Investors looking for a little relief from the generally downbeat news on technology stocks will find it when Microsoft reports first-quarter earnings after the closing bell Thursday. Most analysts expect the world's largest independent software company to hit or exceed the company's forecast of revenue in the range of $8.5 billion to $8.6 billion and diluted earnings per share of 45 cents or 46 cents for the second quarter of fiscal 2003, which ended Dec. 31. Analysts and investors will focus on the details of deferred revenue, as well as the larger question: Will a bullish performance by Microsoft signal the beginning of a recovery for the battered technology sector?
To take advantage of .Net's promise for increased speed and stability for Web development, you'll need to determine if your system is ready for .Net. Here is what is required to migrate current applications to the new platform.
Redesigned from the bottom up, .Net has made marked progress in areas such as XML integration, error handling, component processing, and reusable frameworks. The promise for Web development is clear: faster development, less custom coding, and increased stability. Once you've decided to migrate current applications to the new platform, you'll need to determine whether your application is .Net ready. This article will help you figure out your .NET capability.
Microsoft said on Thursday that it expected sales of personal computers, most of which run software from the world's top software maker, would grow slightly in the first half of the year and that conditions remained soft. "We're looking for PC shipments in the low- to mid-single digits for the fiscal year," chief financial officer John Connors told a conference call, referring to the end of Microsoft's current fiscal year at the end of June.
"Our view continues to be that there has not been much change in the health of the PC ecosystem, where things have continued to be soft," Connors said. Earlier, Microsoft announced its first-ever dividend and a two-for-one stock split as it posted quarterly earnings that edged past Wall Street expectations on higher revenues.
Sun on Thursday reported its largest net loss ever, taking more than $2 billion in charges chiefly for investment losses. Santa Clara, California-based Sun, which makes computers that manage networks, reported a net loss of $2.28 billion, or 72 cents a share, in its fiscal second quarter ended December, versus a year-ago net loss of $431 million, or 13 cents a share. Revenue was $2.92 billion after $3.11 billion in the year-ago quarter. Investors have been concerned about Sun's ability to defend its high-technology territory from incursions by makers of smaller machines running on Intel microchips. Price competition has also been brutal in high-end computers.
Microsoft should report another quarter of strong revenue growth thanks to a shift to high-priced versions of its Windows software, but its profits could suffer from its money-losing Xbox game business and litigation costs, analysts say. Microsoft is scheduled to report fiscal second-quarter results after the close of trading on Thursday. Its December results may outpace other technology firms because the Redmond, Wash., company enjoys a monopoly in the PC market and introduced several new products last year. It also has a $9 billion backlog of deferred revenue from deals signed in prior quarters to buoy its results.
When LinuxWorld Expo comes to town next week, Microsoft will be sticking to pitching its core developer products and messages. Like Microsoft did at the August LinuxWorld show, Houston says, the company will highlight four Microsoft technologies that it believes developers will find of interest. These are: Microsoft's shared-source software-licensing plan; Services for Unix (SFU) Windows utilities; Embedded XP software (for the retail/point-of-sale crowd); and Web Matrix, Redmond's hobbyist programming tool. Houston, along with various members of Microsoft's "GotDotNet" .Net development and evangelizing team will be staffing Microsoft's 400-square-foot booth on the show floor.
Microsoft has released the second Plus! pack for Windows XP, Plus! Digital Media Edition (Plus! DME), which the company bills as the ultimate photo, music, and movie enhancement pack for its best-selling XP operating system. Plus! DME follows Plus! for Windows XP (Plus! XP), which itself included several digital media-related components that were among that product's strongest selling points. However, Plus! DME is a far stronger effort than Plus! XP, with fewer filler-type features. And with an incredible price of only $20--just $15 if you pre-order the package online starting today--Plus! DME is almost a no-brainer for digital media enthusiasts such as myself.
One of two major product announcements Microsoft made at the 2003 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Microsoft "Media2Go" is a platform for portable media players that will begin shipping from OEMs such as Viewsonic in late 2003. From a practical standpoint, Media2Go is essentially a video iPod, albeit with understandably larger dimensions. The devices themselves were codeveloped with Microsoft partners such as Intel, which designed the original prototype device, but Microsoft was solely responsible for the software side. In this preview, we'll take a look at Media2Go, both from a platform perspective, and from how it works in everyday use.
A federal judge on Wednesday ruled that Microsoft has 120 days to begin shipping Sun Microsystems' Java technology with its Windows PC operating system. Motz granted Microsoft's motion to delay his Java order so the company could appeal his decision. Motz stayed his order for two weeks so that the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit, has a chance to look at his decision.
Microsoft lawyer Steven Holley argued that Sun's wording of the "must-carry" order is vague and could require Microsoft to carry Sun's JVM in its server operating systems, a market in which Microsoft does not have a monopoly, he said. He also expressed concerns that the order would require Microsoft to carry Sun's Java on older versions of Windows other than Windows XP and in the Internet Explorer browser. The .Net Framework is an optional install for original equipment manufacturers in the newer operating system.
Holley also argued that Sun only offers its Java software in nine languages, while Microsoft's Windows is distributed in 34 languages. He suggested that Microsoft should not be required to distribute Sun's Java unless Sun could provide it in all 34 languages because the discrepancies would cause confusion among Microsoft's non-U.S. consumers. "[Sun has] asked to be part of Windows, that's the cost of the ride," Holley said. The Microsoft attorney asked Motz to give Microsoft up to 180 days to offer Sun's Java in an upcoming service pack for Windows XP.
Hewlett-Packard is sponsoring the GRIDWARS parallel programming challenge with prizes and systems. In GRIDWARS participating developers submit CxC battle programs that will fight against each other for control of parallel processors. The GRID WARS Championship takes place in February on an HP Intel Itanium 2 cluster computing system running Linux. The battle programs are developed under Windows. The HP-sponsored prizes include an iPAQ Pocket PC, photosmart digital camera, and all-in-one printer. The deadline for submissions is the February 14th.