Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Business Keeps Declining and Microsoft is Lying About It, As Usual

Microsoft lies



Summary: Response to the financial deception which Microsoft has just spread to unsuspecting journalists (and the sobering reality)

MICROSOFT is bluffing big time, but almost nobody calls them on it. We contacted one Microsoft-focused journalist (Joseph Tartakoff) who was parroting Microsoft only to find that in defence of his writings, he only repeats more Microsoft talking points*. A lot of reporting is done by one journalist who echoes another, who is affected by seeding from Microsoft's PR people (whose role is by definition to deceive and it comes to show how far PR goes). Yesterday we explained why Microsoft is lying in its report, so we won't be doing that again. Microsoft can claim to have only "embellished" the results, but the outcome is still the same. Microsoft can adjust their expectations (for analysts to be "surprised") and it does this all the time. We have shown this repeatedly for years. Since 2008 in fact, we have exposed the ways Microsoft was spinning, cooking numbers, and lying about its results. Microsoft is almost obliged to lie in order to paint a good picture to its clients. It's a form of mass hypnosis.



“Microsoft can claim to have only "embellished" the results, but the outcome is still the same.”Anyway, few people did actually engage in some investigative reporting and got hold of the real numbers. These show that Microsoft is down in almost every area of business, even compared to the slump of last year (right after Wall Street had crashed) which should be easy to beat. Many companies beat that quarter, many by huge numbers (like hundreds of percentages in profit growth).

Joe Wilcox deserves credit for actually doing some work and extracting real numbers from Microsoft's bundle of lies. In his article he states that "Business [is] down 3 percent from $4.88 billion a year earlier [is] Online Services Business [is] down 5 percent from $609 million a year earlier [and] Entertainment & Devices [is] down 11 percent from $3.26 billion a year earlier."

And this is what Microsoft calls a good quarter? A lengthy discussion about this took place in our IRC channel yesterday. It starts here.

Chips B. Malroy explains that: "Overall, I see this quarter as a failure for MS in dollar terms, once the deferral is out of the picture, it looks like a decrease to me. In fact some divisions lost, especially Xbox360 lost. Wilcox article actually shows decreased on most things."

DaemonFC says that "they don't like to lose, so they force themselves to put up with loss every quarter in divisions that are never going to do well."

And on it goes...

Microsoft employees from Mini Microsoft are apparently not foolish enough to believe the spin from Microsoft. One commenter writes (identity unverified): "if you take out the deffered revenue out of the report, microsoft missed on the revenue side by about half billion dollars and barely makes it on the earning side due to cost cutting. summary: expect more cost cutting since that seem to have neautralized the revenue miss."

As Pogson puts it:

The figures are now in. That other OS client division brought in $2.8 billion more revenue than in the same quarter last year. The sad thing is that $1.7 billion of revenue counted this quarter was deferred income from sales of Vista (with upgrade rights to “7″). That means they got a 20% increase in revenue when PC production returned to normal from the slump. That means no “pop” in the quarter in which “7″ was released. The CPU and PC sector saw 30 and 15% increases. Up-selling is just not working…


Yes, Microsoft growth from Vista 7 debut is outpaced by overall growth in the market. This is telling. One of our readers told me yesterday: "They can only fake things for so long of course. The bang you are hearing in the future is MS hitting a brick wall." Not even a brand new release of Windows managed to put a smile on the face of Microsoft's CFO. He quit the company last month and the Seattle Times reveals that he got himself a "hush deal":

In addition to the $1.9 million sayonara payout disclosed last month, Liddell's Dec. 1 "resignation agreement" bars him from ever writing, speaking, blogging or podcasting anything about Microsoft and its executives covered by a confidentiality agreement he signed in 2005.


Going back to the numbers, Chips B. Malroy says: "Wilcox, big fanboi that he is, still does dive into the numbers more, for that I too give him some credit"

Compare that to Joseph Tartakoff, who is parroting Microsoft's claim: "Msft has sold 60 million Windows 7 licenses over two quarters #pcbuzz"

These are of course fake numbers and we have already explained why (many times in fact). Microsoft used exactly the same tricks with Windows Vista. These numbers are bunk, just like Microsoft's results, which will easily have the readers forget that Windows revenue was down by a staggering 40% in the previous quarter (Microsoft announced this on the very same day that Vista 7 was released, so the financial news was buried by design). ____ * For instance, he uses "official" Microsoft numbers when he writes that "MSFT headcount down 8 percent year over year #pcbuzz". Many more were temporary and external staff, but Microsoft does not want reporters to pay any attention to them. I also told him that "MSFT faked their results through deferral" and he then referred to analysts, whose expectations are always being beaten because Microsoft ensures they are set that way by revising them. The state of reporting is depressing when people who call themselves "journalists" become lazy and prefer to be told what to write (by companies).

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

[Video] Richard Stallman Questions and Answers Session in Google's YouTube or Invidious
From last night
Slopwatch: Anti-Linux Articles Published by Bots, Dominating Google News
So a lot of the Web is Microsoft chatbot-generated anti-Linux FUD
Macho Patent Office
At the EPO there's always room for women in top roles
Gemini Links 12/02/2025: "Bream Gives Me Hiccups", Making Chinese Tea, and More
Links for the day
This is Why Codeberg Issues an Apology Today
This response was clear and relatively swift
Destruction and Distortion of Information, Including Facts About Linux (Bonus: This is Destroying the Planet)
All that LLMs have going for them is hype, and moreover media that intentionally misrepresents them and their supposed capabilities
Google Seems to Have Just Killed All Instances of Invidious
YouTube is rapidly becoming just "another Neflix"
 
Links 13/02/2025: Mass Layoffs at Google (Disguised as "Buyouts"), Telecoms Price Hikes as Collusion/Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 13/02/2025: Broken Watches and Naming Types
Links for the day
Corrupt Bill Gates Worming His Way Into Richard Stallman Videos in Google's YouTube
Reputation laundering riding other people's names?
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, February 12, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Links 12/02/2025: Crytek Layoffs, Security Holes, and Giving Ukraine to Russia
Links for the day
Relaying GAFAM Talking Points and Lies Using GAFAM LLMs, or Slop Pasted in by Brittany Day
linuxsecurity.com is relaying slop, i.e. misinformation
Photos From This Evening's Talk by Dr. Richard Stallman in Torino, Maybe a Video Soon
The talk that Dr. Richard Stallman gave today (a few hours ago) was recorded and streamed
IlSoftware.it Covers Richard Stallman's Visit to Give Talks in Italy
The publication is in Italian, the talk was in English
EPO Staff Representatives Confront the President Who Says 'F--king' in Front of Female Workers Over Measurable Discrimination Against Female Colleagues
Central Staff Committee versus Lukashenko's sponsor
The Register Studies (to Affirm) Reports of IBM Layoffs "at the Finance and Operations business unit"
something about that specific unit
Links 12/02/2025: SSL FUD, DEI Phase-out, Felonies Committed by MElon (Data Breaches)
Links for the day
Italian Media Covers Richard Stallman's English Talk Ahead of Tonight's Public Appearance
article in La Stampa
Microsoft Skype in a Freefall: About 20% Decrease in Site Traffic in 3 Months (Amid Microsoft Phasing Out Credits)
Microsoft axing more services/features may mean that now they scrape the bottom of the barrel and Skype will simply die, discontinuing service (like ICQ) in a matter of years
Gemini Links 12/02/2025: Depression, Gabbro, WikiTok, and More
Links for the day
Links 12/02/2025: Health, Security, and Monopolies
Links for the day
Gemini Protocol is Increasingly Important to the Net
Gemini Protocol will turn 6 this summer
Former EPO Manager Warns That the Illegal 'Court' for "Unitary Patents" Enables “Law Shopping”
Daniel X. Thomas opposed the very existence of the UPC, which any honest person could recognise was both illegal and unconstitutional
Like GAFAM, the EPO is Passing the Financial Pains to Staff
the EPO is operating illegally at this point
Morale at Microsoft Ruined by the Company Labelling Thousands of Workers 'Low Performers', Sacking Them on the Spot and Denying Them Basic Benefits
people laid off as "low performers" go to social control media to bemoan the label
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, February 11, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Links 11/02/2025: Current state of the Internet and Smallnet Information Services (SIS)
Links for the day
Conservative Estimate: Over 10,000 IBM Workers to Be Laid Off in the Next Two Waves
The morale is low and layoffs are expected soon, with mass layoffs likely happening next month and then again later
Links 11/02/2025: Trade Wars and "Crisis for American Universities"
Links for the day
Parasitic LLM Slop Sites Destroy the Ability to Find "Linux" News in Google News
Remember that Google News laid off lots of its workers
Richard Stallman's English Talk in Italy Less Than 24 Hours Away (Torino) and Then Another Talk in Italy Scheduled (University of Bozen-Bolzano)
He's active and he travels a lot in spite of his medical condition
IBM Layoff Rumours, Large-Scale Implementations Weeks Ahead (in March 2025)
There are some people corroborating
Links 11/02/2025: Nutritional Poverty, Closure of USAID, More Fictional 'Valuations' Around Buzzwords
Links for the day
Perl Programming Leftovers
recently in perl.org
Microsoft in Africa: From 98% to Less Than 10% in Just 16 Years
Microsoft being on less than 1 in 10 Web-connected devices in Africa is a very big deal
Almost as If MElon Reads Techrights
The joke we started appears to be spreading
Microsoft Blasted for Adding Insult to Injury: Workers Laid Off Without Prior Notice, Without Severance Payment and Basic Coverage (Like Health), Then Stigmatised as Bad Performers So They Cannot Find a Job Elsewhere
Such stereotypes end entire careers
Gemini Links 11/02/2025: NeoVim and Deploying Other People's Code
Links for the day
BetaNews is Still Publishing LLM Slop/SPAM About "Linux"
Assuming it is indeed LLM slop, it seems clear BetaNews has no intention of improving or is simply unable/unwilling to improve
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 10, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, February 10, 2025