Crumbs
Rich T finds some tasty titbits you might have missed in the week's news
Wednesday 21 February 2007, 11:17 AM
Ballmer cautious; shock
It comes to something when Steve Ballmer is not super-confident, but his latest analyst conference proved one exception. Or a partial one at least. One thing Microsoft's chief executive didn't hold back on was his aggressiveness towards the Linux community; the non-Novell Linux community at least.
But on the potential sales of Vista, Ballmer was surprisingly downbeat: "I think some of the revenue forecasts I've seen out there for Windows Vista in fiscal year '08 are overly aggressive," Ballmer told the analysts in New York.
Lower selling prices, relatively low corporate sales (many sales happened shortly after the launch date and are slowing now) and continued piracy would hamper revenue figures going forward, Ballmer said, leading to a flatter 2008 financial year.
Perhaps this is a good lesson in not overhyping new releases - XP didn't take off that quickly, with businesses upgrading when they needed it, rather than buying XP because it had been released. I'm sure the same will happen with Vista, too.
But on the potential sales of Vista, Ballmer was surprisingly downbeat: "I think some of the revenue forecasts I've seen out there for Windows Vista in fiscal year '08 are overly aggressive," Ballmer told the analysts in New York.
Lower selling prices, relatively low corporate sales (many sales happened shortly after the launch date and are slowing now) and continued piracy would hamper revenue figures going forward, Ballmer said, leading to a flatter 2008 financial year.
Perhaps this is a good lesson in not overhyping new releases - XP didn't take off that quickly, with businesses upgrading when they needed it, rather than buying XP because it had been released. I'm sure the same will happen with Vista, too.
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