[Am-info] XBox Economics

[John Poltorak]

On Tue, May 21, 2002 at 04:38:28PM -0400, Paul Rickard wrote:
> ========== On 2002.05.21 04:21 PM, Sujal Shah typed: ============
> 
> >Having 30 billion in the bank
> >doesn't help them if they keep falling short of their quarterly earnings
> >mark because of greater than anticipated losses on the XBox.
> 
>      Microsoft now has about $45 billion, and its growing at something 
> like $1b a month. Even though growth is down they're still raking in 
> record amounts of cash and have yet to pay out the first stockholder 
> dividend. 

You would think that the antitrust laws would have been designed to level 
the playing field and provide for some element of competition, yet here we 
are, four year down the line from the start of the trial, and Microsoft has 
essentially been left unscathed, in fact he their monopolies are becoming 
are reaching farer and wider than ever before. It beggars belief that they 
have not been found guilty of overcharging for their products with the 
imposition of some price limit on Windows and Office.

Most countries in the west seem to have some sort of government department 
charged with stimulating fair competition, but they never even bother 
looking at Microsoft which operates as a monopoly. One can only speculate 
that there is corruption on a massive scale in the departments fuelled by 
Microsoft's huge slush fund.
 
>      "No other nonfinancial firm has more liquid money at its disposal, 
> and only a handful of banks do. It's more cash than Ford, ExxonMobil and 
> Wal-Mart have combined, and nearly four times as much as Intel, the tech 
> company with the next largest cash balance. It is enough to buy the 
> entire airline industry -- twice. Or all the gold in Fort Knox, four 
> times over. It is enough to buy 23 space shuttles or every major 
> professional baseball, basketball, football and hockey team in America." 
> - http://money.cnn.com/2002/04/12/pf/agenda_msft/

There's definitely something wrong here, but how come no one else sees it?
 
> 
> ======== Paul Rickard, Editor of The Microsoft Boycott Campaign =======


-- 
John