Microsoft is giving away $32 billion in special dividend, or about $3 a share. Funny that kind of news should have bumped up the price a little but, but Microsoft gains are marginal today. I would say, isn’t it the day you buy the share for $3 discount. Just wondering out loud. Or is the market saying well even with a $3 discount, the future of this company is flat!
Can’t see Apple as a creditable threat to MS at this point – they just don’t have any place in either business or education and have slipped to the lowest market share ever – less than 2%. Microsoft’s biggest threat is really just slowing growth, slower upgrade cycles and the slow erosion of their software base internationally to open-source products.
Apple has some large long-term problems – as noted here, iPods ain’t gonna carry the day, and they aren’t moving machines like they used to….
Market is saying: good on the dividend, now we’ll wait for the earnings number on Thursday. Growth is definitely an issue with Longhorn looking like late 2006 or 2007.
MSFT’s real problem is that it has now experienced a role reversal.
MSFT is no longer the low price solution and these guys have never been in this situation before.
re:LongHorn,
aka another 20year potential overnight success?
Back we I was just a wee lad at Georgia Tech, Jim Allchin, SVP of the Windows Platform, etc, was an aspiring PhD candidate, and soon to be professor.
Now lo and behold, Allchin was working on the foundation of LongHorn, only it was called Oxygen in ~1983. Ah, the creative mind is always racing way ahead of production capabilities.
I think MSFT’s biggest near term problem is that Apple may get to LongHorn status before they do. The new Pather demo is awesome, and Apple is making productive use of former BE software engineers.