I just bought an XBOX 360 with Kinect, my kids loved it, I too and my wife is enjoying it... loved the games that much that I replaced my 32in with 42in HD!
[citation][nom]yorgos[/nom]how they sell it when everything out there, laptops and oem PCs, are either Win or Mac?that's forcing people to buy your product.[/citation]
That's what's called a natural monopoly in economics.
That also explains their 33% net profit margin. Even Apple or Google don't have profit margins that high.
Congrats Microsoft, you are the rock of the computer industry. For as much bad press and stupid M$/Microshaft comments you get from clueless kids in their parents basement you kick-ass year after year and provide the foundation. Good luck in 2012 and with Win8. I think bringing together Win8 on all devices will be a game changer for consumers and businesses, no other company is in the position to do this like MS can.
[citation][nom]vaughn2k[/nom]I just bought an XBOX 360 with Kinect, my kids loved it, I too and my wife is enjoying it... loved the games that much that I replaced my 32in with 42in HD![/citation]
[citation][nom]molo9000[/nom]That's what's called a natural monopoly in economics.That also explains their 33% net profit margin. Even Apple or Google don't have profit margins that high.[/citation]
Google no, Apple yes.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/03/02/what-doth-it-profit-an-iphone/
Congratulations to Microsoft. I don't like some of the things they do, or are planning to do, but they are a very solid company that tends to get a bad rep. People like to beat up on them for their mistakes and don't give them much credit for their successes. But they had a good year last year, so I hope we can all at least look forward to their continued success in this and the many years ahead. Otherwise us computer users and enthusiasts will find ourselves in a very unsavory PC market.
[citation][nom]rpgplayer[/nom]Google no, Apple yes.http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/0 [...] an-iphone/[/citation]
Wrong.
Apple net profit margin 2011 = profit/revenue = 25.922 billion/108.249 billion = 24%
Google net profit margin 2011 = profit/revenue = 8.505 billion/29.321 billion = 29%
Microsoft net profit margin 2011 = profit/revenue = 23.15 billion/69.94 billion = 33%
The margin shown in your link is the gross profit margin, which is something entirely different than the net profit margin.
It measures the revenue of a particular product against the costs that can be directly attributed to that product. Those include production, materials, shipping, etc., but they don't include fixed costs like Research&Development, running the supporting infrastructure (iTunes/Appstore/whatever) and all the other costs you have when running a company.
Yes, the complaint of piracy costing the companies billions seems kind of weak when they are already making billions more than anyone else on the planet.
To all of you MS lovers in here who are complaining that MS gets a bad rap when they really are a good company, (they must be look at all of those billions) apparently don't know how bad of a ride it has been with MS for the last almost 3 decades.
Apparently none of you remember how bad most of MS operating systems have been over the years.
Windows 3.x: Completely counter intuitive and almost unusable for anyone without training in computers.
Windows 95: Just plain awful, MS grossly understated what the minimum system requirements were for this and as a result ran like complete crap on all but the newest machines with at least 16mb of ram. Plus 4 major revisions during its lifespan just to work out "most" of the bugs.
Windows 98: Marginally better but still pretty bad. Random system freezes and/or BSOD anyone.
Windows ME: A really bad revision of 98, most people had huge driver and software issues and even MS abandoned it after only a couple of years.
Windows XP: Finally an operating system that worked pretty good, but it took until SP2 almost 2 years after the first release to make it that way.
Windows Vista: This operating system was as bad as ME was or worse and even MS has admitted that this was probably one of their worst products ever.
Yes there are a couple not on that list but you should get the idea.
The whole time MS has been stabbing us in the wallet until it bled to pay for all of this crap.
I think they have more than earned their bad reputation and deserve every last comment about how much they suck.
[citation][nom]SmileyTPB1[/nom]To all of you MS lovers in here who are complaining that MS gets a bad rap when they really are a good company, (they must be look at all of those billions) apparently don't know how bad of a ride it has been with MS for the last almost 3 decades. Apparently none of you remember how bad most of MS operating systems have been over the years. Windows 3.x: Completely counter intuitive and almost unusable for anyone without training in computers.Windows 95: Just plain awful, MS grossly understated what the minimum system requirements were for this and as a result ran like complete crap on all but the newest machines with at least 16mb of ram. Plus 4 major revisions during its lifespan just to work out "most" of the bugs.Windows 98: Marginally better but still pretty bad. Random system freezes and/or BSOD anyone.Windows ME: A really bad revision of 98, most people had huge driver and software issues and even MS abandoned it after only a couple of years.Windows XP: Finally an operating system that worked pretty good, but it took until SP2 almost 2 years after the first release to make it that way.Windows Vista: This operating system was as bad as ME was or worse and even MS has admitted that this was probably one of their worst products ever.Yes there are a couple not on that list but you should get the idea.The whole time MS has been stabbing us in the wallet until it bled to pay for all of this crap.I think they have more than earned their bad reputation and deserve every last comment about how much they suck.[/citation]
Ok, if you are so great and they are so incompetent, why don't build a good operating system and make a fortune on it? Lets see you write millions of lines of code without a single bug.
Microsoft is a world class company and they didn't get there by accident; people are readily willing to adopt their software. They have no monopoly, they are merely dominant in the market because if they were to actually to make an operating system that did not function, nobody would buy it and they would lose sales to competition.
Microsoft has to be offering something that people want, otherwise there would be no reason to use it and everybody would stick to free Linux platforms. It is obnoxious to see people making stupid comments about how Microsoft is a horrible company that sucks our wallets dry when we are the ones that open the wallets and freely give them our own money. Why? because we want their software, instead of an alternative that we think is worse.
[citation][nom]Burodsx[/nom]This is what happens when you produce a quality OS.[/citation]
Still want a refund from MS for Windoze ME and Windoze Vista, both were horrible OSes.
Now if they would avoid giving Windows 8 that TERRIBLE Metro UI (at least for desktops and laptops), these profits will likely continue. I'll be sticking with Windows 7 for quite a while at this rate.
[citation][nom]SmileyTPB1[/nom]To all of you MS lovers in here who are complaining that MS gets a bad rap when they really are a good company, (they must be look at all of those billions) apparently don't know how bad of a ride it has been with MS for the last almost 3 decades. Apparently none of you remember how bad most of MS operating systems have been over the years. Windows 3.x: Completely counter intuitive and almost unusable for anyone without training in computers.Windows 95: Just plain awful, MS grossly understated what the minimum system requirements were for this and as a result ran like complete crap on all but the newest machines with at least 16mb of ram. Plus 4 major revisions during its lifespan just to work out "most" of the bugs.Windows 98: Marginally better but still pretty bad. Random system freezes and/or BSOD anyone.Windows ME: A really bad revision of 98, most people had huge driver and software issues and even MS abandoned it after only a couple of years.Windows XP: Finally an operating system that worked pretty good, but it took until SP2 almost 2 years after the first release to make it that way.Windows Vista: This operating system was as bad as ME was or worse and even MS has admitted that this was probably one of their worst products ever.Yes there are a couple not on that list but you should get the idea.The whole time MS has been stabbing us in the wallet until it bled to pay for all of this crap.I think they have more than earned their bad reputation and deserve every last comment about how much they suck.[/citation]
Nobody here is responsible for your lack of computer prowess. It's not Microsoft's fault you suck at using their systems. Take responsibility for your own ignorance, son.
[citation][nom]molo9000[/nom]That's what's called a natural monopoly in economics.That also explains their 33% net profit margin. Even Apple or Google don't have profit margins that high.[/citation]
Cause Apple sells hardware along with software (if you even want to bother deeming it worthy of software) and Google provides a lot of free services designed to create reliance on their company. Microsoft isn't always the greastest innovators but the company has always been run by great business men who may get bashed for calculated risks that fail but they tend to make the right gambles over time, play their hands well and don't get enough credit for those traits because the general population tends to not idolize 'business' vs 'vision' but the world desperately needs good business men as well.
[citation][nom]SmileyTPB1[/nom]To all of you MS lovers in here who are complaining that MS gets a bad rap when they really are a good company, (they must be look at all of those billions) apparently don't know how bad of a ride it has been with MS for the last almost 3 decades. Apparently none of you remember how bad most of MS operating systems have been over the years. Windows 3.x: Completely counter intuitive and almost unusable for anyone without training in computers.Windows 95: Just plain awful, MS grossly understated what the minimum system requirements were for this and as a result ran like complete crap on all but the newest machines with at least 16mb of ram. Plus 4 major revisions during its lifespan just to work out "most" of the bugs.Windows 98: Marginally better but still pretty bad. Random system freezes and/or BSOD anyone.Windows ME: A really bad revision of 98, most people had huge driver and software issues and even MS abandoned it after only a couple of years.Windows XP: Finally an operating system that worked pretty good, but it took until SP2 almost 2 years after the first release to make it that way.Windows Vista: This operating system was as bad as ME was or worse and even MS has admitted that this was probably one of their worst products ever.Yes there are a couple not on that list but you should get the idea.The whole time MS has been stabbing us in the wallet until it bled to pay for all of this crap.I think they have more than earned their bad reputation and deserve every last comment about how much they suck.[/citation]
Do you remember their competition in those years? that's the computer ice age. Microsoft was shooting for the stars back then and it took a lot of trial and error to get it right. While everyone else was trying to build OS that could do a few tasks well, all other options were extremely limited. Microsoft has ALWAYS tried to give us a versatile, all encompassing OS that allows open source development so that the machines could be unlocked to do tasks that no one dreamed of at MS or even needed to. If you owned a mac back then it was for typing only. If you played around with linux you were probably just a savvy nerd who enjoyed (or needed) writing one program at a time to do single tasks and that's what the machine was devoted to. The difficulty of creating an environment as powerful as Win 7 is monumental and that's why it has taken so long to get here. Because it should be that difficult and take that long to create something that refined. It takes that long to design a plane, but this is a commercial market, no government money keeping something afloat for 20+ years of development.
[citation][nom]jaquith[/nom]Yeah increasing the price of Windows 7 by +$10 doesn't hurt their profits either...[/citation]
They also doubled the student cost of Windows 7 from $30 to $65 recently. Great job Microsoft.