Hasta La Gadget!

This time last year, almost to the day, Microsoft saw its first annual sales decline in history. Things are looking much better now, with the company reporting a record $16.04 billion in revenue, a 22 percent year-over-year increase for its Q4 revenue ending June 30th. In fact, revenue is up across all divisions, with Windows and Windows Live seeing the biggest uptick (43.5 percent to $4.55 billion) followed by Entertainment and Devices (27.3 percent to $1.6 billion). Operating income, on the other hand, paints a different picture of E&D, showing a $172 million loss for this quarter (compared to $141 loss in Q4 last year), but looking over the entire fiscal year, the home of Xbox and Zune this year did $679 million in operating income — a sizable jump to the $108 million from 2009. The overall operating income for the company is $5.93 billion this quarter (net income $4.52 billion), a 49 percent increase over last Q4, and $20.36 billion for the year (18 percent compared with fiscal 2009).

We know you’re interested in comparisons, so we’ll just go ahead and break it down for ya: the gang in Redmond is still beating Apple in both revenue ($16.04 billion vs. $15.7 billion) and profit ($4.52 billion vs. $3.25), but that margin feels smaller than it used to. Enough to keep the rumored pressure off Ballmer? Frankly, we don’t even think biplanes could knock the man off the top of a tower, but Windows Phone 7 has a lot to prove, and fast. Microsoft is hosting a webcast of its report later today — usually much ado about nothing, as far as we’re concerned, but we’ll listen in and let ya know if anything interesting pops up.

Update: Some interesting Xbox 360 statistics. 1.5 million consoles were sold this last quarter. Xbox Live has 25 million members, and for the first time since its inception, the revenue from the Marketplace exceeded subscription revenue.

Microsoft reports $4.5b in profit, a record $16.04b in revenue originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One of the more interesting exchanges at D8 actually happened across two days as both Steve Jobs and Steve Ballmer were asked about the future of PCs: Jobs compared traditional computers and tablets to cars and trucks by saying most people will eventually only need tablets while some would still need the added utility of a PC, and Ballmer responded directly by saying, “Well, there may be a reason why they call them ‘Mac’ trucks!” Ballmer snap. When it comes right down to it, though, both CEOs expressed relatively similar visions about the prevalence and importance of multiple computing form factors in the future and mostly differed on semantics — Ballmer came right out and said he thinks the iPad is actually a PC, and we’re pretty sure Jobs thinks it… isn’t. Check our edited video after the break to watch these two go at it across space and time, and then check our Ballmer liveblog / video highlights and Jobs liveblog / video highlights for more.

Continue reading Jobs: The PC is a truck. Ballmer: There’s a reason they’re called ‘Mac’ trucks.

Jobs: The PC is a truck. Ballmer: There’s a reason they’re called ‘Mac’ trucks. originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 18:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re just a few days away from Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which means the rumor mill’s heating up again. Let’s take a look at what’s burbling and see if we can’t separate probable fact from probable fiction. UPDATED: More »

Check back at 8:00AM PT!

Continue reading Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie live from D8

Steve Ballmer and Ray Ozzie live from D8 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 11:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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An analyst named Trip Chowdhry at Global Equities Research set off a firestorm of rumors last night after he claimed that Steve Ballmer would appear onstage with Steve Jobs at WWDC for exactly seven minutes to announce Visual Studio development for the iPhone — and the maelstrom of crazytalk quickly expanded to include everything from a Bing partnership to Silverlight for the iPhone. Turns out all that chatter was just as insane and untrue as you’d expect, though: Microsoft’s official Twitter account just clamped down on the speculation, saying that Ballmer isn’t speaking at WWDC, or appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Sorry kids — looks like we’ll have to just hold out hope for next season.

Debunk: Steve Ballmer not speaking at WWDC originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 May 2010 14:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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