Re: [ossig] SOFTWARE SUBSCRIPTIONS PUSH MICROSOFT EARNINGS UP

[Imran William Smith <iwsmith@mimos.my>]

And their cash pile has grown from about USD40bn a year ago
to almost USD50bn now, which has been 'vacuumed' out of the world's
economies.

The risk to open source is that they can accelerate their programme to
give a lot of things away for free (like training, Windows-only computers
for schools etc)  which promotes their monopoly.

Interesting that all the money they paid to AOL (basically for
killing Netscape and establishing a near monopoly for IE) amounts to
about 1/3 of a quarter's profit, or equivalent to Microsoft stopping work
for just 1 month.


Let's hope they pay a few dividends in the next few years to reduce
that cash pile.    But why would anybody own shares in Microsoft at
USD28 or so, when the highest likely dividend is around USD0.30 per
share?  1% return on investment is laughably low.  And the share
price can't reflect potential for future growth - where are the huge
growth markets?  The whole developed world already buys their stuff,
and the developing world can't afford to.

Imran


Nan Phin wrote:

> Posted July 17, 2003 5:00 PM Pacific Time
>
> Microsoft reported a year-on-year increase in sales and net
> profit for its fourth fiscal quarter on Thursday as it
> benefited from multiyear software subscription deals.
>
> Net profit for the quarter ended June 30 was $1.92 billion,
> compared with $1.53 billion in the year-ago period, the
> Redmond, Wash., software vendor said in a statement. This
> year's figure was reduced by $533 million in after-tax law
> suit settlement charges, while last year's result included a
> write-off charge of $806 million, Microsoft said.
>
> For the full story:
> http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/07/17/HNsubscriptions_1.html
>
>
> --
>
> best wishes.
> /nan phin
>
> Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
>
>
>
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--
Imran William Smith
Project Manager, Open Source Development, 
MIMOS Berhad, Malaysia

Asian Open Source Centre : http://www.asiaosc.org
MIMOS Open Source        : http://opensource.mimos.my




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