Microsoft News Tracker

According to the Wall Street Journal (subscribers only) eBay is talking to Microsoft and Yahoo to find a friend for a fight with Google. CNNMoney.com:

Citing people familiar with the matter,The Wall Street Journal reported that eBay began discussions with Google’s rivals last fall after the Internet search giant began encroaching on its different business divisions.

eBay, a long-time partner with Google, relied on the Mountain View, Calif.-based firm for driving traffic to its site and was one of Google’s earliest search-based advertisers, according to the paper.

But that partnership became tainted after Google launched a product similar to eBay’s online payment service PayPal and rolled out Google Base in October, a free online-classified ad service, which competes with eBay’s main business, the newspaper said.

There were no terms or deadline for a deal, but presumably an ally would replace Google as the vendor for ads on eBay itself and for eBay ads elsewhere on the Web. Joe Wilcox and Jonathan Berr have more analysis.

This week has provided several reminders of one of my favorite questions - how much incremental revenue can Microsoft expect from Vista? This is separate from technical arguments about the Vista feature set and whether it is “novel,” “original,” “sucks,” or something similar as just came up again in Paul Thurrott’s wrap-up to his latest Vista beta review:

Promises were made. Excitement was generated. None of it, as it turns out, was worth a damn. From a technical standpoint, the version of Windows Vista we will receive is a sad shell of its former self, a shadow. One might still call it a major Windows release. I will, for various reasons. The kernel was rewritten. The graphics subsystem is substantially improved, if a little obviously modeled after that in Mac OS X. Heck, half of the features of Windows Vista seem to have been lifted from Apple’s marketing materials.

Shame on you, Microsoft. Shame on you, but not just for not doing better. We expect you to copy Apple, just as Apple (and Linux) in its turn copies you. But we do not and should not expect to be promised the world, only to be given a warmed over copy of Mac OS X Tiger in return. Windows Vista is a disappointment. There is no way to sugarcoat that very real truth.

While that certainly gets the juices flowing, my question is much simpler.

The basic underlying fact is that a Microsoft operating system will be installed on well over 90 percent of all new PCs that are shipped and that this is the vastly predominant way in which Microsoft sells Windows client licenses. Vista doesn’t seem to be so compelling that significant numbers of users will demand operating system upgrades on their existing hardware and Vista doesn’t seem so defective that users will turn away to a non-Microsoft operating system. While there may be temporary blips in anticipation of and then in reaction to Vista’s release, the Windows cash machine will just keep on dispensing at the usual rate tied to new PC sales unless Vista can help Microsoft can increase their revenue per new PC sold and the only way to do that is to reduce piracy and/or charge more per PC.

The piracy reduction effort is a long hard slog, but Microsoft keeps working at it and in the difficult area of relationships with developing countries made progress in just the last few weeks with China ([1], [2], [3]). Specific to Vista, Ina Fried reported at CNET that without authentication of a genuine license, Vista won’t display the fancy new Aero Glass graphical user experience, arguably the biggest new feature. So there’s hope there and perhaps a gain of a few percent in Windows revenues from all of the anti-piracy efforts including Vista features.

More interesting is the Microsoft effort to upsell customers to premium versions of Vista and thereby increase the revenue per PC. I’ve mentioned this before (e.g. [4]) and Mary Jo Foley provided a comprehensive discussion this week including a reference to a new analysis by Rick Sherlund of Goldman Sachs & Co.:

Goldman Sachs estimates that Microsoft is charging PC makers roughly $45 per copy of Windows XP Home and $85 per copy of Windows XP Pro. While the Vista SKUs do not line up, feature-by-feature, with their XP predecessors, Goldman is estimating that Microsoft might charge PC makers $45 per copy of Vista Home, but about $65 per copy for Vista Home Premium, which includes Media Center, Tablet and other functionality built into a single SKU. (It is up to PC makers to determine how much, if any, of a Microsoft Windows price increase they will pass on to customers when selling new systems preloaded with Vista.)

“We think most of the Home market would elect the Premium version since this has the Aero/Glass interface and ability to burn DVDs and related multimedia,” said Sherlund. “We have been more focused on the incremental upgrade revenues from Vista, but the bigger benefit over time is the mix shift to a higher-priced Windows SKU.”

Goldman is estimating that about 75 percent of the Vista consumer demographic will go for the Home Premium version of Vista, as opposed to Home Basic.

If that $20 extra per copy for the premium home edition calculation holds, Microsoft will earn $1.5 billion a year in additional revenues, just by switching its product mix, Goldman reasoned in its April 3 research note. The change in its Vista revenue forecast led Goldman to revise its Microsoft projections, increasing its Microsoft fiscal 2007 earnings-per-share figure from $1.54 to $1.57, and its 2008 estimate from $1.75 to $1.78.

Hopefully most OEMs will make the customer pay up at time of purchase because relying on the easy instant “Anytime Upgrade” mechanism promises to be a swell way to make consumer PC buyers grumpy as they unwrap their shiny new PCs and find out they have to get out their credit cards to get the spiffy new user interface they have heard so much about. Wouldn’t you consider a consumer “Vista PC” that can’t run Aero Glass or burn DVDs as broken? I would.

Hit the article for the considerations for purchasers of the business versions of Vista which are similar, but somewhat complicated by the availability of some versions only to members of Microsoft’s volume purchase programs which leaves out individual users and small businesses:

One enterprise user, who asked to remain anonymous, said his company recently decided to bite the bullet and sign a Software Assurance license to get these features. He called Microsoft’s premium upgrade tactics “extortion.”

Looks like a lot of unhappy campers ahead, but per the article, Microsoft says PC purchasers are relatively price insensitive on operating systems. All the better reason to hit them with it up front rather than nickle and diming them later.

Putting aside the proper method of sugar coating the pill, the net is simply that Microsoft is raising the price per machine for Vista or as Microsoft Vista marketing VP Michael Sievert says:

Rather than upping Windows Vista’s price, “our focus is more on getting people to buy in at a higher price point,” Sievert explained.

Humor aside, how much more will Microsoft get? It’s hard to say without all the pricing information but, since they are the only client operating system in town, the real answer is based on how much Microsoft thinks they can raise the price without incurring the wrath of customers or pesky regulatory busybodies who might get upset about “outrageous profits.” Sherlund’s 2007 estimate is $1.5B on what is now an approximately $14B client OS business, but you can mark it up for audacity or down for caution as you like.

Google underscored my post yesterday on its leadership in the burgeoning Internet ad market when it announced spectacular quarterly earnings after the market close. Jonathan Berr at TheStreet.com says Google Blows the Doors Off:

Google walloped first-quarter earnings estimates Thursday, sending its shares up 6%.
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For the quarter ended March 31, Google made $592 million, or $1.95 a share, up from the year-ago $369 million, or $1.29 a share. Gross revenue rose 79% from a year ago and 17% sequentially, to $2.25 billion.
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“We basically have good news across the board,” CEO Eric Schmidt said on the company’s postclose conference call with investors.
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“It looks like to us that we are continuing to gain market share,” Schmidt added.
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Google-owned sites generated revenue of $1.30 billion, or 58% of total revenue. That’s up 97% from last year and up 18% sequentially. Google’s partner sites generated revenue, through AdSense programs, of $928 million, or 41% of total revenue. That’s up 59% year over year and up 16% increase sequentially.

Hit the link for the plaudits from fund managers, but basically Google exceeded already high expectations. Note also how important the 3rd party publishers are to the total. If there is a downside to it all, it is (as Ray Ozzie observed for Microsoft) that it takes money to make money in the ad-supported online services game:

Google continued to make substantial capital investments, mainly in computer servers, networking equipment and space for its data centers. It spent $345 million on these items in the first quarter, more than double the level of last year. Yahoo, its closest rival, spent $142 million on capital expenses in the first quarter.

Google has an enormous volume of Web site information, video and e-mail on its servers, Mr. Schmidt said. “Those machines are full. We have a huge machine crisis.”

Jordan Rohan, an analyst for RBC Capital Markets, called Google’s capital spending “unfathomably high,” noting that it spent the same percentage of its revenue on equipment as a company in the telephone business, an industry traditionally seen as far more capital-intensive than the Internet.

Nobody is complaining while the earnings stay high, though. Finally, on Internet advertising in general, the Interactive Advertising Bureau reported some new US numbers:

Internet advertising reached US$12.5 billion in 2005, up from $9.6 billion in 2004, a growth rate described in a statement as “tremendous” by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), which commissioned the study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC).
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Still, Internet advertising made up only 4.7 percent of total ad spending in the U.S. in 2005. While this is an improvement over 2004, when Internet ads accounted for 3.7 percent of the overall market, it’s still small compared with other ad segments, such as direct mail ($56.6 billion), newspapers ($47.9 billion) and broadcast and syndicated television ($35 billion).

I guess junk mail is the target to shoot for! More details here.