LOOK NO FURTHER than Microsoft for evidence of the company's gradual collapse. Even its top people lost faith. Bill Gates has been getting rid of his Microsoft shares for quite some time (only gradually), but Steve Ballmer too is starting to get rid of Microsoft shares, starting with a huge disposal of $1.34 billion in Microsoft stock.
Chips B Malroy says that "If this isn't an impending sign that the stock is going tank soon, then its a sign of Ballmer being soon forced out, or both." There is a lot more in the IRC logs. "Notice that the sales," he adds, "were not made (at least the news of the sale) public until late Friday... Because a sale like this by the CEO would have caused the stock price to tank.
"It looks like Ballmer is trying to cash in, and just doesn't have enough stock, even with his one position on the board itself, to prevent his eventual ouster. Just more rats deserting the sinking ship, but this time it might be the CEO himself."
According to Microsoft boosters, Ballmer will sell almost a fifth of his stake. The sources add: "Ballmer last made a sale of Microsoft stock in 2003. Bill Gates remains the largest individual shareholder in the company. The Microsoft chairman routinely sells 80 million shares a year in a portfolio diversification strategy. As of the company's last proxy statement, Gates owned 621 million shares, or more than 7 percent of the company."
“But if you sell it too fast, it will surely tank.”
--Chips B Malroy"Ok, so neither Ballmer or Gates wants to be left holding the bag of Microsoft stock when it tanks," Chips B Malroy speculates. "But if you sell it too fast, it will surely tank.
"Could it be that WP7 is already a bust, with Kinect not far behind? Is this the real reason that the CEO is dumping stock?"
Both products had about half a billion dollars dedicated just to marketing. That is some huge waste. Ballmer recently joked rather than properly answered the question when asked if WP7 (Vista Phony 7 [sic]) failing would cost him his job.
Chips B Malroy quotes from a very recent article (or several): "But given how many mistakes Microsoft made in the design of the Windows Phone 7 OS, it probably makes sense to focus on not using the device. No one, as near as I can tell, will want to spend much time with it. Maybe the slogan should be "The smartphone for people who hate smartphones." [...] It doesn't support copy-and-paste. It doesn't offer an easy way to switch between open applications. And it doesn't have a universal search that allows you to find applications, content, messages or other data stored on your device. [...] What's more, its Web browser supports neither Adobe's Flash software nor HTML5, which Apple has promoted as an alternative to Flash."
Notice that Microsoft shares no numbers about WP7 (Vista Phony 7 [sic]) sales. It means that the number of actual sales (not channel stuffing and granting of phones to all Microsoft employees, with an apparent similar deal at Dell) must be embarrassing.
Oiaohm responds by saying: "Android is only first wave of Linux. Meego is lining up to be second wave. So we are going to have Meego vs Android. [...] Really, Meego is about unifying distributions. Fedora [and] Suse already have Meego forms."
“Android is only first wave of Linux. Meego is lining up to be second wave.”
--Oiaohm"It's important to show that Microsoft is failing to compete with Linux in the form of Android and with Apple on ARM devices. This will be when the snowball start to speed up on the decline of MS," Chips B Malroy claims. "We should not want the US gov to bail out MS when the time comes, as in "too big to fail." MS will try to pull that one. [...] using taxpayers money to bail out MS when and if it fails, is not funny."
"Really, here is the funny part," says Oiaohm in response. "By the time US gov tries to bail out MS it might be impossible. Only way to bail MS out would be to raid it and release all its source code. Basically terminate its existence."
Chips B Malroy continues: "Well, the brainwashed here will be crying for the gov to bail them out, so they won't have to try another OS. Inertia is all that is keeping MS going, that and the hold they have on OEM's preinstalls. The preinstalls are now in effect being broken by Apple and Google. This trend is likely to rapidly accelerate. At some point, enough users will have used Android/ChromeOS and iOS on ARM devices to try them on Intel computers. When that happens, MS is dead."
"But OEM preinstalls are not going to be enough," replies Oiaohm. "Linux has preinstalls now on phones and other devices. The market is poisoned. Problem is in a way that there is no way to stop it [editor's note: actually, Microsoft reportedly extorts with patents in attempt to prevent this now]. It's exactly like when Linux took the super computer market. Just on a large scale."
The full conversation will be published later.
For those who think that this is far fetched, remember that Microsoft's debt is growing and the future seems far from promising, even based on analysts (who are usually easy for companies to 'buy'). Just because rich people came out of Microsoft does not mean they'll donate their money to save Microsoft. It just doesn't work that way. ⬆
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2010-11-07 03:30:17
Here is a more sober history of Microsoft's meager stock dividend history. The company first offered an eight cent per share dividend in 2003, again when the stock price was headed to $20 instead of recovering from the 2000 crash. While other companies, like Apple and IBM, have come back, Microsoft has never matched its near $60 price. It's no wonder the company has been branded the worst performing tech stock.