Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Fails with Gadgets and Moves on to Toys

Funny eyes



Summary: Microsoft's experimentations with DRM on commodity hardware fail, but new products appear on Amazon

MERCURY News has this interesting article about what came to be a disaster. Microsoft's Zune not only failed to topple rivals but it also lost Microsoft a lot of money. Here are some numbers:

To be sure, the Zune provides a tiny, and apparently deteriorating portion of Microsoft's business. Revenue for the non-gaming side of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices unit, which includes the Zune, tumbled 42 percent to roughly $211 million for the fourth fiscal quarter ended in June — or about 2 percent of the software giant's total, according to regulatory filings.


Bill Gates and his colleagues are very concerned about the iPod, as internal correspondence reveals.

“The reality of the matter is that in its hardware business (mostly XBox and Zune, not just peripherals) Microsoft is losing billions.”The report above is important because many people's assessment is based on the illusion Microsoft spreads about profitability and invincibility. The reality of the matter is that in its hardware business (mostly XBox and Zune, not just peripherals) Microsoft is losing billions. It is the same with Microsoft's business on the Web.

A better-known blood relative of Zune is Windows Mobile, which is falling further and further behind as Microsoft fails to maintain this 'ugly old hack' of Windows. It is just too expensive to do this alone and Microsoft's acquisition of Danger is unlikely to change anything. The Wall Street Journal has this short article that indicates not much will change any time soon, which means that Microsoft's market share in mobile devices will only erode.

Microsoft has a new version of its mobile operating system, Windows Mobile 6.5, coming out on cellphones in October. But that software is generally recognized as an incremental improvement on past versions. So far at least, there don’t seem to be any announced handsets that will run the software that are blowing critics away.


Watching how Microsoft failed to turn a profit outside the core cash cows, John Dvorak asks if the party is over for Microsoft. As he puts it:

Everyone knew the day would come when the fortunes of Microsoft Corp. would reverse. The company might now be in actual decline.

[...]

I could go on with home-automation initiatives, phone operating systems, pen computers (two shots at that market), page-layout programs, Web-design tools and on and on -- all shiny objects for a company that doesn't want to actually fill a need, but jump from one idea to the next.

What's shocking is that the cash cows, specifically the Windows operating system and the Office suite, have managed to finance all these idiotic efforts for so many years. While Microsoft's profits and sales were way down this last quarter, it is only a matter of time before losses begin. Read more about the disappointing earnings.


The column above mentions Microsoft Barney Actimates, which proves that Microsoft still tries to sell tangible things, not just licences. A while ago there was also a lot of talk about softwear [sic], which is about Microsoft selling clothes. To be sarcastic here, there's a future for Microsoft in selling something other than licences (clothing and toys) if DRM-laden devices prove to be a failure, which they do. As the next post will show, the XBox business continues to be a disaster that's costing Microsoft billions.

As a bit of side news, another Microsoft product is now being delayed (at least not canceled like many others). It's just not working right.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
 
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete
Links 26/10/2025: Microsoft Spies on Gamers, Open Transport Community Conference
Links for the day
Links 26/10/2025: LLM Slop / Plagiarism Programs Continue to Disappoint, CISA Layoffs Threaten Systems
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/10/2025: Gemsync and Joining the Small Web
Links for the day
India.com a Click-baiting, SEO-Spamming, Slopfarming Heap
They do this almost every day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 25, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, October 25, 2025
Without XBox Consoles, XBox is No More, It's Just a Brand (More Rumours of Microsoft Ending XBox, Then Laying Off Lots of Staff)
All signs indicate that Microsoft wants to "exit" the XBox business (not brand), but it does not want to publicly admit this as it would alarm staff and shareholders