Robert Pogson

There are reports that Steve Ballmer presented data and made statemets to stock analysts that are quite shocking.

• That Other OS attach is down 5% year over year last quarter
• No change versus Apple
• Effect of lower-priced hardware, -9%
• “upselling” -4%
• PC market down 6%

Grand total is -24%… Most of that is M$ not selling what end-users want:

• smaller
• cheaper
• better performing

Where does Ballmer see growth?

• recovering economy
• emerging markets and consumers (who will not be offered a choice…)
• reduction in illegal copies (How?)
• prices of “7″

News for Ballmer:

• less is more … Thin clients are about 10% of PCs and netbooks are about 3%
• people do not want to pay more for a slower OS
• many PCs 4 or 5 years old work just fine with XP and GNU/Linux
• emerging markets are extremely price sensitive
• all over the world, where illegal copies were persued, GNU/Linux grew…

There is no light at the end of the tunnel, Steve.

I find it telling that Ballmer would bother to tell analysts that people do not want netbooks and thin clients. It is like a small boy saying repeatedly that he is not afraid of the dark…

“Nobody believes in thin clients,” Ballmer told analysts, meaning PCs with limited, if any local processing power.”

Tell that to Munich, Extremadura, Tell that to IDC.