Microsoft: Outlook Dreary, Competition From Google, Apple

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said Tuesday outlook for the company would remain dreary through its fiscal year ending in June.

The stock traded down to its lowest level in 11 years on the news.

Ballmer also reiterated his desire to talk with new Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Carol Bartz, but he's getting the cold shoulder.

Henry Blodget thinks the power dynamic between Microsoft and Yahoo has shifted.

The Microsoft chief also said the company was unlikely to gain much ground against Google, and that Apple Inc. has eaten into about one percentage point of market share in the desktop computer market.

Still, all is not rosy for Apple either, with one analyst downgrading the stock on Tuesday.

Comments

[mero909]

Microsoft doesn't bother me. I mean... the .NET Framework was one of their best ideas in a long time. I hear Windows 7 is remarkably better than Vista so I think they're going to be fine.

[marlovian]

Hey, Stevie B. - you can always get a job with GM.

[zukervati]

I hate Microshaft products, marketing strategy and their outsourcing of code-writing to mediocre developers overseas (what difference do new version of Winblows and MS Office have year after year? More lipstick on the same p.ig!) Seriously, if someone paid me a million bucks to stand underneath a valve that was controling the release of Sulfuric acid using the Microshaft code, I wouldn't do it and neither should anyone else.

Nonetheless, I do admire Bill and Melinda Gates' unbelievable generosity and Bill's sense of competition. His business and work ethics are not only legendery, they are also quite admirable.

[jerrypl]

Microsoft makes a mediocre product. Apple makes a far superior product. It just comes to that.

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

[mero909]

Apple makes good products, but they also make their own hardware to run their software on. Microsoft makes software agnostic to hardware. When it comes to business practices you have to ask this question: One of these two companies must rule the world, which one would you want to do so?

Too easy. I choose Microsoft in a heartbeat.

[mcamp52]

Microsoft is for Republicans. Macs (Apple) are for Democrats. See ya later Microsoft...

[IDIOTA]

What? Microshaft is not the PC. Have you heard of Linux?

[The Ghost]

Linux is for technophiles. Completely useless for the general user.

[Slapmewhenitsover]

I figure MS has screwed enough people with their inferior products. I guess Gates better keep his money because it might be all he makes, ever.

[sueinmn]

They could do better by dumping Vista and prefecting XP. Vista is a pig similar to millenium. Xp was /is better system. Im tired of having so few choices and Microsoft spends too much and too many years implementing s sytem that sucks and leaves us with one choice. Thats to go to Apple!
Pay attention Microsoft, I preer windows but Im tired of being forced your inept upgrades!

[research]

I bought enough win xp computers to last me for awhile.

[IntelligenceQuantifier]

I second that 100%.

[MNmommy]

My favorite machine in the house still has Win2kPro. What does that tell you?

It's about time to chuck it

:(

it's gotten too slow and too many impediments with the kids' needing Office 2007, a Zune and Gen 3 Nano in the house.

[MyTake]

Well Stevie, if you think this year is going to be dreary, just wait until the Windows 7 operating system starts selling and people find out that there is no email software included (you are sucking everyone up into the CLOUDS and will be storing all their email messages and a whole lot of other personal data up there as well).

Perhaps your dreariness arises from the EU wanting to break up your monopoly and the fact that the business world turned thumbs down on your lip-gloss Vista operating system and stayed with XP.

I just bought a quad core computer with Vista installed. The guy at the store tried to tack on an extra charge to have their tech shop optimize Vista for me. I declined knowing I could tweak it myself but was absolutely curious why your incompetent programmers would not include a high performance optimization program that tweaks the OS given the hardware footprint. So when I started it up on the Intel Quad Core system, Vista, with 8 GB memory, was slower in performance than my nicely performance tweaked XP Pro OS on my Amdahl Dual Core computer.

And if Apple released their OS to the public domain and gave your monopoly some nose-to-nose competition, I think your investors would toss you in short order.

[sueinmn]

No email software in W7? They took away direct picture mailing from Vista, unless you use the old express mail only cable users ustilize. It must be their Best and Brightest from India huh? They have become an overbloated joke!

[mero909]

If you want an email client, download one. I agree with Microsoft on this point. Just give me the base Operating System and let me choose the software I want to use.

[PhilipTaylor]

This is to be expected as upgrading or new software can wait!

But when we start to recover they will get a really big bounce!

Automation and productivity enhancement is on the Obama Agenda for government and industry so MSFT will do well! Right now he has to stay with the Economy.

[Brighten]

Microsoft products are so bad, they are on the verge of being criminal. It’s actually an insult. Years of productive time have been wasted by a generation of computer users that stare blankly into the monitor like monkeys while Windows boots up. I guarantee that if there was a competing product on a similar platform, software companies would challenge each other to see who could develop an operating system that could boot up faster. If Microsoft spent as much time and money understanding what people want, as they spend trying to keep out competition, their products would not be so pathetically third rate.

[SusanStoHelit]

I'm no big Microsoft fan - but anyone want to point me to something better? Sorry to all the fans, but while Macs are more elegant in user interface, in some areas anyway, they're less robust, have had far less virus attacks to test their security, and run on a quite limited set of hardware. Open source - a huge risk, and generally too poorly documented, supported, and designed for the average user.

Until there's something better out there - REALLY better - I gotta hope they stay open. And as a programmer, hope that the transition is fairly clean, because you just cannot imagine the pain of writing for a bunch of different operating systems - I did it at the start of my career, I'd rather not do it again. Everything seems right, but some subtle difference in the SXDJE39842 function call happens to cause the whole program to crash every Thursday when the user has set their background color to purple, etc. It's such a nightmare to build and to test, and as a result, lower quality software with fewer features is created.

[ecotopian]

Try Open Office, Firefox and Thunderbird. They have taken a good sized bite out of Microsoft's dominance and they are well supported and documented.

[William S]

Those who say open source is 'a huge risk' or is 'insecure' are truly clueless. What do you think powers Google's search engine, Apple's computers, or Amazon's Kindle? That's right - open source software.

There is no perfect operating system, but at least users of the open Unix OSes (i.e. Linux & BSD) aren't paying a convicted monopolist for the pleasure of being screwed when their software takes a dump.

Your conviction that writing portable software is difficult says much about your skill as a programmer.

[mrcontinental]

Open source rules! If I didn't have so many Microsoft certifications I would have dumped all things Microsoft ages ago but they keep me employed by building crap. Oh well.

[planetjeffy]

I'm typing this on a new core 2 notebook with vista business. It rocks. It opens and closes fast. Apps launch quickly and glitch free. Printers configure themselves... The new Office is much better than 03 and Firefox works great too. My last notebook was a single core with XP and it was slow and crashed all the time. It is all how you set it up - remove crapware, install free avast security, dump the aero effects and so on. I've used tons of MS, Linux and Apple puters, open office and Google Apps and the Vista / Office combo are the best. That be said, I can't wait til Windows 7 comes out later in the year.

[The Ghost]

Thanks, Bill!

[mero909]

Actually, I run Vista and have never had a problem. I'm not sure what the obsession against Microsoft is from.

[OrganicGeorge]

Your logic is MS is so bad, but it's the best of the worst?

Funny how governments out side of the US run open source as do many corporations.

When do you get your paycheck from MS? Sorry I had to ask since we know MS has paid commenter's in the past.

MS is obsolete, the only reason they are relevant is due to their OS monopoly on every new PC.

Could you name one product that MS has successfully produced in open competition, other than the X box?

With the new administration, that prefers Mac, I doubt that MS will continue to be able to continue evade it's court ordered sanctions.

The stock market understands that MS best days are now behind it.

[quentint]

Microsoft has been a terrible, ruthless beast for years. The more they fall, the better.

[AlphaMutt]

That's because they suck.

Once you go Mac, you never go back...

[IDIOTA]

The Mac is not a magic bullet. I bought a Macbook in April, and it turns out that I can only use 3 of 4 gigabytes of RAM. That sucks, and Apple has not fixed the problem. Also, when the first i-Macs came out, there was a 10 percent failure rate for hard disks. That's criminal. I have never had such a problem with my PC desktop or laptop computers. I hope that my Mac hard disk does not fail.

[IDIOTA]

I bought a macbook only to discover a huge problem with RAM, namely, i can only use 3 of 4 gigabytes. i may never buy another mac, particularly because apple has not fixed this problem.

[The Ghost]

Bill says your check's in the mail.

[ecotopian]

Sorry, that's not true. Some of us are practical when it comes our hard earned cash. Macs are just too expensive for the average person. I like Macs, but when I needed a new computer it was a Windows machine.

[The Ghost]

If you like constantly cleaning out viru$e$, Trojan hor$e$ and $pyware, then paying for $ecurity $oftware and nece$$ary application$ that don't come with PCs, and then $pending half the night searching for driver$ for your peripheral$, then Window$ is for you!

For everyone else a solid secure computer at a fair price that works perfectly out of the box is all we need. Sorry by time is money, and mine is worth the extra $100.

[katielady]

I had to purchase a new computer; loaded with Vista! and for some reason tonight Mozilla won't load and am forced to use Explorer.. which I really DO NOT LIKE! A pox on Bill Gates and his ilk!

[norkas]

Get rid of gates and balmer and let someone honest take over the company that is smart and honest and you will see a big change.

I have a new internet company ready to launch and we used allot of open source because of the wonderful reputation Gates has and how many went out of business using there products in the past. Speak to people about there war stories or better yet look it up and google it.

Warren Buffet is not stupid so why would he best freinds with someone who so many hate with good justification?

[touringpro]

Jezzus, what a steaming pile of incoherent verbage. Good luck pitching Titanic, Inc.'s business plan.

[idisVA]

Bill unretire.