Re: Stock pricds tend to be foward looking
Xerox is a rather poor example of your point. It's R&D was legendary but it never, you know, turned it into profits.
Kodak... well to an extent they saw it coming. I interviewed with them for a digital imaging division. In 1991. But the reality is that they were a horse carriage company selling into a nascent car market. Huge sunk costs, habits, markets, ways of thinking. Nokia-like.
No doubt that MS needs to reinvent itself. But it's R&D while massive has rarely you know... invented anything that consumers, businesses or even computer science have found worthwhile. MS is an execution company, not a trendsetter.
Win 8 was a failure to listen to customers. Less money, more humility and I daresay a firmer view on the bottom line might have kept them from pretty that massive long term gamble that they could parlay their desktop ubiquity into a top spot on phones.
Having said all that I find it odd that the market is basically reacting, very tardily, to past news - how much they've dropped the ball. Rather than to what they are doing now with Win 10 upgrade & Office on non-Win platforms.
Not rocket science those 2, and Azure. They need execution. Not a R&D or UI radical long term plans.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
