Barney's Blog

Blog archive

Netbooks and the 'Dismal Science'

Who will tell the investors? Bill Koefoed, Microsoft's GM of investor relations, has that task. And he recently explained that Microsoft's profitability as a company had a lot to do with PC sales, which were "down somewhere between 6 and 8 percent" in the last quarter. In particular, high-profit business PC sales were lower than consumer PC sales. A particular stumbling block for Microsoft was netbooks, representing "about 11 percent of industry PC sales." The low-tech, low-cost, smallish netbooks bring in less OS revenue for Microsoft than traditional PCs. Microsoft's revenues have been dogged by this "netbook effect" for the past nine months, according to Koefoed. 

Microsoft currently provides the aging XP for netbooks, but any edition of Windows 7 can run on these devices, we're told. The missing piece of the puzzle is what Microsoft will charge for Windows 7 running on a netbook; most think the price will be higher, but the details haven't been announced.

Steve Ballmer recently hinted at a possible way out of this number-crunching mess. He suggested that a category of netbooks, called "ultrathins," will appear next year. Ultrathins will be higher-powered and higher-performance machines compared with netbooks, he explained. And there's even another mobile computing device category that Microsoft is calling "consumer Internet devices" or CIDs.

Is any of this helping? Would you buy an ultrathin running Windows 7 for a higher price than a netbook running XP, or is that too confusing? Let Doug know at [email protected].

Posted by Kurt Mackie on August 14, 2009


Featured

  • Microsoft Appoints Althoff as New CEO for Commercial Business

    Microsoft CEO and chairman Satya Nadella on Wednesday announced the promotion of Judson Althoff to CEO of the company's commercial business, presenting the move as a response to the dramatic industrywide shifts caused by AI.

  • Broadcom Revamps VMware Partner Program Again

    Broadcom recently announced a significant update regarding its VMware Cloud Service Provider (VCSP) program, coinciding with the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, a key component in Broadcom’s private cloud strategy.

  • Closeup of the new Copilot keyboard key

    Microsoft Updates Copilot To Add Context-Sensitive Agents to Teams, SharePoint

    Microsoft has rolled out a new public preview for collaborative "always on" agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot, bringing enhanced, context-aware tools into Teams channels, meetings, SharePoint sites, Planner workstreams and Viva Engage communities.

  • Windows 365 Cloud Apps Now Available for Public Preview

    Microsoft announced this week that Windows 365 Cloud Apps are now available for public preview. This aims to allow IT administrators to stream individual Windows applications from the cloud, removing the need to assign Cloud PCs to every user.