MSFT: A utility stock, w/o the dividend
An oddly favorable piece on our favorite stock in Business Week. It includes such exciting quotes as;
Microsoft has become in many ways like a utility with a really big venture-capital fund," says Brendan Barnicle, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities.
A big venture capital fund, and a huge research budget
Great article in the Economist a few months ago about Rick Rashid, the guy who rusn the Microsoft Research and Development labs. He's certainly got the right attitude for the job:
“If one day we invent the teleporter, the headlines would read: ‘Microsoft copies again',” he jokes.
Your new phone company may be based in Redmond
Amazing three paragraphs, even more amazingly, located at the end of an article abou the Xbox:
A critical component of the social experience planned for Xbox Live will be the audio headset, enabling players to cheer and jeer one another. The technology includes a "voice masking" feature that will conceal the identities and even ages of the contestants — a Disneyland safeguard meant to deter adult exploitation of children online.
Some analysts agree with Microsoft that voice capabilities could take video gaming to the next level.
"You're looking at a service that will become a new phone network overnight," said Richard Doherty, president of Envisioneering, a research and consulting firm in Seaford, N.Y. "By Christmas, Microsoft could become the nation's fourth-largest phone company."
But WHY would Microsoft want to be the nation's fourth-largest phoen company? The other three in front of it aren't doing particularly well these days.
Perhaps they're interested in it to 1) change the economics, 2) use telephony to sell other prdoucts that they can make money on it. You've gotta love that one -- telephony as a loss leader. For what we can only imagine...nudge nudge wink wink.
The other interesting thing about the linked article is that Microsoft continues to invest in the Xbox, despite the RVM (Rear View Mirror) media's obsession with the fact that it is probably lagging expectations in sales. What that doesn't indicate tis that Microsoft is investing for something that most technoilogy and investing journalists don't udnerstand -- the long term. They've clearly got a vision of where the XBox will be in a year, three years and five years. And, sales down 20% in the first six months or not, they're going ot continue to invest in that vision to make it come true. I subscribe to a number of investing web sites that concentrate on investing action on a daily, sometimes an hourly basis. These commentators, while talking about hte state of the market on an extremely temporal basis, also make long-term predictions based on a variety of short-term indicators. They seem genetically unable to mount the sort of longer term thinking that actual businesses are based on.
3:11:13 PM 
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