Summary: If people sell shares at their high point, then Gates does not anticipate a great future for his company

Yesterday we wrote about Christopher Liddell, Microsoft's CFO, selling many shares of Microsoft. It was large enough to go atop the radar of the press and so is this considerable transaction from Bill Gates, which as we've stressed for several years, is part of a trend lasting a long time. Bill Gates is getting out of Microsoft, at least in the financial sense (he is still lobbying for the company). People who are closely affiliated with the company are not permitted to sell too fast, based on the simple rules.

Bill Gates Dumps 7 Million Microsoft Shares

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is trimming his stock portfolio--he's sold off 7 million shares in the company he founded since the beginning of August.

Gates' newer investments are enough to raise a brow and we have a Wiki page to summarise this long-established critique.

Truth be told, based on this post that we have not cited before, Microsoft's business model is aging, and it is gradually becoming obsolete or at least less profitable.

This reduction in dominance will entail a decrease in Microsoft’s profits from operating system sales. Revenue from this side of its business recently suffered its first annual decline. This reduction in revenue puts added pressure on other parts of its business to become revenue producers.

The author offers some charts, too. This author appears to be a proponent of Apple, but just to set the record straight, Apple too is not without its issues. From the news:

Does your firm pay for overtime? Apple doesn't

[...]

The employee, Kenyon Zahner said that he usually worked for more than 40 hours per week at an Apple location in Florida. But, he alleged that the company did not pay him extra, which is required as per the state law for non-managerial employees. Zahner's attorneys in the legal documents filed in the U.S. District Court in Florida stated that "The defendant knowingly had the plaintiff work off the clock and did not pay the plaintiff overtime." Apple is yet to file a formal response in this case.

Apple has become profitable in the phone business, even if it plays dirty against Linux (also see [1, 2]). But Apple, unlike Microsoft, is actually seeing success in this area. Check out this new article from Business Week.

Microsoft's Windows Mobile: Time to Hang Up?

There are better ways for Microsoft to make money from smartphones than to keep investing in a mobile operating system that's losing share and relevance

Many say that mobility is the future of computing. If that is the case, then indeed Gates was right to sell his shares... sooner rather than later. ⬆