back to article If you're looking for bad news about Microsoft, top tip: look away now

Microsoft's boss Satya Nadella march into the cloud seems to be paying off for the Windows 10 and Office 365 giant: on Thursday, the biz announced its sales for Q3 2018 jumped 16 per cent. For the quarter ending March 31, the third of Redmond's 2018 fiscal year, can be summarized thus: Revenues of $26.8bn were up 16 per cent …

  1. bombastic bob Silver badge
    Meh

    rewards for 'bad behavior'

    seem counterproductive to proper vendor/customer relations. I have to wonder how treating customers like minions or cash cows is in any way getting them EVEN MORE money than before.

    It boggles the mind.

    1. Mark 85

      Re: rewards for 'bad behavior'

      It's not about vendor/customer relations.. it's about share price and dividends. I suppose that once Win10 yearly billing comes in from non-commercial users, things will look even better to the money counters. Given the way Win10 has been going it sounds like "they're not customers, they're testers and will be paying for the privilege."

  2. 89724905708169238590784I93056703497430967093434677347864785234986359235564854495684561564545876

    He's got you all worked out

    Using leverage to deliver infinite mediocrity.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    beggars belief

    How the hell you can still make money from a moribund corpse. Called LinkedIn.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: beggars belief

      As a candidate - my last 2 roles have been found via LinkedIn. I don't bother with agencies anymore, other job sites or scrabbling about finding a local company. In the first role, I paid for Job Hunter premium account. The second time, I enabled a flag to say I was open to new roles. The time for finding new role didn't take long at all. LinkedIn had 467 million members, so even if half of those decide to take Premium - it's a good return.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

        1. Kabukiwookie

          Re: beggars belief

          Yes, you can pay for the privilege of your data to be mined.

          At least Google doesn't require you to pay to give them your data.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Interesting

    I can't find any specific Windows 10 sales figures but, from the article and the press release, they seem to be a lot less than 25% of the revenue.

    The Amazon article has the sub-heading "It's pretty much a cloud provider with a gift shop on the side". It seems that Microsoft is 'pretty much a cloud/business services provider with an OS on the side'.

    It isn't hard to see why Microsoft really don't give a toss about criticism of Windows 10.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Re: Interesting

      It isn't hard to see why Microsoft really don't give a toss about criticism of Windows 10 from Linux fanbois on El Reg.

      FTFY

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Interesting

        No, my original words are valid. I'm not a Linux fanboi : criticism of Windows 10 is an objective reality, and most of it as far as I can tell has come from people who are Windows users and even Windows fans.

        It is clear that Microsoft have chosen to ignore a lot of the criticism and move ahead with whatever their plans are for Windows 10, and as I observed, it doesn't seem to have harmed them.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          "has come from people who are Windows users and even Windows fans."

          Exactly. Especially professionals and power users, long time Windows users, who can't buy the Enterprise version and thereby neuter much of the slurping features without great efforts - and still get am half backed OS which is hostile towards users - despite some improvements under the hood.

          And dumbing down the UI and the built-in applications towards mobe ones - and bad ones on a mobe as well - doesn't help either.

      2. TVU Silver badge

        Re: Interesting

        "It isn't hard to see why Microsoft really don't give a toss about criticism of Windows 10 from Linux fanbois on El Reg"

        I think you'll find that you'll find that a lot of criticism comes from Windows 10 users themselves on assorted forums asking for help.

        That said, I am pleased with the figures for Microsoft and it shows that Satya Nadella's thoughtful and pragmatic approach is paying off (a complete contrast to the Ballmer years!).

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Interesting

      So at least two of the world's biggest and wealthiest corporations are focusing heavily on cloud provision. Probably many others are, too; copying Amazon and Microsoft presumably looks like a fairly safe bet.

      But that implies, surely, that large numbers of corporations - and even government departments - are outsourcing their IT to "the Cloud".

      Is this wise? Do they really understand the balance of risk and reward?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Microsoft is 'pretty much a cloud/business services provider with an OS on the side'."

      It's hard to tell from the numbers, the way Nadella cunningly distributed products around to ensure his strategy looks right - Windows is still 9bn vs 6bn, but does Office 365 also include local software subscriptions?

      Net income of course takes advantage of the much lower taxes.

  5. Zippy's Sausage Factory
    Meh

    Actually this does smell like a death spiral to me. Their business is essentially now based around Office 3.65 and Azure. Last year AWS pulled in 10 times as much revenue as Azure does now, and yes I know they're growing faster, but they're still close to being a rounding error aren't they?

    I'm discounting Windows 10 because basically Chrome books seem to be eating into that market heavily. And if they're not yet, it's simply because people are afraid of Microsoft's reprisals if they start stocking them. That, I expect, will start changing soon. They even stock some down the road at my local consumer electronics shop.

    Based on this, I'm guessing Azure is now at the "Windows Mobile 8" stage - i.e. they've just made it over, taken away some features users like (the new AD console isn't a hit if I recall) and we're just waiting for the remaining users to jump ship.

    Yes, in the short term, this looks great - everything's lovely. But Microsoft now looks like IBM in the 80s - they're trying to fight Google, Amazon and Apple at the same time, and losing ground on all frontiers.

    1. cambsukguy

      And I predict that you will be proved wrong on all counts.

      Even less chance of a Surface Phone now, shame.

      1. Zippy's Sausage Factory

        @cambsukguy

        I bloody hope so, my career depends on them. Sadly, I'm not optimistic about it.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Anecdote

      I just took delivery of a brand-new PC, and I very carefully chose an AMD Ryzen 5. As I ordered no OS, it arrived with a copy of Windows 10 which will presumably stop working in a while if I don't "activate" it - which means paying M$ at least £100.

      After a little experimenting, I now have my existing Windows 7 system working smoothly. All it took was a PS/2 keyboard and mouse, downloading and running wufuc, and reactivating (which, to my surprise, was immediate and pain-free).

      For a few minutes I was tempted to adopt Windows 10. The user interface looks fairly crisp, a few things have been enhanced, and I am inclined to believe some of the talk about improved security.

      But then I thought about the data suction, the advertisements, even the rather unpleasant startup screen... and, most of all, the whole ethos of an OS that assumes the user is a junior partner in a joint enterprise, rather than the owner.

      So I am going to remove Windows 10 and continue dual-booting Windows 7 and Opensuse Linux. Until Microsoft withdraws support for Windows 7 - at which time I shall commit wholly to Linux.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      'Last year AWS pulled in 10 times as much revenue as Azure does now, and yes I know they're growing faster, but they're still close to being a rounding error aren't they?"

      Your figures are out of date. Azure is now on about 1/3 the revenue of AWS and growing at twice the speed. And Microsofts cloud division as a whole overtook AWS in revenue a year ago.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Last year AWS pulled in 10 times as much revenue as Azure does now

      In IAAS this is correct. Include PAAS and SAAS and suddenly Microsoft leads, followed by Amazon and then (shock) IBM.

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