Just some excerpts below from a WSJ article on MS. The NYTimes ran a similar article.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-tech-microsoft-earns.html (This requires registration, but, everyone should be registered with the NYTimes, anyway. It is free.) Of interest, in the NYTimes, one city in Canada switched a lot of its PC's over to StarOffice, cutting software costs 85%. But, even that guy said he would switch back to MS if MS lowered its price. It is very interesting that under their subscription plan, people who have continuously upgraded their software to the latest and greatest will save money, whereas the frugal types among their customers, those who haven't felt the need to upgrade frequently, will spend more. Certainly, there must be commercial opportunities here for alternative software vendors. I guess one challenge would be to find out who these frugal types are and approach them with alternatives. As usual, though, you would have to start at the top, since the lower down people will be likely MS droid's incapable of thinking in non MS terms. Warren Buffett emphasizes in his writings the importance of investing in companies which have a "franchise." That is, some sort of market share that allows it pricing power. For example, a farmer selling wheat is the worse possible investment, since he has no pricing power. He just sells an easily available commodity to the highest bidder. Wheat is wheat. There is no brand name here. Same for an airline. Tobacco, on the other hand is a good business. Addiction combined with brand loyalty, to quote Warren. So, give credit where is it due. MS has created 100's of millions of addicts with brand loyalty, in and out of business. Bill will now start to seriously squeeze them. This will be fun to watch, especially if you own MS stock. Now, that IS evil. Joel SEATTLE (AP) -- Microsoft Corp.'s profits more than doubled from a year ago as a new, controversial software licensing plan helped drive sales and insulate the company from the turmoil hitting the technology industry. The software giant also was able to stem losses from investments. For the three months ended Sept. 30, the Redmond-based software maker had a profit of $2.73 billion, or 50 cents a share, compared to net earnings of $1.28 billion, or 23 cents a share, for the same period a year ago. Microsoft cited a higher-than-expected enrollment in new, subscription-like licensing plans that require companies to sign multiyear agreements and pay annual fees in return for rights to software upgrades. The new plans also eliminate many discounts that companies could receive when they chose to upgrade. The company also announced Windows XP sales have hit 67 million since the new operating system was launched in October 2001. It also saw strong increases in revenue for its MSN Internet access service, as well as a 14 percent jump in sales for its server software and related products. _______________________________________________ Linux-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe/Suspend/Etc -> http://www.linux-sxs.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-users
