Microsoft Profit and Loss by Business Area 970
An anonymous submitter writes "The Register is reporting in this article striking new evidence of what in my opinion can only be described as abuse of their monopoly position. A recent SEC filing shows that they lose money in every business area except Windows (86% profit) and Office (79% profit)." Another notes that the Financial Times has a story on the same subject - Dr. No writes "According to the Financial Times, Microsoft's Windows division has a profit margin of 85%. This is the first time this figure has been made public." The full version of Windows XP costs about $300.00. Microsoft could sell it for $45 and still make a profit. The difference between the $45 price and the $300 price is what economists call "monopoly rents".
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)
Post-Enron SEC filings.
B) If we can trust this data?
Gates had to personally vouch for this. The board faces personal (not corporate) liability if it's false. I don't think Billg wants to go to jail.
Re:Been There, Done That (Score:5, Informative)
Re:uhhh... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:85%? (Score:5, Informative)
It sell for $300, and the cost to produce it is $45.
That means the profit is $255 and the gross margin is $255/$300 * 100 = 85%.
Necessary (Score:3, Informative)
That's great.
Microsoft's X-Box division has a profit margin of -300%.
The OS division is where MS gets the cash to pour into products that will never turn a profit, or at best break even; the services they're providing (even for a charge) that are good to have but aren't really marketable, or are only marketed by MS for the sole purpose of having a presence in that market, without hope of actually taking over.
Re:uhhh... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:85%? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wouldn't want to abuse that monopoly position (Score:5, Informative)
There is something wrong with abusing that monopoly to shut out competition (denying people choice) or leveraging that monopoly to compete in other markets (eg, using the DirectX and Win32 API to compete in the games console market).
It also suggests that Microsoft could get hammered under various nations' anti-dumping laws, since it would appear they're selling goods at well under the cost of manufacture.
Re:uhhh... (Score:1, Informative)
that's not true.
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)
From the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission:
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000
Re:I wonder (Score:1, Informative)
A company with multiple lines of business must report the total picture of what happened. HOWEVER, they must also along with that provide a snapshot of their various business goups if they are "material".
Management gets to decide what the business groups are, and what is "material".
Material is anything a shareholder would consider important. The management and auditors must come to terms with what makes that cut. Auditors have been a LOT more stringent on that count these days, bad calls (like enron) can kill their company and they are reminded of it.
BTW, to become partner in an audit firm you genrally BUY into things (with the company loaning the money) and if you go put you still owe.
The SEC has gotten a lot tougher on having companies report better and more segment data, what we are seeing is most likely a result of their efforts. Also, wallstreet has most likely been asking for this information and with the antitrust lawsuit gone it isn't as dangerous for the company to divide thins up in a better manner
File formats! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:uhhh... (Score:1, Informative)
Windows wrote theirs from scratch...
Re:I wonder (Score:1, Informative)
Bill Gates did not personally vouch for this; that is the responsibility of the CEO (Steve Ballmer) and the CFO (John Connors). You can find their signatures at the bottom of the reports.
MSR in windows inernals? No. (Score:4, Informative)
MSR provides nothing to the Windows internals. What a ridiculous statement.
MSR is a prestige organization only, and MS pays huge for that 'prestige'. Every so often you will hear about something from MSR getting into a product, but let me assure you its all hype. Most things that actually do get into a product were built by people from the product team who changed orgs to MSR after the idea was already proven. And those are very rare too.
No, MSR is a worthless academic sideshow that will be cut off the day MS profits are unable to hide its wasteful useless bloat.
Re:uhhh... (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong! Windows 9x came from DOS, which Microsoft bought [about.com] from Tim Paterson. Windows XP came from Windows 2000 which came from Windows NT which came from a joint project [os2bbs.com] between IBM and Microsoft.
Re:This profit subsidizes the rest... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:You Just Argued FOR Microsoft! (Score:2, Informative)
Whether the public thinks the product is worth a certain amount or even willing to pay a particular price is irrelevant.
It is also a fallacy to consider a monopoly necessarily illegal.
Let me make up an example. I think we can all agree that Microsoft is a monopoly. They basically have an enormous and guaranteed flow of cash because of this monopoly.
Now, what if they use the profits gained from this monopoly to open a coffee shop beside every Starbucks in the USA. No problem, right? What if they paid each customer who walked in the door $1.00 as a thanks for visiting? What if they also gave away all of their coffee products for free?
Apparently many readers (or MS astroturfers in disguise) believe that it is perfectly fine to sustain serious losses in a new market in this way. Some even go so far as to claim "this is Economics 101" or some other such rhetoric.
The fact is, Microsoft could afford to starve out Starbucks, using the profits from their monopoly to balance out the severe losses brought about in their attack on Starbucks. They could basically eliminate Starbucks. This is illegal, regardless of what they do with their new monopoly on coffee shops or what they charge for their OS. This seems to be where your confusion lies.
Re:File formats! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Microsoft's Corporate Customers Won't Like This (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I wonder (Score:4, Informative)
By not reading the article.
According to the article itself the parts of Microsoft that lose money are the parts that everyone already knew lose money. MSN, XBox, Windows CE and the Business Solutions division, all of which are in 'start up' mode, apart from MSN where the loss is narrowing.
Microsoft sure ain't losing money on Visual Studio, Money or their games. They probably make a profit on their keyboards and mice. They are just taking an expected loss on XBox until they can build a sufficient market share - which is likely to take until XBox 2 comes out
Also note that these are operating profits and not GAAP earnings. There is a big difference between the two. Basically operating profits only show one quarter of cash flow, to get a sense of whether the company as a whole is making or losing money you need to take into account how much it cost to build the product they are selling - which would have been billed in previous quarters as a 'loss'.
Re:I wonder (Score:3, Informative)
Creative accounting (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, the SEC filing is not a lie, but Microsoft could choose any gross income they wanted for any given division, and it would be just as accurate, because it doesn't actually reflect any measurable difference in the world outside.
$300 for Windows XP???? (Score:2, Informative)
Full version of Windows XP Home, not the upgrade, full retail, and the version most people opt for, is no freakin way close to $300 at most online outlets. I picked mine up for $150+tax, shipped from a retail office outlet, at the end of September, sealed in its oversized blister pack with box inside, all legit, all receipts and packing slips, CUA, and all. Again, full retail, not the OEM stuff.
Even the Pro version, full retail, is $250 if you have a brain and freakin shop around. Obviously, the editor is so flush with cash after laying off all those fellow workers at OSDN.
By and far away most of MS's products ship out through the OEM channel. You know this, but silly
And, while it's not $45, a company can charge whatever the hell they want. So, while I'm on this rant, any car produced today doesn't have $2,500 worth of parts in it, but you aren't going to find a car for that price. But I don't see you bitching and whining about the labor unions driving up car prices, or, more substantially (as workers really just try to get what they believe is fair with the rest of society), the health profession (an enormous part of a car's expense is actually to pay for the outrageous sums the doctors and pharmaceutical industry "requires" for their income and profit margin, which gets passed on as health benefits, aka company cost, to the autoworkers).
As if the doctors and pharmaceutical industry don't exercise state monopoly power via "professional" ties, aka the state laws that requires medical licensure which, while justifiable, are not justified because they are leveraged to cap the number of people trained, since they control the academic channel.
Gee, those billions MS costs us are really hurting us, as compared to the trillion dollars getting thrown around behind your back with medical expenditure, worsening by the day as profits rise, generics get put out of business, and our population ages (typically requiring more care).
I applaud
Hmmmm, did you ever think of product cycles? (Score:1, Informative)
Monopoly (Score:2, Informative)
Profit Maximization:
Perfect Competition Case
Price = Marginal Cost
Perfect Monopoly Case
Price = Marginal Revenue
It has EVERYTHING to do with being a monopoly. If Ford were to decide to raise their prices, people would buy less Fords (not less cars). If MS decides to raise their prices, people buy less Operating Systems, Computers, mice, etc (add any compliment good). The effect on the economy is devasting. Furthermore, optimal output for a monopoly != optimal profit, since they control the price (optimal profit is at much lower output). So, you get much less (maybe half) the purchases of computer related equipment than you would in a competitive market.
So, you see, it has EVERYTHING to do with being a monopoly.
Re:Monopoly! (Score:5, Informative)
According to the field of Microeconomics no firm will be able to maintain high profit margins in the long term unless they are a monopoly (or similar things like oligopoly w/ collusion.) In a real competitive market with low costs of entry, other firms will see Microsoft with such high profits and have incentive to enter the market, undercutting Microsoft. As the result of new firms entering, prices go down to a point of "normal or zero economic profit." This is how the competitive market works.
Microsoft is able to maintain such high profit margins because of their monopoly market position. Little other market factors would allow sustained high profit in the long term.
Now... combine what the SEC "suspected" back in 95 (Score:2, Informative)
Thus, let's say a product generates a certain revenue stream for 2 years, but you amortize the costs over 10. It looks great on paper, but year 3-10 you have no way of recouping it... "Sure you do... other products!" Yeah... like the next version, with the same problem due to the same faulty accounting.
The time frames MS used are large enough that they will show a profit for another half decade or more - but the money isnt real. The SEC was convinced to drop the investigation (plenty online about it... simply go to Google) - and no, not because MS wasnt guilty of doing so - the SEC decided they were guilty on a number of counts and told them "dont do it again...".
Now, knowing that only the Win/Office divisions are (falsly) profitable, that means the true MS losses must be staggering.
Simply do a Google Search [google.com] and check it out - now, the hard part is reading about a dozen (no joke) stories to actually see all of what the SEC accused them of and told them to stop doing. Most of the articles downplay it as simply forgetting to list a few accounts and other BS. Keep reading and you'll see it's a long long list of violations.
Rob
Re:Microsoft's profit, our loss... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Well, now (Score:3, Informative)
But if you read Sherman, et al. you'll find that monopolies are illegal because they COULD lead to abuse.
No, monopolies are illegal when abused. One example would be leveraging a monopoly position to force entry into another market. Another would be taking actions specifically designed to discourage competition. The rules change when you become a monopoly, but it's still legal.
Re:You're missing the point. (Score:2, Informative)
So, basically... If they charge more on a product (Say $300 instead of $130 for Mac OS X) they're evil. And if they charge less, they're evil. And if they charged exactly the same amount, they'd be copying, and thus... Evil.
I hope I'm not getting trolled my an MS fan(boy|girl)...
The problem isn't necessarily what they are charging. The problem is that their prices and placement are tailored to prevent other companies from competing.
Windows and Office, MS's cash cows, are priced far, far above what they would be priced if there was any competition in those two markets. The lack of competition is not due to their products being superior (in which case I wouldn't have a problem with them charging whatever they felt like charging), but special mob-style deals that they have made with the OEMs. At first, before the computer manufacturers were tied hand and foot to Windows, MS charged next to nothing to bundle their OS with the computers. As Windows became the one-and-only consumer OS out there, MS has raised the price because the OEMs had no choice but to pay. They have done the same thing with Office and will do the same thing with any product they have the opportunity to do it with.
Then you come to the products that MS uses as nothing more than a hammer to crush their competition. No company in the world that was not a monopoly would have been able to give away IE for free like they did. They used the money generated by Windows to crush Netscape. MS was never in the browser business until it began to threaten their OS business. Their OS business was threatened because Netscape was becoming a platform for other applications, and if Netscape became the dominant platform and decided to be available on another OS, then MS would have lost (their monopoly). So, they bundled IE with Windows for free, while Netscape was charging. Most people went with the free browser, and the threat was eliminated.
That is what is wrong with MS's pricing. It is used to choke out companies that are making a better product. Once the threat is gone, MS raises its prices. We, the consumers, end up paying more for an inferior product. Although at the end IE ended up being superior to Netscape, this is only because MS choked the living shit out of them and forced them to give away their product for free. It's kind of hard to pay developers when you're not making any money. Just look at what Netscape has done now that AOL/TW is pumping money back into the project. Mozilla is already on par with IE, and will soon pass them up. Unless MS has grown too fat and stupid to see what's coming, they are going to attack Mozilla in the near future. They should have done it sooner.
When MS wants to break into a new market, all it has to do is choke out the competition and walk in unopposed. If it was not a monopoly, it would not be able to do this. A company that needs to make money on its product to stay alive cannot afford to give it away for free. A company that does not give its product away for free or nearly free cannot choke out the competition. A company that does not choke out the competition cannot overcharge for its product. A company that does not overcharge for its product cannot afford to repeat this over and over again, muscling its way into whatever market it wants, ad infinitum.
Although there is a lot of mindless MS-hating here on Slashdot, there are tons of valid reasons to hate them. I guess I should congratulate you for being able to think for yourself and not hate MS just because everyone else here does, but I'll save that for when you're more than a dumb animal that can't tell when it's getting screwed.
Training students.... (Score:2, Informative)