Robert Pogson

Even if they counted the deferred revenue for filling the supply-chaing with “8″ they would still be off 10% so they are doing worse than the unit shipments of PCs, expected because their share is falling. Retailers are really hoping they can sell “8″… There was no back-to-school bump. The whole operation was off 8%.

“Windows Division revenue decreased from the prior year, due mainly to the deferral of $783 million of revenue related to Windows 8 Pre-Sales and $384 million of revenue related to the Windows Upgrade Offer. Windows Division revenue was also negatively impacted by a decline in the PC market, decreased inventory levels within distribution channels as OEMs and retailers began to prepare for the Windows 8 launch, and continued higher relative growth in emerging markets, where average selling prices are lower than developed markets.”

see QUARTERLY REPORT ON FORM 10-Q.

Google’s third quarter revenue was up 45% compared with last year. What can you say? Google is on a roll. Meanwhile Wintel stagnates. Could it be that Android/Linux investment is paying off? Yes, paid clicks are up 33%. No sagging economy or “wating for 8″ here.

Google, Inc. – Current Report.

Do the maths. All these applications on server and desktop for four years for just ~150 per user. Further, the money goes to employ local small businesses boosting the French economy which needs boosting…

“The contract is meant to support use of open source by the General Directorate of Public Finance, which employs over 116,000 civil servants. The consortium will offer the DG support for over two hundred open source applications. According to the French IT news site Journal du Net, the list of applications include Drupal, Open LDAP, Lemonldap, Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, OBM, Tomcat, Postgresql, Apache, Nagios, Cacti, LibreOffice, PHP, Firefox and Thunderbird.”

via French finance ministry awards 15 million euro open source contract.

I watched most of the debate the other night on CNN. It was appalling. The matter of IT came up:
Candy Crowley:
“iPad, the Macs, the iPhones, they are all manufactured in China. How do you convince a great American company to bring that manufacturing back here?”

Mitt Romney:
“The answer is very straightforward. We can compete with anyone in the world as long as the playing field is level. China’s been cheating over the years. One, by holding down the value of their currency. Two, by stealing our intellectual property, our designs, our patents, our technology — there’s even an Apple store in China that’s a counterfeit Apple Store, selling counterfeit goods. They hack into our computers. We will have to have people play on a fair basis.”

President Obama:
“Candy, there are some jobs that are not going to come back,” he said. “Because they are low wage, low skill jobs. I want high wage, high skill jobs. That’s why we have to emphasize manufacturing. That’s why we have to invest in advanced manufacturing. That’s why we’ve got to make sure that we’ve got the best science and research in the world.”

Still the polls have those two neck and neck… One has no clue how emerging markets work. After China raises wages there will be India and other SE Asia countries, and finally, Africa. Even South America will eventually be a force in IT. Obama is right. Some of those low-wage jobs will never come back. Neither will there be enough high-wage jobs for everyone in USA. The whole structure of the US economy must be changed. Obama seems willing to do some of that. Romney seems intent on preserving the tip of the pyramid and leaving the rest to drown.

That’s just in hardware. In software the same thing applies. The world can make its own software and share it at much lower cost than M$ and Apple do (well, Apple is not that bad but bundles the software with expensive hardware for the same effect). Sooner or later China will be exporting CPUs competitive with Intel. They do already with ARM. They have good volume but not the highest throughput CPUs yet. That will take a few years but it is inevitable.

Wintel is becoming legacy industry and not competitive on price/performance. There is no way that it can compete relying on a crumbling retail monopoly when many millions already use FLOSS and love the price/performance. It’s just a matter of time before OEMs and retailers desert M$ and Intel. The world wants small cheap computers and Wintel cannot/will not supply them.

Then there was the budget. Romney seems to feel the budget is only numbers and that he can fix it by adding and subtracting. He has not divulged a budget of any substance yet. He is going to make tax cuts and invest in war and he’s telling the middle class they won’t be harmed… That does not add up. Still the voters like Romney’s style.

Obama has opened the gates of government to FLOSS. He understands but do the voters? They seem not to be there yet. The voters sampled seem hung up on style and not on substance. The election will be critical for the possibility of a fool or a wise man to run things for a few years. I dread Romney taking office. He could well undo adoption of FLOSS in USA which will damage the US economy upon which my country depends and he could plunge the world into yet another economic or violent war for no good reason. We live in dangerous times.