“Microsoft’s stock took a beating in trading today after a pair of research firms said PC shipments in the first quarter were down as much as 14% from the year before,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld. “As of 4 p.m. ET, shares of Microsoft were down nearly 5% to $28.82.”
“Other technology stocks, including those of Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Intel, were also off today, down eight-tenths of a percentage point, 6.5% and 1.7%, respectively,” Keizer reports. “In its estimate of first-quarter PC shipments Wednesday, research firm IDC partly blamed Microsoft’s Windows 8 for the drop in sales, said HP’s shipments declined 24% compared to the same quarter of 2012, and said Dell’s shipments dropped 11%.”
Keizer reports, “At least three Wall Street analysts also downgraded Microsoft’s stock today… Patrick Moorhead, an industry analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, wasn’t counting Microsoft dead and gone — ‘The game is not over with,’ he said — but neither was he overly optimistic. ‘So far, their prognosis doesn’t look good at all.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Crap company that deserves all the crap coming its way and then some.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “winmacguy” for the heads up.]
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Gartner: PC Market posts 11.2 percent decline in Q113; Apple Mac sales up 7.4 percent in U.S. – April 10, 2013
IDC: PC shipments post the steepest decline ever in a single quarter, down 13.9% in Q113 – April 10, 2013
It’s been 15 years since anything Microsoft got me excited. They’re doing (have done) something very wrong with all that mindshare and cash.
Microsoft slithered, bullied, or insinuated themselves into corporate and private life in stages, and once they had the world at their feet, they became complacent, secure in their hegemony, dismissive of any challenge, increasingly corrupt, delusional in the same developmental pattern as a religious sect, and as degenerate in their entrenched culture as Imperial Rome under Nero who for some reason reminds me of Steve Ballmer.
I was with you until you got to religious sects. WTF?
From my perspective, Hannah is enjoying going all maniacal in a comparison of Microsoft behavior with that of classic cult / religious sect degenerative behavior, which in turn is similar to the classic story of ‘fall of the Roman Empire’.
There is also an echo of satire here regarding the comparison of Apple fanatics to the Jones Town Kool-Aid drinkers as well as jokes about Apple ‘Evangelists’, as if one had to be a blind religious fanatic in order to appreciate Apple creations. I found Hannah’s descriptive language to be thoroughly entertaining. She’s a much better writer than I am!
This is sort of a pet peeve of mine, but Jonestown used Flavor-Aid not Kool-Aid. So when people say someone drank the Kool-Aid, they either don’t know the history or don’t care. But I happen to like Kool-Aid and don’t like the association.
Kool-Aid is like Kleenex in that it defines a market category.
😀
Sounds like the direction Apple is heading. Remember, the lock that Apple has on OSX hardware is as corrupting a monopoly as Microsoft ever had on desktop PC software. Not all the issues are similar, but nevertheless the oligarchical fingerprints are all over Apple. With its total monopoly over OSX, Apple realises that it can screw its customers very hard and deep, and that the pain threshold of Apple users is very high. In other words, Apple knows if can get away with stuffing us around, and not worry about losing its profit margins. And so, over the years, Apple has indeed taken steps that have infuriated millions of uses, confident that it can keep adding to its pile of cash, without needing to listen to what you Apple users think. It can maintain its profit margins by dumbing down the OS and iOS, and not bother a hoot about people that an iOS file system, matte screens, DVD drives, replaceable RAM, replaceable batteries – simply because there are lots of iPhone/iPad newbies who bring enough money into the fold so that you others don’t really matter. That, my friends, is what a company can do when it has a MONOPOLY. And don’t you for one second believe that Apple will be any nicer than Microsoft when it comes to enforcing a monopoly to make money.
KK, you cover the classic response of businesses to monopoly positions. It is NEVER good. I too would expect Apple to rot into am abusive parasite on its customers if left with no competition. Apple REQUIRES competition.
HOWEVER: FUD much? I have no idea what orifice you’ve pulled your scary ‘pain threshold’ and ‘stuffing us around’ rhetoric from, but you can keep it.
Apple is as customer focused right now as it ever was, remaining one of the few extraordinary companies currently in business. Apple makes most other companies look like either blunderers or outright psychopaths sucking the blood of their customers.
Get some perspective man! Lay off the FUD rhetoric. We long term Apple fanatics have heard it ALL before and know just how WORTHLESS this oh-so-scarrry bullshit really is.
When Apple pulls a blunder, no one is more vocal about it than serious Apple fanatics, such as myself. And look how Apple responded a year ago to my constant influx of criticism: They put me into the AppleSeed program, beta testing each new revision of OS X, and I’m not currently in the developer program. IOW: Apple is ASKING me to provide them with even more valid criticism.
So please STFU until such time as you know what you are talking about and have some documented facts to back up your rhetoric. Thank you! 😛
Apple is about customer service. After a combined five hour Genius Bar visit to fix an iCal issue on my wife’s MacBook Pro, they waived a $300 screen repair on my kids’ MacBook. The said, “You were here a long time. This is on us.” Take a wild guess on who’s products I’ll continue to buy?
KK,
Good comment… but I don’t believe a word of it. Just because Apple does not make cheap crap or stuff you can alter to pieces, does not mean they are the evil empire. For that you need to look at Microsoft. Yes there are good people at Microsoft, but many have left cause it just does not want to move to customer focused.
Ballmer says it all the time…. We will “monitize” this, i.e. give it free until you kill the competition and then use the monopoly to control the market. Its their old, tried and true (till this decade) game plan. Sadly we have changed games… LOL
So, relax, Take a breath.
PS, Steve Jobs (read the book) learned that being cool is one thing but in the real world, you have to make money or it does not work. How else do you think Apple could have spent 8-10 BILLION dollars to pre-buy things like memory and other chips, milling machines that gave it a lock on aluminum cases… etc. Yes…. Market share is good for advertising but profit is good for making business better.
JAT
en
Very articulate expression of the reality that is Microsoft…
Derek, Apple users – the true affectionados, at least, only drink Apple Juice… Kool-Aid has no Apple flavour.
😉
And this is just the tip of the iceberg for Captain Ballmer!
Best comment ever about MSFT! Well done!
You could get a new MS Surface – the people who get them look like they are having a great time around the table – they look pretty excited!
HAHAHAHA. Funny!
The paradigm shift was predicted in 2010 when Steve introduced the iPad.
Talk about ahead of your time …
Actually, it was much earlier with the introduction of Apple’s OS X, based on Unix. The Unix kernel could then be customized to run a factory or a wrist watch…or an iPod, or an iPhone, or an iPad.
Vista copied the look and feel of OS X, to an uncanny degree. Sure, it didn’t wash with customers, who saw no need for it. I’ve always thought that somehow Microsoft panicked, and Vista was the result.
“uncanny”?
Hahaha!
Agreed about the panic thing. And Ballmer being “the sales guy”, he naturally thinks Apple’s success is all marketing, thus his increasingly strident marketing attempts.
The Unix kernel could then be customized…
Actually, it is/was the open source XNU kernel, (no relationship to Scienterrificology mythology). It currently incorporates the Mach kernel, a mixed BSD kernel and the Driver Kit API. The most current version is 64-bit, called K64.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XNU_kernel
XNU stands for ‘X is Not UNIX’. Hardy har har. It is actually the foundation of OS X and iOS that allows them to be certified as UNIX, (as opposed to those UNIX wannabes).
OS X is posix compliant, as is its parent, BSD Unix. That means that it accepts and implements all standard Unix commands, and acts in a standard manner. I have extensive experience with QNX, another flavor of Unix similar to BSD. I used it in factory automation, so I knew what was coming with OS X.
*ENVY* What a great background. I had some UNIX background from when I was studying software project management, as well as from my big FreeBSD tome. The rest I figure out along the way as I need it.
My first exposure to Mach was the project branch going on at MIT, circa 1994, where a friend was working. I had very little knowledge of the work going on at NeXT.
Yes indeed, solid code is key to success.
Seem to recall NEXT Computer also ran UNIX and was sold to Apple during Job’s second coming.
The smartphone market players were routed fairly quickly after IPhone. It will take a little longer for PC’s but Dell & HPQ look like toast. MSFT will bleed out slowly over the next couple of years.
They really won’t “bleed out” for a long time. Most of their revenue is recurring license fees, which are paid by corporations for the installed base. This includes Windows server, Windows OS, Office, and their ERP solutions.
The platform is not going away any time soon, even if companies were to hold off replacing their PCs for a long time. The only ones that are screwed by a slowed replacement cycle are the companies dependent on selling new PCs.
I think your right unfortunately but Microsoft will continue to bleed consumer customers as it maintains the business side. In my opinion Windows was a poor and complex OS for a lot of consumers and those same consumers are switching now to easier to use iPads. And that’s a big chunk ‘o market share.
Considering what Microsoft charges for OS upgrades, they will be in the black for a looooong time!
Apple is in danger of this happening to them, at some point. It has already started. Microsoft is no longer apple’s enemy. Apple and Microsoft need to put the past behind them and become alies in the tech world, to counter the real enemy of tech , the axis of Google, Samsung and Facebook.
The kicking of Samsung parasitic ass has already begun, and will intensify into the future. Karma is a bummer. (Get it? Ass kicking, a bummer?)
The future of Google and Facebook is up in the air. Both have made big blunders recently. Both have promise. Neither are seriously endangering Apple in any real way, only in imaginary ways, as are portrayed by techTard journalists and analcysts. Android is gaining a bad reputation at its malware count explodes exponentially. The new youth culture is turning away from Facebook for the plethora of more private alternatives.
All Microsoft has to offer Mac users is Office. I haven’t used Office in decades. I know of and use plenty of equal or superior alternatives. No Mac users require Office unless some Microsoft addicted business is shoving it down their throat. There are plenty of translators to and from other formats, including that other international standard format, OpenDocument.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
I so so agree with you Derek – beautifully said.
Andrew, first off, Apple is a SOFTWARE company which understands the benefit of custom hardware neatly tying to it’s software. NO other company places such emphasis on having control over both sides of the equation. Microsoft is also a software company and still is in the game. Google has become a software company of sorts, IMO a test lab. Adobe is a software company. These are Apple’s enemies – or rather competitors. Secondly, before iPhone was introduced, S. Jobs made a rather touching moment and admitted the Windows won the PC wars to B. Gates. Peace was made at All things Digital. Two old friends who will go down in history for their achievements to the world. As for Samsung and Facebook… well I think in the very near future you will be astonished at the outcome from Apples gobalthermalnuclear war on Android – and Samsung will be forced to RE-think its game.
Really? At the online Apple store you see a lot of hardware and essentially no software so there.
How do you tell if MSFT took a beating? It has been moribund for years and years.
Exactly. Wasn’t MSFT at $27.whatever just last month? Kick MSFT down to $26 or less and I’d notice something new had occurred.
BTW: Isn’t it amusing that AGAIN Apple had great news as part of this same report and yet-again some dunderheads dumped the stock? It used to be that only the tech literate bought into Apple. Now that Apple is the biggest tech company on the planet, the tech illiterate run to and fro, sell and buy, with every little tech analcyst blowhard breeze. The cost of fame and fortune.
Well said.
How NOT to get rid of the stinking carcass…
Are you insinuating getting rid of another fat whale that is practically dead?
Exactly!
This article brought up some really interesting comments. It’s a different standard comparing to the comments from an Android or Windows news site. Thanks.
Say goodnight Irene. Bomber is finished as is Microshaft…
Love that word ‘putrid’. Microsoft has always been putrid, done putrid things, established putridity as a commercial entity, and continued the quest for further putridness in all its endeavors. Putrid is also the state of a rotting corpse.
fetid, putrid’s kissing cousin, is good too.
But at Microsoft it all began with Flaccid…
Not for nothing is Steve Ballmer lovingly referred to as “Uncle Fester”
Does pottymouth Derek have any data to support his assertion that Samsung is being kicked in any significant degree?
MS stock is worth about the same today as it was 10 years ago. In that same period, the Nasdaq Composite has doubled. That indicates a complete failure of the executive leaders at MS. There is plenty of great talent at MS, but management there has no clue how to get it to produce truly great products. What a waste of human resources. The next 10 years will be interesting with the PC market headed down.