What a nice way to top off an already big week.
Posting first-quarter financials before market opening this morning, Microsoft said it earned 40 cents a share on revenue of $12.92 billion, besting analyst estimates that had called for a profit of 32 cents a share and revenue of $12.4 billion.
Nonetheless, the software giant still saw both profits and revenue decline for the third quarter in a row.
Though Verizon’s new Droid ad campaign might seem to preclude one, Apple would be wise to ink an iPhone distribution deal with the carrier–if not to hasten iPhone adoption, then to slow rivals that would supplant it. That’s the argument put forth by Piper Jaffray analyst Chris Larsen in a research note to investors Monday.
Pat Gelsinger isn’t the only Intel veteran leaving the company amid the big management restructuring announced today. Longtime general counsel Bruce Sewell is taking his leave as well. Which is odd, since Sewell has been quarterbacking Intel’s fight against antitrust allegations at home and abroad since, well, since they were first brought against the company.
Despite all its threats and protestations, Microsoft has finally capitulated to the European Commission’s demand that it bundle rival Web browsers along with Internet Explorer in Windows 7. “Microsoft has proposed a consumer ballot screen as a solution to the pending antitrust case,” the Commission said in a press release. Microsoft, for its part, says the move is a “big step forward.”
The high-end PC market is not a bad place to be. Just ask Apple, which rules it and with great financial success. According to new stats from NPD Group, Apple now claims 91 percent of the U.S. retail market for personal computers costing more than $1,000. Nine out of 10 dollars spent on such machines in June went to Cupertino.
Microsoft has signed off on Windows 7. On Wednesday, the company released the final version of the operating system to manufacturers, a piece of software that it hopes will restore the engineering reputation that Vista so badly tarnished.
Windows XP is almost nine years old. And it will be almost 11 before it is finally retired for good now that Microsoft has once again extended XP downgrade rights, this time for 18 months following the general availability of Windows 7.
Microsoft’s proposal to remove Internet Explorer from Windows 7 in Europe may put the company in compliance with European law, but it’s not going to lead to better competition in the browser market. That’s the word from Microsoft’s rivals at home and abroad who say the “must-carry” provision the European Commission has been mulling as a solution to the company’s antitrust indiscretions is the only one that will work.
Well, look at that. Floundering though it is, AMD has managed some gains in the semiconductor market. According to IDC, the company’s share of the chip market hit 22.3 percent during the first quarter of 2009, an increase of 4.6 percent over the fourth quarter of 2008. Meanwhile, Intel’s share fell to 77.3 percent, a decline of 4.7 percent.
You wouldn’t know it from the protests over Microsoft’s decision to retire Windows XP at the end of June or the PC users exercising their Windows Vista downgrade rights, but Vista is actually selling quite well. Microsoft (MSFT) Chairman Bill Gates said today that sales of Windows Vista have reached 140 million copies worldwide. “That’s [...]
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
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