“History informs us that leaders from prior bull markets do not lead in the next bull — and MSFT was a leader two bull markets ago,” Barry Ritholtz writes for The Big Picture.
“Consumers are migrating from desktop to mobile to handheld — none of which plays into their strengths,” Ritholtz writes. “During the past decade, MSFT returned exactly zero to investors, including dividends. They are a bloated bureaucracy run by bloated, bureaucratic CEO. The paradigm has shifted, and they have failed to make the turn. They missed literally every major new technology, every innovation, every great idea from search to social to handhelds to tablets over that period.”
Ritholtz writes, “The Kinnect is certainly a hit, but its not the sort of product that moves the needle for a $234 billion company. X Box is also a consumer winner, but the firm spent billions to grab the franchise from Sony — with far less ROI than such a massive investment would should ever warrant. Everything else from Online to Search to Social to portable music to even their well reviewed but 5 years too late cell phone — has been a bust. Their bread and butter franchises — Office, Windows and even SQL — are under assault from completely new product categories to which they have no response.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Scathing, but true. Their best hope is that the law actually deals Google’s Android what it deserves. If so, Microsoft will be standing there, ready to license Windows Phone to the iPhone wannabes of the world. Thanks to Google’s over-the-top hubris, Microsoft just might luck out still.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “cpbjr” for the heads up.]