumbled set of olympic rings; in the future, I think it'll progress to be more like this.

I don't think we're near the point of a 'super device' just yet. Whether there will ever be one true super device will depend heavily on the ceilings we reach with battery potential and our material development a product that can 'expand and contract' at our discretion (the day you can pull a monitor out of your pocket will change everything), only then will it bring obsolescence to any one type of "niche" product; until that point I think there will always be a [smaller] place for Game Boys, DSLRs, dedicated GPS units, desktop computers and other 'specialized' devices. But I think it's quite conceivable that twenty years down the road we may all have a phone/tablet/laptop hybrid to carry around that simply docks with keyboards/TVs/controller accessories/etc as a mainstream computing device.

 

[Red Storm]

It's not diverging in that people now have more devices to accomplish a task, but rather converging in that each of these devices are slowly evolving towards the same end (or maybe towards 'each other').

Phones started as phones. Then they could text (aka instant message). Then they could browse the net (aka surf). And are now evolving to be able to accomplish gaming and varying levels of productivity and content creation all in one.

Tablets started as "computers you could write on" and are now expanding as a gaming, productivity and communication mediums.

Desktop computers (and more specific to this idea, laptops) are the baseline for performance and capability really, but are expanding their usage model with touch interfaces, improved portability, and smaller and more attractive chassis.

I don't think we're near the point of a 'super device' just yet and I don't think it will bring obsolescence to any one type of "niche" product; I think there will always be a [smaller] place for Game Boys, DSLRs, dedicated GPS units, desktop computers and other 'specialized' devices. But I think it's quite conceivable that twenty years down the road we may all have a phone/tablet/laptop hybrid to carry around that simply docks with keyboards/TVs/controller accessories/etc as a mainstream computing device.

When I had my Note 2 this is actually how I used it for a while. It was my phone, GPS, tablet, and I would hook it up to my TV for media, and I'd connect it to a monitor and keyboard/mouse to use for web browsing and document typing and such. Was it perfect? Not quite, but we're very close.