Posted on 10/21/2013 12:51:53 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The last time we saw a slide deck from Cole Wilcox, of Longboard Asset Management, the firm was arguing that Tesla is the new Apple, and the stock was headed up to $200 a share.
Now the Longboard is out with a new "next Apple" to share with the market. It's the old Apple, actually — Microsoft.
In its presentation, Longboard says the current perception that Microsoft is, well, soft, is ignoring the success of Office 365, their top cloud business, and the potential earning power of Windows plus Android hybrid devices.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
The MSFT I bought after their recent tumble is now up $4 a share. The stock throws off a >3% dividend.
I plan to hang on to it...
And Silicom (SILC) may be the next Cisco. Check out what it did today.
RE: Well, they made a huge mistake with Windows 8 for desktops and laptops.
Microsoft seems to find a way of righting their initial failed attempts.
Many of their initial products were not considered successes ( maybe even outright failures ). Count them — Windows 3.0, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows Vista.
They were even late to the browser and the gaming industry.
But after that, they seem to come out with products that succeed and even kill the competition.
Count them — Word Perfect, Novel Netware, Netscape, Borland IDE, Lotus 1-2-3, Delphi. etc.... all of them eventually killed by Microsoft.
Arrow has noticible Windows 8 product placement.
You know for $4.00 or even free you can have the start button back and have win8 act just like win7 only better. It’s much faster and more reliable.
I found the issues with Win8 were minor. Now that I’m on 8.1, so far it seems as good as 7. No question they blew it IMO- biggest mistake was defaulting to the Metro UI on laptops & desktops.
yeah sure and everyone will think Windows 8 is ‘glitch’ free and wonderful....NOT
lol
They’ll be begging for a bailout in 5 years
I agree. You should look into 8.1- I’ve noticed a faster login and fewer glitches.
Advise your friend to get the free 8.1 upgrade. It launches faster and includes the option of booting to Desktop.
Microsoft is years ahead of Apple and Google in Tablet technology. Neither Company has a 64 bit touch operating system that can take advantage of the processor’s Intel will be releasing over the next couple of years. Prices will fall and fall hard over the next 12 -24 months.
How will Apple or Google compete with Microsoft/Intel tablets that are dirt cheap and 500% more powerful? With a Docking Station Windows Tablets are 4 in 1 devices: A tablet, a laptop, a desktop and a gaming console.
In the case of browsers, Microsoft bundles Explorer in Windows — and it used to not share enough code to allow competing browsers to work well with Windows. That was the subject of an anti-trust suit in 1998. The first courts nearly forced a breakup (Operating system to a separate company). Naturally, this was appealed — in the final settlement, Microsoft agreed to share essential code with competitors.
Like most people, I used Explorer — because it was there. I keep hearing about how much better other browsers were, but never bothered changing until it became just too glitchy to tolerate. I’ve been using Firefox for about 3 years now, and it’s much better.
No it won’t.
I like your screen name. Are you predicting the writing on the wall for Microsoft?
MS's business is built around people buying their OS's, so they have to kepp producing them every two or three years just to keep making money.
Office is ancient history as there are so many free versions of very good Office-type products (with the possible exceptions of Access and Excel).
I know too many people who are just plain tired of "having to" upgrade their OS every couple of years, or even buy a whole new PC because their old PC is no longer powerful enough to run the latest MS OS bloatware.
I play PC games, but I will seriously check out the PS4 as I am done buying a new box every couple of years just to play the latest PC games.
According to Longboard Asset Management ( as per the article), Microsoft’s future success will not be based solely on the Windows OS.
Microsoft’s decision to take Office to the cloud — in the form of Office 365 — has been a smashing success. Previously, Microsoft released a major update to Office every few years (Office 97, 2003, 2007, etc.) and hoped that businesses and consumers would purchase the new software for several hundred dollars.
But now, with Office 365, Microsoft has embraced a subscription model — one in which customers make regular payments — and Microsoft has a steady stream of revenue: Office 365 is now on pace to bring in $1.5 billion per year.
Also, Longboard points out that Microsoft is changing itself to be an ENTERPRISE company, and as it pushes products like SharePoint, Lync, and Azure, it’s poised to dominate the enterprise cloud opportunity.
Microsoft’s real opportunity lies in the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) product -— Azure. This could become a huge business. That may be, but again, Microsoft faces a lot of competition in the space, in particular, from Amazon.
So, forget PC’s. Enterprise is where Microsoft will dominate, and they have the products in place -— SharePoint, Lync, System Center, Azure, SQL Server, Application Virtualization, and of course -— Visual Studio.
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