Microsoft has announced its third-quarter earnings--and for a company that some have pronounced dead, it's certainly a well-heeled corpse.
The company announced record profits--net profits were $4.93 billion--and credited them, in part, to sales of Windows Vista and Office 2007, which became available to consumers during the quarter.
I don't own a nickel's worth of Microsoft stock, so I'm interested in all this mostly because I'm curious just how well those two major upgrades are selling. But even in the wake of the earnings announcement and its accompanying conference call, it's kind of hard to tell.
It's no shocker that sales of the products contributed to the quarter's robust profits--after all, this was the first one that they were available at retail at all. But how many copies were sold? Was it fewer or more than expected? How did it compare to the releases of previous Windows and Office upgrades, once you've adjusted for overall growth of the PC market?
The press release quotes Microsoft COO Kevin Turner as saying "we are delighted with the positive customer response these products have received." And during the conferece call, the company's general manager for investor relations, Colleen Healy, referred to "the extremely positive consumer response to the launches of our flagship products." Both of which are more platitudes than definitive statements.
On the other hand, this Barron's blog post by Eric Savitz says that Microsoft is declining to provide unit sales for either application--and unit sales might make it easier to compare and contrast with previous launches.
There is one interesting tidbit in the conference call transcript: 71 percent of OEM Vista sales (that is, the copies preinstalled on new PCs) are for Premium editions of Vista. Which would mean that relatively few folks are getting stuck with the dumbed-down Home Basic version.
But if the question is "Are Vista and Office 2007 selling well?," I'm still not sure if Microsoft's strong quarter really amounts to a clear "Yep, they are...."
I'm curious too, and since Microsoft isn't releasing details and bragging, one has to wonder. Honestly I have Vista installed on my laptop and I am not all that impressed. It's not backwards compatible so a lot of programs you already own will not work on Vista, Microsoft moved a lot of things around in Vista- so if you're familiar with XP you lose time and productivity having to learn where everything was moved to- lets not even get started on all of the annoying pop-ups. Don't upgrade if you don't have to.