My Windows 98 crashed so this is with Linux!
FT.Com Writes:
Microsoft shares fall after Vista warning
By Kevin Allison in San Francisco
Published: February 16 2007 22:44 | Last updated: February 17 2007 02:33
Microsoft shares suffered their biggest intra-day fall in nine months on Friday, a day after its chief executive warned that some analysts’ revenue estimates for the new Vista operating system appeared to be “overly aggressive”.
Steve Ballmer’s comments, made at a presentation to Wall Street analysts, came two weeks after the long-awaited launch of Vista, Microsoft’s next-generation operating system.
Vista, which is intended to replace Windows as Microsoft’s core profits earner, is the company’s most important new product since the launch of the Windows 95 operating system nearly 12 years ago.
Mr Ballmer on Thursday cautioned that Vista would not lead to a big increase in Microsoft sales in the coming fiscal year.
“You shouldn’t think of a huge surge in fiscal year ’08 relative to ’07,” he said.
Roger Kay, an analyst at Endpoint Technologies, said the comments may have been a way for Microsoft to damp expectations for the coming quarter, which typically marks a seasonal low for consumer personal computer sales.
“Most consumers aren’t buying PCs right now, and corporations are serious when they say they are not going to start adopting Vista until 2008,” he said.
Mr Kay, who expects Microsoft to ship 72m copies of the operating systems this year, said Microsoft’s internal estimates for Vista sales may have been overly optimistic as well.
“Ballmer has always been very much a salesman, and he has tended to tout things on the high side,” Mr Kay said.
Most big companies, which account for the bulk of PC sales, are expected to upgrade to Vista gradually over the next few years.
Microsoft’s shares fell as much as 2.7 per cent in early trading in New York on Friday, recovering slightly to close down 2.4 per cent at $28.74. The shares had risen from a low of $21.51 in June, an increase of about 30 per cent.
However, shares in the world’s two biggest personal computer makers, which are relying on Vista to boost sales of PCs this year, drifted slightly higher yesterday. Hewlett-Packard rose 0.21 per cent, while shares in Dell rose 0.04 per cent.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007