Microsoft, the bleedin’ advertisers
This week Microsoft produced their annual report for 2012. It’s been commented on by many and the main theme seems to be that they’ve reported their first quarterly loss since ages (or ever). Well, yes. And so what? The Online Services Division, a eufemism for “we wanna go where Google went” has been a […]
Apple Q3 2012 – for better or worse?
Yesterday Apple announced its figures for Q3 2012.I decided to have a good look at them, given the news and blog posts that flew around. Here are the clean stats: 2012 Q3 Revenue of $35.0 billion Net profit of $8.8 billion Gross margin 42.8% 26.0 million iPhones – 28% growth 17.0 million iPads – 84% growth […]
2004-2011 financial analysis: Non-traditional SI (Indian players and IBM)
Yesterday I published my financial analysis of 4 traditional system integrators: Accenture, Atos Origin, Capgemini and Logica. In a conversation I got asked why IBM wasn’t on the list, and my answer was somewhere along the line of “it’s not a pure player”. Also, I hadn’t published my Indian friends yet, so here are another […]
Traditional system integrators 2004-2011 financials
Traditionally, 31st of March is the date that all my favourite system integrators (SI) have released their annual report for the previous year. Oddly, however, I’ve seen some strange changes this year – for the first time. I could -and will- even say that traditions have been broken with I had to look hard and […]
Wanted dead or alive: any Facebook user, $ 125 reward
With the upcoming IPO of Facebook this week, I got a little worried. I told a few people “Mark my words, this IPO is going to blow the Social Media bubble once and for all” and even “Wouldn’t be surprised if FB’s IPO is going to start the final leg of this crisis and finish […]
Apple margin per device – expressed in Chinese
[Image by Sven Teschke] An article in the New York Times published 2 days ago suddenly gained a lot of traction and got discussed, reposted and reblogged today: Apple making money off of the United States, while directly employing “only” twice as many employees in the US than overseas – but indirectly more than ten […]
Consumer and enterprise IT company analysis
In January this year I did an analysis of “classical” US IT companies: Google, Microsoft and Apple, which are targeting consumers, and Oracle, SAP, IBM and HP, which are targeting companies. Yes that’s a fairly big generalisation but please allow me to do so… This is the update which includes the next year, I need […]
Innovation – today’s Golden Calf
This week I had a conversation about Innovation and IBM. Vijay Sankarav wrote a follow-up post on that as he was forced to “leave early” – this is my reply to that. I think the three of us usually agree pretty much on pretty much everything. And this was an awkward one really It all […]
Does Google get enterprise? No – so what?
After a small conversation with Frank Scavo – whom I hold highly – it struck me: we old enterprise boys that keep kicking the #socmed chins might be on our way to retirement. Not saying that Frank’s one of them, but I certainly count myself to the pack as I’ve only been around multinationals and […]
A new kind of Capgemini Consulting, errrrr attrition
I was attended on Twitter to this thoughtless, clumsy, mindless piece by Peter Sayer on PCWorld: Capgemini Consulting, a specialist in strategy and transformation, is about to transform its own strategy for the second time in two years. To cope with the change, the company plans to recruit up to 1,000 staff this year, predominantly […]
SaaS And Cloud Computing Taking Off With Financials And Accounting Professionals
Proformative, an online community for corporate, finance, accounting, treasury and related professionals, recently conducted an online survey of their members and found that these professionals are more open to SaaS and Cloud Computing than ever before. We have to keep in mind that this survey and report was sponsored by Netsuite and we should take […]
Twitter delegates the monetisation strain to its developers
On the Twitter Development Google Group, Twitter announced today that they’ll stop whitelisting. Whitelisting basically lifts an application developer’s limitation of 150 Twitter requests per hour, that mere mortals suffer from Beginning today, Twitter will no longer grant whitelisting requests. We will continue to allow whitelisting privileges for previously approved applications; however any unanswered requests […]
Gamification – yet another one-size-fits-all?
I got into discussions today about gamification: Gamification is the use of game play mechanics for non-game applications (also known as “funware”), particularly consumer-oriented web and mobile sites, in order to encourage people to adopt the applications. It also strives to encourage users to engage in desired behaviors in connection with the applications. Gamification works […]
Real Profitability Part V: The Aftermath
After the last 4 posts on the subject (1, 2, 3, 4), this is the final one I had a few chats with respected and “bearded” analysts in the field, and realised that my unorthodox calculations would be fine as long as they’d make sense – the average analyst is only interested in earnings per […]
Real Profitability Part IV: The Verdict
In yesterday’s post I showed the absolute and relative revenue, profit and R&D figures of Tata Consulting Services and Wipro. The day before that, I showed the absolute and relative revenue, profit and R&D figures of Accenture, Atos Origin, Logica and Capgemini. The day before even that, I started this series by showing the absolute […]
