Comments on: Who has cash to survive the downturn?

For those technology companies that have managed to save cash during the good times, they may be best positioned to thrive and make big bets in the bad times.

[Mr. Dee]

"Ironically, given that Apple and Microsoft have two of the biggest cash hoards, it may well be that money earned on the desktop will provide these vendors the best options for extending that dominance to the cloud."

and it burns you doesn't it?

[myles taylor]

How's Google doing for cash?

[CDubber]

Apple sits on a pile of cash while sales continue to do well.

Every dark cloud has a silver lining. In this economy, that silver lining is Apple. Too bad their stock price still doesn't reflect it.

[ScottRiqui]

Google is at about $11 billion as of the end of 2008.

[jonathan0766]

Not sure where your numbers are coming from but they're way off. Oracle's balance sheet as of December 1st was holding $7.35 billion in cash and $3.3 billion in short term assets. IBM is sitting on $12.9 billion in cash as of January 1st, 2009. To note, IBM has been holding at least $10 billion in cash + short term assets for at least four years now. RedHat is sitting on $529 million in cash and $238 million in short term assets as of December 1st. Yahoo Finance and Google Finance both spell out these same exact numbers pretty clearly in the balance sheets for the latest quarterly data.

[p-brane]

Matt, could your #'s actually have been this far off?

[Waam]

As a shareholder of Microsoft stock I am continually puzzled why Microsoft is fighting battles it knows it will lose. Zune? Why? HD DVD? Why? MSN? Why? I'm still keeping my fingers crossed on XBOX, but it looks like now they will never catch Nintendo, and PS3 still is a sleeping giant. Why can't they just focus on what they are great at, marketing their OS to business and making Office the best product it can be? Please focus your company and make my balance sheet recover! I don't want to cut my losses because I feel if Microsoft can just focus on what it's good at, this is a stock worth keeping.

[Millerboy]

Zune is for Microsoft to learn how to develop music management software, and integrate it into their smartphones (i.e. Microsoft Windows Mobile). HD-DVD was to spite Sony's Blu-Ray and hurt Sony as a corporation. Sony and Microsoft are competing in the video game industry. MSN is for the internet and it is related to software, the internet is definitely going to be another market to sell software as services in the future. Xbox is a smart move because it provides a foot in the door for putting MS software into the living room. After all, the video game console might be the most important entertainment device of the future. Not to mention the fact that the video game industry is bigger than Hollywood, in terms of revenues and profits. Microsoft sees an opportunity for revenue growth, the Xbox 360 is doing fine, and I wouldn't get too scared of the Wii. The Wii tapped new markets, children, parents, and grandparents. The Xbox 360 and PS3 are competing in the same demographic: hardcore gamers, male, age 16-35. The X360 is kicking ass right now.

Microsoft should learn from Zune and MSN to find new ways to improve their software. First, MS should integrate their MP3 player into their smartphone OS. The gadget world (cell phones, PDAs, mp3 players, etc.) is heading towards convergence. Sooner or later, the MP3 player will be assimilated into cell phones. It's only a matter of time. The device of the future is a smartphone.

[Millerboy]

For what it's worth, this is a direct statement from Microsoft?the crux of last week's Financial Times story was not found in a direct quote, but rather in a section of analysis. Says the FT:

"[The future of the Zune] lies in planting the software and online service linked to the player in other devices."

Given that music phones have long since come of age, such a strategy?whereby the Zune is a software platform primarily intended for the multitude of Windows Mobile handsets?would make sense. But for now at least, the standalone Zune seems to have some time left.

Source: http://i.gizmodo.com/5130915/microsoft-denies-reports-that-zune-hardware-isnt-long-for-this-world

[dragonbite]

So Proprietary vendors have less cash on hand, but more cash coming in while open source has less coming in but less going out.

[pentest]

If MS had succeeded in acquiring Yahoo, they would be sitting on no cash, and their stock would be worth less. They would have been in really big trouble. Serious trouble today.

Yet Ballmer, the mastermind behind it isn't standing in line at the unemployment office.