Why Microsoft’s Zune is Still Failing
,----[ Quoet ]
| Just as with its “shipment sales” of the Xbox 360, Microsoft’s retailers now
| have to sell them again, this time for real. Channel stuffing makes for good
| press releases, but it doesn’t actually put products in the hands of
| consumers. It does however allow Microsoft to advertise sales twice: first as
| shipment sales reported in its financial statements, and again as retail
| sales reported by NPD.
`----
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/11/22/why-microsofts-zune-is-still-failing/
More examples below. They cook the books. Same with their financial figures...
Related:
Microsoft says Zune executive will leave company
,----[ Quote ]
| Bryan Lee, corporate vice president at Microsoft's entertainment
| and devices division, also played a key role in shaping the Xbox
| game console business and the introduction of its Internet
| Protocol television software.
`----
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6155200.html
Error Message Of The Day: "Zune Failed"
,----[ Quote ]
| This is what you get if you plug the Zune 2 directly into a Vista PC.
`----
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/11/error-message-o.html
Software Notebook: Microsoft's cash pile isn't what it used to be
,----[ Quote ]
| But Microsoft has taken a series of steps to reduce its cash
| balance. Specifically, by Microsoft's count, the company has
| paid out nearly $100 billion through dividends and repurchasing
| its own stock in the past five years.
`----
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/309852_software02.html
Is that 1 Million Zunes Shipped or Sold?
,----[ Quote ]
| Stephen Baker, NPD's vice president of industry analysis, says he believes
| that Microsoft could have shipped 1 million Zunes. "They have not sold 1
| million players through nor do I believe they will by the end of June," he
| said. "That number is likely to be around 750,000."
|
| Microsoft's modest sales goal--at least compared to more than 100
| million iPods--may or may not be in sight, depending on whether
| that number is shipped or sold.
`----
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/games_consumer/is_that_1_million_shipped_or_sold.html?kc=MWRSS02129TX1K0000535
Rumor: Is Microsoft cheating their [Xbox 360] sales?
,----[ Quote ]
| All in all, there are some sobering thoughts with very broad implications
| for any company if that were true. That being said, would you buy
| from Microsoft, or any other company for that matter, if they were
| cheating their sales?
`----
http://xbox360.qj.net/Rumor-Is-Microsoft-cheating-their-sales-/pg/49/aid/89595
Uh-Oh, Vista! PC Sales Levels Are Normal
,----[ Quote ]
| "Vista hasn't been a catalyst for PC sales," he said. "Looking at the
| weekly data, there really isn't anything happening with sales that
| has anything to do with Vista."
`----
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/vista/oh_oh_vista_pc_sales_levels_are_normal.html
,----[ Quote ]
| "This is a relic of old-line consumer products companies like Philip
| Morris, or fraudsters like Miniscribe who literally shipped bricks in
| lieu of disk drives to hit sales targets.
|
| [...]
|
| Channel stuffing is the business practice where a company or a sales
| force within a company inflates its sales figures by forcing more
| products through a distribution channel than the channel is capable
| of selling to the world at large.
|
| [...]
|
| We have a game we play around the office here with Microsoft press
| releases. The game is, "Find the words that make the headline true."
| It's not always easy.
|
| [...]
|
| Sony, like Microsoft, announces units shipped, not actually sold.
| This allows both companies to advertise sales numbers based on how
| many units they can force retailers to accept, not on how many units
| customers actually buy; both have considerable market power to push
| excess unsold inventory into the channel."
`----
http://www.informationarbitrage.com/2007/04/microsoft_phili.html
Open Source Fights Back
,----[ Quote ]
| Question: The OpenSourceParking.com announcement cites a Netcraft
| report, which found that GoDaddy.com's migration from Linux to Windows
| caused Apache to lose server share. Was this event the sole impetus
| for OpenSourceParking.com?
|
| Perens: Not the first. It's part of a continuing behavior pattern by
| Microsoft that I think it's fair to call "dirty fighting." GoDaddy was
| using Apache (I assume on Linux) because it was a great technical
| solution. They didn't switch to IIS on Windows Server 2003 for any
| technical reason. The switch was accompanied by a press release by
| GoDaddy, containing Microsoft promotional language. Now, I've changed
| many servers from one thing to another, but I've never made a press
| release about it. GoDaddy wouldn't be doing that unless Microsoft had
| offered them something valuable in return. There has been talk in the
| domain business that Microsoft has been offering the large domain
| registries a wad of cash to switch their parked sites. There is no
| other reason to do this than to influence the Netcraft figures.
`----
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/item/?ci=15108
Microsoft’s Club Live fiasco
,----[ Quote ]
| People were using the macro on more than 3 games at a time, on more than 2
| accounts at a time, why Microsoft didn’t pick up on the fact that in the
| first few days some people had accumulated enough for 3 Zunes each is beyond
| us. Some were lucky, others, not so much.
|
| [...]
|
| So far no one has been banned from using their accounts, which they needed to
| sign up, probably because they did not break any laws, or probably because
| Microsoft didn’t want that hassle and liked their new found traffic.
`----
http://www.blogthe.net/2007/07/16/microsofts-club-live-fiasco/
Bots Helped To Boost Microsoft Live Search Gains
,----[ Quote ]
| In a blog post, Compete analyst Steve Willis attributed Microsoft's
| search gains to prizes awarded to users participating in Live Search
| Club, which features games that post queries to Microsoft's search
| engine.
|
| [...]
|
| Microsoft is essentially being DDoSed by thousands of people hundreds
| of times per minute, but they are mistaking this rise in traffic for
| people actually using Live Search."
`----
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201001092
Microsoft funding bankrupt Live Search experiment with porn spam
,----[ Quote ]
| Dear reader, please tell me: what do you think of a search engine that steals
| (bandwidth and AdSense revenue), lies, spams away, and is not clever enough
| to stop their criminal activities when they’re caught?
|
| Recently a Live Search rep whined in an interview because so many robots.txt
| files out there block their crawler...
`----
http://sebastians-pamphlets.com/microsoft-live-search-the-downfall-of-a-tiny-search-engine/
|
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