Interesting article, 360 console sales are good but MS has so many incentives to buying and they pay out lots of money for timed exclusives, and advertising curious to see how that effects the bottom line. As others have sd no one can stay on top for ever I'm an Apple guy with laptops for life since buying my first macbook, but with Iphone and Ipad are hot right now but I dont see a ton of innovation coming from them, I have moved on from the Iphone and dont see myself buying a tablet ever.

Oh I stand by my statement. Whoever thinks 5 billion in profit, not revenue, every fiscal quarter isnt labelled "great" like the thread title says, then someones clearly hatin on MS. 

It split to like $24, it is now $26.xx

A lot of sites that have share price history often adjust for stock splits, and you will see that the people invested in it really haven't made any money in it other than dividends.

Good I'm glad you stand by your statement. It just makes it all the more easy to knock you off of it.

Stocks are about growth. 5B$  a quarter to a company who's assets totals well over 200 Billion $ means that it will take Microsoft over 10 years @ this current level of income to double in size.

While this is no small feat, businesses who's stocks triple and quadruple over 5 years, are ones that double in size every year. Naturally, the larger the company gets, the harder it is to double, this results in very slowly and sometimes, dipping, stock prices. The reason the article refers to the lost decade is because in this time, apple stocks have done just that. What it goes to show is that in the future, microsoft WONT be making the amount on a course of 10 years because it isn't growing, whereas competition is, and at a certain point, competitive growth will become loss in profit for MS.

It's not doom and gloom though, so rest assured about that.  A company that is in trouble will do what it must.

So, again, 5B is nothing to MS, which is why the stock is level. 5B though, is a lot to Vgchartz, therefore vgchartz stock will flip 12 times over and split 15 times. And everyone who put in a dollar will make 12 dollars,and people who invested in MS will make 12 cents.

But just goes to show how much people know before they make criticisms.

Ok, I understand a lot of what you're saying here. But your analysis is a lot more objective than the original story. For instance, this statement:

"Add it all up and you get a great company in a horrible situation. Google is finally succeeding in championing free operating systems, with Apple cleaning up on the other end. Barring something miraculous, Microsoft's relevance will continue to fade with every passing year."

Those sweeping generalizations about the performance of Google and Apple fail to consider the same principles that you pointed out above. Google and Apple had tremendous growth during the 2000's, just as MS did in the 90's. But what is the likelihood they will sustain such growth throughout the 2010's?

Google is starting to see decline's in search revenue due to competition and Android is not currently a credible source of revenue despite its large install base. Their purchase of Motorola Mobility has been questionable as well, not to mention serious pending litigation from Oracle. Apple without Steve Job's performing in his previous capacity is another question mark as well as the future prospects of the iPhone and iPad in their increasingly competitive markets. Seriously, how much CAN each of those companies grow beyond where they currently are?

MS is healthy, but they will NEVER have the type of crazy growth like what we've saw in the 90's. Every market has it's threshold. Looking at it from an investor's pov, I can understand not putting a ton of stock in MS as a financial goldmine. But to confuse that with a company's financial viability or market strength is not particularly accurate, and this was the tenor of the original article.

The Nasdaq is worth right now half of what it was worth 11 years ago so it's hardly something specific to Microsoft.
Basiacally he's looking at the stock over the 11 worse years in the history of the stock market...........

So if you looked only at the market index you could say that Microsoft has done twice better than most companies as their stock price hasn't been divided by two......

to be fair things have changed quite a bit since your graphic...

Android related revenue topped 1 billion$ in 2010.

Android itself will never generate crazy revenue as Google gives the OS.

The revenue will come from the Android Store and from running google search and adds on Android phones..

PS : Google revenue was up 36% last quarter..

That is the big question. But look at Ail above, google revenue increased 36% this year. That's the difference between a company that is going to expand, and a company that is not. Google still has to release its OS, the new android coming out (which is shortly becoming the most purchased smart phone), file-sharing service, etc etc.

If you look at the future I still think Google is the company with the brightest future for one reason :
Almost all of their revenue is recurring. You have to keep paying to get your ads to show up. And they are in a market that is still growing a lot ( internet and cellphones).

Microsoft's revenue is mostly recuring but only because so far they have managed to convince customers to purchase new versions of OS or office products which lets be honest are not huge upgrades compared to the previous versions. And as the PC market shrinks their potential market shrinks too...

The huge majority of Apple's revenue is hardware, and that revenue will keep climbing until they reach market saturation but once this is done the revenue will not keep recuring ( because at some point people will realize there isn't such a huge benefit in upgrading their phone every year ( and the more apps they download the more of a pain it is when you get a new phone and have to redownload all those apps). So at some point their revenue will stop growing like crazy and most likely slow down ( the way  the Ipod sales have started declining).

As market saturates  and competition intensifies Apple will not be able to keep makign such huge margins on its products either...

Still short term Apple is the company where the sky is the limit but if you had to bet about which of the 3 companies would be doing the best 11 years from now, my money would be on Google, not Apple....

So if I had to rank those companies in terms of growth :

3 years time frame :

Apple > Google > Microsoft

10 years :

Goggle > Apple = Microsoft  

PS : I own Google stock so I might be biaised...

I agree with your post for the most part, but on the subject of Microsoft, I would like to point a few things out.

I personally believe the PC market is shrinking because we aren't seeing enough innovation in the hardware. Most people will need their laptop for tasks that do not require a huge amount of power, so people are finding new PCs less attractive, because they're already being served well by their laptop, both for using on the go and in the home. So the market needs to be reinvigorated, and I personally believe tablets can do this.

Having a tablet with the functionality of an EeePad Transformer or an EeePad Slider combined with the versality of a PC could make for a very attractive piece of kit if you can control it right. And that's exactly what I'm seeing in Windows 8, an OS that allows you to control your hardware in a more casual way without being clunky, but allows you to quickly change it to a proper work device if you need to.

The iPad has proven there is a market for tablets, but having a tablet that can actually replace your laptop is much more exciting to me than anything currently on the market. And Microsoft seems to get that, so I hope they do it right, and Windows 8 becomes a success for them on that front.

On another front, Microsoft might be able to invigorate both PC and Xbox sales with an added focus on Kinect and the possibilities it brings. While it's unclear how Microsoft will use it going forward (it's definitely here to stay on Xbox, but what might their plans be for PC?), they've certainly proven that people want this sort of interaction with their technology. So if Microsoft can make the Xbox the goto choice for media, gaming and related services, it will only keep growing.