Not sure that I believe this... looking at their stock, but hey...whatever!
There were two interesting Windows-related news stories last week. First, Joe Wilcox’s story on a report from NPD claiming that 91 percent of $1,000-and-higher retail computer sales now go to Apple. Second, Microsoft’s quarterly financial results, in which revenue fell $1 billion short of projections and declined 17 percent year-over-year.
To be clear, Microsoft remains a very profitable company. However, they have never before reported year-over-year declines like this, nor fallen so short of projected earnings. Something is awry.
What is particularly alarming about Microsoft’s numbers is that revenue from its Windows PC division suffered an even greater year-over-year revenue decline than the company as a whole: 29 percent. One explanation for that is that Windows 7, a major new update, goes on sale in October, and so it’s expected, somehow, that Windows revenue would decline in the months preceding its release.