Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Says PC Market Is Finally Stabilizing (fortune.com) 51
In a call with analysts on Thursday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the consumer PC market is finally stabilizing after being in a long decline. His statement echoes a recent report by International Data Corporation in which the market research firm said it was optimistic that the PC market would rebound this year after five years of contraction as people switched to mobile devices. Fortune reports: Nadella, however, did not cite specific numbers showing that the consumer PC market was rallying. He merely said that video gamers seem to be buying high-end computers loaded with Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system, raising hope of an overall recovery in the PC market. Additionally, Nadella said that businesses are increasingly upgrading to Windows 10, which is noteworthy because several other third-party research firms said in November that Windows 10 adoption numbers seemed low. "I think the overall adoption cycle of Windows 10 in the enterprise is perhaps the best we have seen for any new release of Windows," Nadella said. Still, Microsoft's personal computing business unit that includes Windows 10 dropped 5% year-over-year in the latest quarter to $11.8 billion. Still, the unit's revenue was better than what the company had originally projected because of an unexpected uptick in Windows 10 sales, said chief financial officer Amy Hood. Microsoft said that the money it collects from sales of Windows by other PC makers rose 5% in the latest quarter, which Nadella said highlights an "improving commercial PC market and enterprise demand." Nadella said that computer manufacturers that use Windows are seeing an uptick in sales of high-end PCs. He took credit for the rise by saying that the Surface blazed the trail for other manufacturers to create similar devices, which are selling well. "The enterprise adoption of these new devices is driving the all around excitement of Windows 10," Nadella said.
The Han Solo Defense (Score:5, Funny)
Nadella: [sounding official] Uh, everything's under control. Situation normal.
Voice: What happened?
Nadella: [getting nervous] Uh, we had a slight weapons malfunction, but uh... everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?
Voice: We're sending a squad up.
Nadella: Uh, uh... negative, negative. We had a reactor leak here now. Give us a few minutes to lock it down. Large leak, very dangerous.
Voice: Who is this? What's your operating number?
Nadella: Uh...
[Nadella shoots the intercom]
Nadella: [muttering] Boring conversation anyway.
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On an unrelated sidenote, hey Slashdot editors, an annoying fixed location ad about "vuln management". Not only offensive, but also, seriously, "vuln management". Sounds like some sort of sci-fi flick where the hero starts out as a "vuln manager", where vulns are large four-winged fanged monstrosities. "So tell me, Creedo Nugalan, what did you do before you became a space pirate?" "Uh, you know, vuln management."
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Thanks for calling /.!
The ads are displayed by a third party according to your DNA fingerprint.
You must have been visiting too many vuln sex sites hence the relevance of the ads in order for you to get a cure.
Nevertheless, /. doesn't necessarily endorse the content of the ads since they come from a third party.
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We are Legion.
We are the Third Party.
Wanna toke?
Enterprise adoption the best? (Score:2)
"I think the overall adoption cycle of Windows 10 in the enterprise is perhaps the best we have seen for any new release of Windows,"
Is that you, Mr. President?
Re:Enterprise adoption the best? (Score:4, Interesting)
More like Kellyanne Conway unmasked. "I have to conclude the investor meeting, I've got to change into Revolutionary garb to make America safe from inconvenient facts!"
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Oh, you misunderstand me. I have nothing but admiration for Conway. Sure, she's clearly an amoral sociopath, but she's stunningly brilliant, and I doubt there's anyone Trump owes his victory more to than to her.
if by "stablizing"... (Score:2, Insightful)
you mean "bottoming out" then you might just be right for a change. the only people (customers) left are those who don't want the limited capability and form factor of a tablet or phone.
but until you get your grubby greedy hands off of users' data and lives, and return control over their computers back to them, you will NOT see a single penny of new sales from us.
** microsoft account needed for office, even to just install? (or subscribe? hell fucking no.) nope, free programs exist that work just fine for u
Change Ethernet to metered in W8/10 registry (Score:2)
cant set a wired connection as 'metered' even though many have just that
Such as a home LAN with a satellite upstream or the USB tethering of many smartphones, which appears to the PC as an Ethernet adapter. But there is a registry tweak to set the media cost of Ethernet [windowscentral.com] in Windows 8 and 10. In case that document disappears, here's a summary:
1. In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NetworkList\DefaultMediaCost, grant ownership and Full Control permission to the local Administrators group.
2. Change the Ethernet value from 1 (meaning unmetered) to 2 (m
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I hate registry tweaks. At least with a .conf file you just open it & edit it, and half the time there's a decent example line that you just have to uncomment.
He's delusional (Score:2)
Reading through Nadella's comments ... the only thing I can conclude is that he's delusional and somehow believes that Microsoft can still dominate everything through sheer chutzpah and say-so. "Black is white," Nadella said, "and we're confident that in the future, green will be yellow."
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Your comment would be more cutting and worrying if Microsoft wasn't doing just that.
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Why is it worrying? Don't forget to include an idea in your idea! What are you worried about, and why does being worried about it affect the analysis you responded to?
Were you meaning to indicate merely that you agreed, but were unable to phrase it except as disagreement?
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Why is it worrying?
Depends if you're a shareholder or just generally think its a bad idea if the software company which runs the OS and Office suite that keeps the vast majority of the world ticking fails.
Were you meaning to indicate merely that you agreed, but were unable to phrase it except as disagreement?
Sure. If you're incapable of following English that's exactly what I meant. I'll leave it as an exercise to an intelligent reader to figure out what the GP said about Microsoft's strategy and what subject I referred to with "just that".
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Your comment would be more cutting and worrying if Microsoft wasn't doing just that.
I take it you're referring to my wording, "dominating through sheer chutpah and say-so." Yes, they do seem to be doing just that. But it doesn't exactly seem like a long-term strategy any more. They've been able to do it for many years, true enough, but (just like with IBM; the parallelism is amazing) it seems to be running out of steam.
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But it doesn't exactly seem like a long-term strategy any more.
I don't see any evidence of that. The tablet craze and the computer slowdown era was just that. A plateau in sales. That doesn't change Microsoft's incredible power and dominance over the desktop world. The fact that they continue to push these which are now effectively in "maintenance mode" i.e. fewer newer devices and more replace / keep existing devices, while at the same time attempting to explore a wide variety of new markets don't point to anything bad at MS at all. They failed on the Phone, they are
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For a company that according to
Wish I were so spectacular of a failure. A yacht would be nice....
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"Black is white," Nadella said, "and we're confident that in the future, green will be yellow."
I love this guy already! He has the best thoughts! This guy knows his alternative facts, believe me, folks.
Death of something tends to produce stability (Score:2)
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You're blaming them, but you're the one who had to spend two weeks futzing with it and kept using it.
Take responsibility for your own actions, however awful windoze is, as a windoze user you have responsibility for every negative impact it inflicts on you. And if you're in IT, you have responsibility for all the harm you've inflicted on users with it.
Its fun to watch these Microsoft Idiots (Score:1)
They basically made huge stuff ups with Windows 8, and Windows 10. They continue to rally behind these monumental fuck ups instead of admitting they got it wrong. Windows 10 is a piece of rubbish.. its based on windows 8 which was a complete joke of an operating system. They need to admit they got it wrong, they should stop spying on people and bring out windows os based on Windows 7. They also need to stop pissing off administrators and tech people.. we are the ones who the consumers ask for advice.
PCs mostly for professionals, not for homes. (Score:2)
Just about everyone else will direct their disposable technology budget to a kick ass new phone.
If you look at the needs of the avera
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I suspect they looked at what programmers really wanted to do as opposed to what they wanted to programmers to do and then realized they were only keeping
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This is a huge breath of fresh air where Microsoft spent a huge amount of energy trying to turn programmers into .net enterprise sales people forcing the entire microsoft ecosystem down our throats. The useless programmers adopted .net and went to work for government and big companies. The real programmers went elsewhere.
I know /. has a hard-on for the "real" programmers that work on self-driving cars, AIs like Watson or AlphaGo etc. but there's a lot of mundane software that makes the world go round. Writing a payroll system is never going to impress a CS expert, but people sure notice if they're not getting paid or paid to little and the IRS sure aren't happy if you haven't made the right tax deductions. And they change on external whims just like most business applications, it's not a CS problem where you can approach so
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I suspect that this is why MS is catering to programmers. They are one of the bastions of professional users who also create products for other professional users. If they programmers all go to linux and mac then there is going to be a trend to more and more professional products on those platforms.
Bwhahahahaha, that is funny. Microsoft is pissing off programmers and professional users in the quest to turn the PC into a locked down desk bound tablet. If they continue, we will see a return to the era when CP/M was commonly used for business applications and development work except it will be Linux or anything except Windows.
The only people who actually listen to Nadella (Score:2)
The only people who actually listen to Nadella are those who drank the KoolAid, liked it, and drank lots more. His pronouncements are both smarmy and mostly free of anything important, credible, interesting, or even amusing. With Ballmer, at least one could occasionally grab a bag of popcorn and watch the show. By comparison, Nadella is a windbag and a walking, talking yawnfest. Does he provide anything for Microsoft that couldn't be had from the combined talents of a department store mannequin and a platit
There was no decline (Score:2)
Re: There was no decline (Score:2)
I half agree, and I half don't. The 30% CPU speed increases were far more noticeable in the late 90's and early 2000s, but I think you'd be comfortably within the second standard deviation of users who would be able to meaningfully distinguish between 4x2.5ghz cores and 16x3.5ghz cores. Hardware used to matter more then, in no small part because the things that mattered were all local. I remember the days of checking out software on CD-ROM from the library, and a mindset where "logging into the internet" wa
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I half agree, and I half don't. The 30% CPU speed increases were far more noticeable in the late 90's and early 2000s, but I think you'd be comfortably within the second standard deviation of users who would be able to meaningfully distinguish between 4x2.5ghz cores and 16x3.5ghz cores.
Unfortunately not only have significant CPU speed increases with every generation stopped but increasingly bloated software which slows down with every generation has not.
Is it? (Score:2)
Can I finally start a side-business building people desktops, then? Because I don't think that's feasible and it's quite likely those days will never return.
Gaming's bringing folks back (Score:2)