Posts Tagged ‘microsoft’

On its Webcast of quarterly revenue for Microsoft’s third quarter of 2010, CFO Peter Klein announced record revenue, with 10 percent of PCs worldwide now running the new Windows 7. This, he said was its fastest sales of operating systems ever.

Bing realized 10 consecutive months of market share growth and its Yahoo search partnership was cleared by both the U.S. Dept. of Justice and the European commission. The US launch should complete by the end of calendar year 2010, with it live globally on Yahoo by early 2010. Yahoo’s recent earnings call discussed the partnership as well.

Online advertising grew 19 percent, driven by search outperforming the market, according to Klein. “The expectations for Q4 are similar to Q3,” he said. “We expect online advertising to be better than fiscal year 2010. We also expect the Yahoo partnership to begin to contribute to our revenue the second half of the fiscal year.”

Here’s the earnings release.

Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corporation just announced that the companies have finalized and executed the definitive Search and Advertising Services and Sales Agreement and License Agreement in accordance with the letter agreement announced in July. AIM Group covered the July announcement, and discussed what it might mean for newspapers.

The companies released the following joint statement:

“Microsoft and Yahoo! believe that this deal will create a sustainable and more compelling alternative in search that can provide consumers, advertisers and publishers real choice, better value, and more innovation.

“Yahoo and Microsoft welcome the broad support the deal has received from key players in the advertising industry and remain hopeful that the closing of the transaction can occur in early 2010.”

Microsoft Canada Co., established in 1985,  today announced the launch of MSN.ca, a French/English Web destination for Canadians. Publicly available September 1, 2009, MSN.ca will deliver news and information from across Canada and around the world. Canadians will also be able to follow MSN.ca at msnmobile.ca and get latest updates and breaking stories on news, sports, lifestyle, entertainment and celebrity gossip on Twitter and become fans on Facebook. MSN.ca will also offer improved personalization with a unique Windows Live ‘signed-in’ experience that allows users to send and receive e-mail, instant message and participate in MSN channel blogs using Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger and Bing embedded directly into the MSN.ca homepage.

“Microsoft is focused on delivering the best consumer experiences and innovations across the PC, online and mobile. Microsoft’s goal for MSN.ca is to give Canadians the best online and mobile destination in the world,” said Owen Sagness, VP and GM, Consumer and Online, Microsoft Canada, in the announcement. 

Microsoft just announced the early end of its double-cashback Bing shopping promotion. Publishers and broadcasters with online marketplace products would do well to explore the concept further, for its cancellation prior to the scheduled August 30 deadline is due to massive response. This campaign, as well as the Cash for Clunkers success tell us that consumers will buy – even during hard times –  with the right money-saving inducement.

“Due to an overwhelming, positive response from our Bing cashback shoppers, we’ve now closed our limited time back-to-school promotion where Microsoft increased the percentage of cashback rewards on behalf of retailers,” read the announcement. Some retailers had already ended their own participation – the sales were that numerous!

The cashback campaign itself might not be perfected as yet, however. One TechCrunch commenter, who dubbed herself Bing Merchant said that “Bing Cashback Engineering is absolutely horrible. It has problems crawling merchant feeds and indexing product for its shopping search.” Yes, getting the mechanics right is crucial. How Bing cashback works.

With the added incentive of discounted advertising buys on all Microsoft properties, French advertising giant Publicis Groupe SA agreed to the purchase of digital marketing firm Razorfish for a $530 million combination of cash and Publicis shares. “Razorfish is known for extraordinary digital customer experiences, and brings with it a robust suite of tools that will enhance the current portfolio of capabilities we are building to keep our clients connected to people in an increasingly digital world,” said Publicis CEO and chair Maurice Levy, in the announcement.

Microsoft has reportedly been trying to sell Avenue A/Razorfish for at least a year now, a company it came to own with the $6 billion 2007 buy of Razorfish parent AQuantive. In August 2008 rumors flew about Microsoft selling Razorfish to WPP, parent of 24/7 Real Media but that deal evidently fell through. At least since June of this year Microsoft has been working through Morgan Stanley, with potential buyers once again including WPP as well as Omnicom.

“Analysts said although Razorfish was initially considered important to promote Microsoft’s rich media and video plug-in Silverlight, it is now seen as a conflict of interest with Microsoft Advertising,” ComputerWeekly.com reported.

Advance Publications’ newspaper division and the separate Advance Internet division are collaborating with Microsoft on the new Microsoft Media Network.  Content Bridges founder Ken Doctor is a multimedia whiz and former executive at Knight Ridder. He made the announcement that Microsoft will deliver its text ads both through its paid search and contextual-reading ad products. Microsoft paid search ads will replace Google paid search on Advance sites.

Though there are similarities to the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium, Doctor discusses the main difference: “Advance Internet is maintaining its own ad platform, currently powered by 24/7 RealMedia, and integrating with Microsoft. Yahoo Newspaper Consortium members have fully adopted the Yahoo APT platform for their ad serving businesses, creating a closer, more exclusive relationship.”

Doctor spoke with Peter Weinberger, president of Advance Internet, who was unwilling to specify what parts of the deal involved exclusivity or the duration of the contract. The very-private Advance Publications, Inc.,  owns Conde Nast, publishers of The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired and 17 magazines, American City Business Journals, Sunday Parade and 30 newspapers. 

Revenue at Microsoft, according to yesterday’s earnings call, is down 17 percent year over year, though costs have been cut $900 million from 2008. New products for 2009 included SQL Server 2008, Office Communication Server R2, Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Bing. 

Office 2010 will be released in the fall of 2010. Windows 7 will be generally available October 22.

The overall PC market for Microsoft dropped 5-7 percent year over year, with non-netbook products taking the biggest hit  – a 16-18 percent drop.   Windows Client revenue was down 22 percent and sales of premium SKUs declined more than 25 percent.

 “We continue to have healthy growth in our client enterprise annuity business, which was up single digits in the fourth quarter,” said Bill Koefed, Microsoft’s general manager of investor relations. Windows server units and annuity revenue increased single digits, although overall server and tools revenue declined 6 percent year over year. Online advertising revenue was down 14 percent, though page views showed continued growth. Search revenue for the quarter was flat year over year.

“…During the quarter we launched Bing, our new search engine which has had positive early momentum,” said Koefed.  “ Unique users of Bing.com grew 15 percent.” We’ve seen particular strength in the areas of shopping and travel as visitors to Bing shopping almost tripled and Bing Travel traffic was up 90 percent month over month since launch.” [AIM Group note – while using Bing today we were greeted with a one-question survey popup: “How likely are you to continue using Bing?” Survey results: 23.5 percent of respondents said they definitely would continue to use Bing; 23.5 percent said they definitely would not. All others were unsure.]

Microsoft business revenue was down 10 percent this quarter, primarily because of a drop of more than 35 percent in license-only sales, though double-digit growth continues in SharePoint, Office Communications Server, and CRM products. CRM achieved the 1 million seed milestone this quarter. Revenue decreased 25 percent in the entertainment and devices division.  Approximately 11 million consoles were sold, including the popular Xbox 360, representing a gain from 2008 of 28 percent. While operating expenses were reduced 11 percent, the savings were negatively impacted by $40 million in severance packages and $105 million in technical expenses for Windows 7. Legal fees were $193 million. 

 “The fourth quarter marks the end of one of the most difficult but in some ways encouraging fiscal years in the company’s history,”  Microsoft CFO Christopher P. Liddell told the audience. “However… We actually executed much better than in preceding years across almost all aspects of our business, we had great product shipments, strong sales execution, and a new level of internal discipline shown by the speed and efficiency with which we cut costs.

“So in my mind, we are a stronger company than we were a year ago — however, the economy continues to be challenging and we need to lift our game to another level in fiscal 2010.”

This report was made possible by the transcript recording services of Seeking Alpha. For the full call transcript go to http://tinyurl.com/nkwbvg 

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is stepping down. Yang’s recent tenure has been tumultuous to say the least. He was at the helm during the company’s rejection of Microsoft’s $47.5 billion takeover offer as well as the failed advertising deal with Google.

Wall Street seems to be pleased. Yahoo stock was up more than 4 percent in after-hours trading yesterday.

Yang was a co-founder of the company and re-took the CEO role when Terry Semel, Yahoo’s chief exec since 2001, stepped down in June 2007.

Yang will now return to his earlier role as “Chief Yahoo” and remain on the company’s board. Yang had a predictably upbeat take on the change: “Having set Yahoo on a new, more open path, the time is right for me to transition the CEO. role and our global talent to a new leader,” he said in a statement.

Yang will stay on until Yahoo finds a replacement.

Yahoo’s press release is here.

Despite what Jerry Yang has been saying, Yahoo better not be counting on a new buy out offer from Microsoft. Here’s what Microsoft CEO told a business luncheon in Sydney today:

“We tried at one point to do a partnership around search … and that didn’t work either, and we moved on and they moved on. We are not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition. I don’t know why they would be either, frankly.”

Nevertless, there are still opportunities for some kind of partnership around search, Ballmer added.

Yang told the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday that he believed a deal between Microsoft and Yahoo was still the best option for Microsoft.

Yahoo shares ended Thursday at $13.96. The company must be looking back wistfully at the $31 a share Microsoft originally offered the search company.