Microsoft Has First Ever Annual Sales Decline

Author	Gordon Kelly
Published	24th Jul 2009

Microsoft Has First Ever Annual Sales Decline

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Now here's a first Microsoft never hoped to see...

The software giant late last night posted its first ever annual year on year sales drop. Total sales fell by 3.2 per cent while net profit was down heavily at 17 per cent to $14.57bn. As for Q4 alone sales were down a whopping 17 per cent to £13.1bn with profits plunging 29 per cent to $3.05bn - but it's still a large and healthy profit, something many companies can only dream of right now.

"Our business continued to be negatively impacted by weakness in the global PC and server markets," Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell. "In light of that environment, it was an excellent achievement to deliver over $750 million of operational savings compared to the prior year quarter."

"While economic conditions presented challenges this year, we maintained our focus on delivering customer satisfaction and providing solutions to our customers to save money," added Microsoft COO Kevin Turner. "I am very excited by the wave of product and services innovations being delivered in this next fiscal year."

In all fairness Turner has a point. The R-word has hit everyone (apart from Google and Apple seemingly), PC shipments - particularly desktops - have slumped and it has been a transitional year for the company with the impending arrival of Windows 7 in October and Office 2010 in... err, 2010.

Don't worry Steve. It's only when Chrome OS arrives that you'll really need to worry.

Link:
Press Release

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Cub said on 24th July 2009

@Andrew - If you're referring to the final sentence, then lets be honest. Neither.

That's not to say I don't think Chrome OS will be good, it's j... more

kdot said on 24th July 2009

depends on the demographic they are aiming for. Android OS coupled with Wave is a very interesting prospect imo, and if it can get it onto the majority of netbooks then yea I thin... more

Gordon said on 24th July 2009

@Andrew Violet - it's tongue in cheek. I think the real threat over the next 3/5 years will be Cloud computing - it's simply cheaper and requires far less hardware invest... more