M$ profits down 29% for the quarter

[Patrick]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... yA3nOPwv_Q

The first thing people cut when things get tight is the non essential stuff.

[RogueSpear]

They've already cut several "home" type titles, yet introduced a family plan for 7. Bing is going to be a money suck for a least a couple of years. I think the next two years will say a lot.

[eddie]

It is a lot more complicated than this and these are over simplified approximations of rounded figures in the billions: See 10k sec form for the stated details.
assets ( current + fixed) = liabilities (short term + long term) + capital (i.e. owner equity)
Net income 15 operating income 20
assets 78 ( current 31 + other 47) = liabilities ( st 27 + lt 11) + owner equity (63 - retained deficit (s/b retained earnings) 23)
In this period MS has 31 to pay short term debt of 27. That is ok.
The bad part is that ms only made 15 (but they took in 20 to spend) to pay for short term debt of 27, You earned 15 dollars this month, Even if you took in net 20 dollars, but your bills this month are 27 dollars. Not good news. How long can you survive living like that.
Microsoft grossed 58. 13 of those dollars were used for advertising. 13/58 or about 20 percent of what you pay for a Microsoft product is just to sell you that product. For every ten dollars you pay for a ms product 2 dollars is for selling you that product. Microsoft needs to find a better way to sell its product. Not many people get 20 percent commissions these days

Steve Ballmer might want to get his resume ready.

Note: If mswindows 7 sells well this situation could turn positive so do not take these figures as an oracle for the future. Things do change..

[Miko]

so M$ only made profits equal to the GDP of a medium size country instead of a quite bigish size country.
Still more money than I can comprehend.