Wildly billish articles such as that certainly give me pause,
but comments such as these can be picked apart easily:
"profits are still incredibly secure. It's very hard for me to
imagine this company's earnings coming up short over the
next year or two." What makes Microsoft's growth picture so clear?
First, "they dominate every category they're in," says Stanek.
okay, lets look at each catagory and decide if Micosoft truly owns
each:
1. OS's--desktop yes, corporate--depends on NT5. Part of the
reason I like the idea of occasionally putting MSFT is the fact
that W98 will like be delayed because of DOJ, would MSFT
be behaving so badly if it were not scared that it will have to
rip up W98 by tearing out IE?
2. Internet--MSN is far behind AOL and the competition in ISPs
is fierce. Now maybe MSN has cleaned up it's act, but when I
tried it last spring it was a disaster, and that channel idea,
lame man.
3. apps, while I conceed office dominates, I think people are
learning that they rarely need 98% of the functionality of the
suites on their PC's, the future could be something like little
java applets, very specialized very portable. I think this part
of the business may have peaked, at around 100 megs he he.
4. Entertainment, probably more competition here than any other
catagory--MS games are pretty good, but with so much to choose
from I wonder if Microsoft can really make much here--I mean if
you had to choose from Close Combat, Steel Panthers, or Panzer
General (and a handful of others) why would you neccisarily go
with the Microsoft product?
5. TV--msnbc is lame, the only show I watched got cut and
now Soledad is just another reporter on the msnbc evening news.
6. The future--set top boxes and hand held devices. Windows
CE--the networks seem to have something against MSFT invading
their turf, I cant imagine them letting MSFT in.
If Microsoft runs up this week following earnings I might be
tempted to get a few puts prior to announcement on whether
MSFT is in contempt. That would be just a quick bet though
...because it seems to me that we will see a nice rally in the
markets in general through February, so I'd probably wait until
March to put it again--with the April or May options--attempting
to time some reaction for DOJ rulings. |
