back to article Microsoft: Cloud-o-bile still only small slice of softening revenue pie

Microsoft reported revenues that beat estimates for Q1 of fiscal 2015, boosted by strong growth in cloud and mobility. But its solid-looking numbers belied ongoing softness in its traditional core markets. Total revenues for the three months ending on September 30 were $23.20bn, a 25 per cent year-on-year increase but flat …

  1. big_D Silver badge

    Consumer

    given that MS is rumoured to start giving Windows away on consumer devices (and it already is on sub10" display devices), the we can see Windows revenues dropping off over time, with a move to value add and the push through to business licensing and cloud services.

    I'm also impressed with the Office 365 Home Premium subscription. With 1GB storage and to 4 subordinate accounts, it is very good. My youngest daughter just bought a Lenovo Yoga 2 for and adding her account meany saving a hundred Euros plus on an Office licence.

    1. Aitor 1

      Re: Consumer

      So now 9,9" chinese windows tablets are THE thing...

      1. big_D Silver badge

        Re: Consumer

        Mine is Korean.

        Then you have the Windows "BING Edition", which is free to hardware manufacturers, if they leave Bing as the default search engine (the user can still select a different browser and search engine after they have signed on for the first time). That can be put on netbooks, desktops and laptops as well.

    2. big_D Silver badge

      Re: Consumer

      Bleh! That should have been 1TB of storage! :-P

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Consumer

      Office 365 now gives you 1TB of storage - and recently added the possibility to upload single files up to 10GB in size..

      http://blogs.office.com/2014/06/23/1-tb-of-onedrive-storage-coming-to-an-office-365-near-you/

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Building for a giant fall.

    They are hiding alot in their financials, for example, using shipped numbers and combined Xbox360 and Xbox One sales.

    Pretending there is a market for Windows Phone, Lumia or Windows, or whatever it's called this week.

    Their traditional markets are dead or dying, their new markets are failing. How on earth can the share price continue to rise?

    1. smug git

      Re: Building for a giant fall.

      Stock prices presumably rose because current expectations are built into the stock price and these results were somewhat better than expected, also showing decent fractional growth in areas of recent strategic focus.

    2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Building for a giant fall.

      "Their traditional markets are dead or dying"

      Quite the opposite. The numbers show - if anything - there is strong demand around the world for people to retain control over their own data by running their own IT. Shocking, but then, only madmen would ever have questioned "put all your data into the American cloud", eh?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    hmmmm

    Heh heh, love this article. Trying to make it sound like MS is a dying beast. Reality is that we are firing on all cylinders and kicking ass! Most MS employees have been accumulating stock like crazy these last few years. Looks like we are having the last laugh now!! I love my job and with the continued success of azure I cannot think of a better time to be employed by the Borg :-)

    1. Phil_Evans

      Re: hmmmm

      I suspect you are right, Drone 7-of-whatever (it's probably not 9 I guess?)

      PCs are dead. Ok, we're still kicking the corpse, but anything other than a cheap laptop doesn't sell any more unless you're an iMac-hipster needing to impress the girlfriend. So 'fat' Office is dead too I guess.

      Tabs and Xboxes are toys until there is a compelling form-factor that out-lasts the current (yet dying) excitement that is the iPad/pod/slate/surface/slab. Both are seen as 'entertainment' devices meaning they are plugging the use cases for the sofa and home cinema/gaming.

      For Microsoft to be diversified across all of these clearly isn't working and I see the cuts in the rot continuing. Now, becoming a main-line cloud player - that's different. Azure and cloud growth has gone from 'cool' to mainline and the growth figures are stupendous.

      Re-imagining the dev and infra platforms for Windows (that is agnostic to the client) is a winning bet I think. The numbers hint at it at the very least.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: hmmmm

        ass kicking machine? never mind the donkeys, the RSPCA will be on your case!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: hmmmm

        "PC are dead". Sure, those 5K screens coming in the next months have been designed to be connected to ChromeBooks...

        Those who believes all those Google induced "the PC is dead" messages fail to understand there's a lot of people who enjoy to "create" on their machines, and they are not going to do it using subpar software running on a web browser storing every bit of your data on someone else server through a connection that is far slower than your SAS/SATA SSD disks... and sharing CPU power with an unknown number of users.

    2. Magnus_Pym

      Re: hmmmm

      "firing on all cylinders and kicking ass!"

      Microsoft have invented gas powered ass kicking machine? What do they want that for?

      1. Craig 2

        Re: hmmmm

        In case Steve Ballmer tries to come back?

    3. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: hmmmm

      Well the consumer divisions, where normal people choose whether or not to buy MS or something else, is down. And that's at a time when they dropped support for XP hoping people would rush out and buy Windows 8 OEM equipment or even a Surface.

  4. Malagabay
    Mushroom

    How on earth can the share price continue to rise?

    Seems to be through share buybacks and higher dividends...

    = = = =

    When the half life on your stock boost from dumping your CEO is measured in days (especially when coupled with less than brilliant M&A transactions) what do you do? Why... resort to the oldest trick in the book: dividend and buyback (most likely leveraged)

    *MICROSOFT SETS $40 BILLION BUYBACK, BOOSTS DIVIDEND 22%

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-17/microsoft-renews-stock-buyback-program-raises-dividend-5-cents

    = = = =

    And it looks like MS are just following IBM down the rabbit hole....

    = = = =

    With this chart, incidentally, we also explained why IBM's ridiculous stock repurchasing strategy, which had seen $37.7 billion in stock buybacks since 2012, or more than the total debt issuance of $33.6 billion during the same period...

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-20/blood-red-big-blue-why-ibm-crashing-charts

    = = = =

    1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: How on earth can the share price continue to rise?

      Microsoft has always done dividends. Though, if IBM is any indication, you can do the share buyback scheme for 15 some-odd years and see stock prices rise.

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