Hasta La Gadget!

Microsoft’s Windows division has been on something of a roll recently, but a deeper look into the company’s financials seems to indicate that the reported numbers might look better than reality. Information Week has done some deep digging into Microsoft’s recent SEC filings and found that several bookkeeping changes resulted in significantly increased reportings of profits in the company’s Windows division. Revenues that had been assigned in previous quarters to other divisions within the company — mostly the Entertainment and Devices unit which includes highly successful businesses such as Xbox — were, in this past quarter, re-assigned to the Windows operating system division.

So just how much money was moved? Well, according to Information Week and the relevant SEC filings statements, about $259 million, or a boost of 6.5% in profit to the division overall for a total of $4.24 billion rather than the $3.98 billion originally stated for Q1 2010. This also resulted in a 25% reduction in profits for EDD, while the total profits — $12.92 billion — stayed exactly the same. Of course, all these bookkeeping maneuvers mean that Redmond’s Windows division looked like it was making a decent amount more cash than it actually was, and when taking into account another complex move — that of deferring $1.5 billion in upgrade revenues from Windows Vista machines sold in Q4 2009 to Windows 7 in Q1 2010 — the resulting picture is a bit different than it would appear on the surface. Ultimately, it looks like Microsoft raked in an 11% increase in Windows profits rather than the 66% reported, when removing both the bookkeeping changes from other units and the upgrade deferrals. Of course, this is all apparently technically on the up-and-up, in terms of financial reporting is concerned, but it does give some insight into the stunning profits recorded in the Windows division as of late.

Microsoft accounting shuffling resulted in higher sales for Windows division originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 15 Nov 2010 17:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ll get this out of the way right up front: VGChartz won’t say where it gets its sales figures and, because of that, they’re not to be taken as gospel or treated with much validity on their own. But, comparing one set of the site’s numbers to another can be useful in showing trends, and with that caveat firmly in mind let’s take a look at Microsoft’s Kinect vs. Sony’s PlayStation Move. According to the site, Kinect Adventures (bundled in with the camera itself) sold just under 480,000 units in one week after launching on November 4th, while the PlayStation Move sold 200,000 “units” in its first week, which according to VGChartz is not individual pieces of hardware but bundles of hardware tied to a single console. (This contrasts to Sony’s figure, which counts each piece of hardware — nunchuck, wand, and camera — separately.) So, by these rather early and decidedly unofficial numbers it looks like Microsoft’s Kinect investment might just be paying off, though of course it’s the long-run that counts in these things.

Speculative Kinect sales figures announced, looks to have handily trumped PlayStation Move originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 11 Nov 2010 07:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tablet sales affecting netbooks? Seems everyone’s been suggesting that lately, from Best Buy to ASUS, with much of the blame placed on Apple’s iPad for mining the gap, so to speak. Add Microsoft to that chorus — specifically GM for Windows Product Management Gavriella Schuster. Referencing the pink netbook sitting between her and Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Nick Eaton, Schuster said, “These are definitely getting cannibalized… these are really a second device. But they are getting cannibalized” (SPI’s emphasis, not ours). Given Windows’ dominance in the netbooks, she’s probably got some hush-hush numbers that color her opinion. Then again, speaking of color, perhaps she just doesn’t like pink.

Netbooks are being ‘cannibalized,’ says Windows GM originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Nov 2010 18:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Amazon has its own applied theory of special relativity, in the sense that we never really know definitive sales figures and instead have to rely on the occasional ratio and comparative figure (based upon aforementioned unknown variables) to glean any sense of success. Jeff Bezos and company are happy to announce the latest Kindle has, in its three months or so since release, surpassed sales of the previous device in its 2009 holiday season (the shopping-heavy October through December period) — in other words, it expects even greater sales for this year’s equivalent quarter, but it can’t exactly time travel to report on the future (yet). Ready for more? Amazon’s also boasting that, for its top 10 bestselling books, Kindle digital books are outselling print (both hardcover and paperback combined) at a rate “great than 2 to 1.” We’re going to guess those are better figures than its tipping point back in July, but Mass-Sales Equivalence was never our strong suit in college. More fun factoids and artistic displays of applied statistics can be found in the press release after the break.

Continue reading Kindle books outselling print 2 to 1 for Amazon’s top 10 bestsellers, and other relatively positive sales figures

Kindle books outselling print 2 to 1 for Amazon’s top 10 bestsellers, and other relatively positive sales figures originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 12:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Can you believe it’s only been a year since Windows 7 hit the market? So much has happened in the interim, we could swear it’s been a decade. Of course, Microsoft is celebrating Windows 7’s birthday the best way it knows how: sales numbers. Turns out the little OS has done pretty well for itself, with 240 million licenses sold, giving it a 17 percent global operating system market share, and making it a healthy chunk of the 1.2 billion Windows PCs out there. As for the slow-to-adopt businesses out there, Microsoft still has some work to do, but it says 90 percent of companies have upgraded or “started their move” to 7. So, we’ve got the cold hard facts out of the way, any precious, personal, heartfelt memories of your time with the OS you’d like to share? We’ve got dibs on Steve Ballmer dropping by the Engadget Show on launch week.

Windows 7 moves 240 million copies in its first year originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Oct 2010 11:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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