Some relative perspective on Sun's recent quarter...
In light of all the news regarding Sun, much of it sour or negative, Joerg Moellenkamp has a good post on the HHOSUG blog about Sun's recent quarter financial performance... folks, it just isn't us, if you're out there saying Sun stinks because of the year-to-year quarter performance, you must think that Intel really stinks at a 26% decline quarter-to-quarter... even the "jewel" of the tech industry Microsoft reported a decrease in revenue and a 32% decline in net income quarter over quarter.
Regarding systems sales companies, Dell (server+network) is down 17% (down 16% as a whole), HP (servers+storage eg. excluding printers and ink cartridge sales) down 18%, Sun down 20%, IBM (systems and technology) down 23.5%...
As the title of this post says, it's relative.
Disclaimer: Love some of Sun's technology, hate the business. User of Sun products from almost day one.
Come on now! Way to cheat everyone's numbers to make Sun not look that bad. That 20% Sun down number is the whole business. If you looked at all of IBM for the last quarter, they were down only 11%, thanks to services and software. Yet, IBM grew margins and made a profit. Sun, margins down and posted a loss.
Intel: made a profit. HP: profit. Dell: profit. Microsoft: profit.
As for Microsoft being a "jewel", they're a better run version of Sun. Made and make some bad business decisions, haven't listened to customers by forcing products onto them that they think customers need, arrogant in the face of changing demand type. Eg. the Vista bomb, shift to netbooks.
Posted by Spin, Spin, Spin on April 29, 2009 at 03:53 PM EDT #
Sorry but it's as close to like for like numbers as you can get. Yep we didn't make a profit but I wasn't reporting on profitability, was reporting on revenue numbers in general quarter-over-quarter. The industry as a whole is down. Period.
And as for Microsoft.. yep, that's why I put "jewel" in quotes. It's a love-hate relationship just as you said about Sun, no doubt.
Posted by Dave Pickens on April 29, 2009 at 04:32 PM EDT #