Re: [Fsfe-uk] [ALUG] Microsoft and schools (fwd)

[ian]

On Mon, 2003-12-08 at 17:02, Telsa Gwynne wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 05, 2003 at 05:36:24PM +0000 or thereabouts, ian wrote:
> > 
> > It will not cover all things. I should think the reality is that OEM
> > Windows and MS Office are by far the biggest revenue generators.
> 
>   ...Windows generated a profit of $2,264m on costs of just 
>   $545m. In other words, of Microsoft's $2,809 million turnover 
>   on Windows, 81 per cent is pure profit. And even on the Office 
>   suite (the prime subject of the Becta deal), Microsoft made 
>   $1,591m profit on costs of $696m - a profit margin of 69 per cent.

Also since they have no real need to compete they probably are very
inefficient so the reality is that with real pressure, these margins
could be even higher. Quite a lot of M$'s cost will be stuff that is
simply useful to offset against tax. Why would it cost $696m dollars to
maintain and distribute an Office suite? OO.o costs nothing like that. I
doubt its even 5% of that amount even costing in the time of Sun's
engineers.

> Extracted from "Overpriced, overhyped, over here", John Naughton's
> column in the business comment section of yesterday's Observer.

Hopefully people are beginning to wake up to this.

> 
> http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1101372,00.html
> 
> Telsa
> 
> 
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-- 
ian <address@hidden>