Microsoft Corp said on Thursday its quarterly revenue fell from the previous year for the first time in its 23-year history as a public company, while its profit dived 32 percent.
The declines illustrated the toll the recession has taken on the world’s largest software maker, even though Microsoft remains one of the richest and most profitable companies. In January, Microsoft said it needed to resort to its first mass layoffs, cutting 5,000 jobs, and on Thursday it announced it would do away with merit pay increases for employees in the next fiscal year.
Microsoft said the current quarter would probably still be weak in the markets for PCs and computer servers. The company did not issue earnings guidance for the rest of the year, and it offered no hope for a rebound in the current quarter.
“I didn’t see any improvement at the end of the quarter that gives me encouragement that we’re at the bottom and coming out of it,” said Chris Liddell, Microsoft’s chief financial officer.
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said that in its fiscal third quarter, which ended on March 31, profit was US$2.98 billion, or US$0.33 per share. In the same quarter of last year, Microsoft earned US$4.39 billion, or US$0.47 per share.
Microsoft’s profit included a US$290 million charge for severance from some of the layoffs announced in January. The software maker also wrote down US$420 million related to investments that lost value.
Revenue in the last quarter slipped 6 percent to US$13.6 billion, missing analysts’ expectations for US$14.1 billion.
“I think it was a good quarter in a tough environment,” said Taunya Sell, an analyst for Ragen MacKenzie, a division of Wells Fargo, adding Microsoft did “the two things you can do in a tough environment — try to keep costs down and make sure customers still want to buy your products.”
END OF GEOCITIES
Meanwhile, Yahoo Inc said on Thursday it plans to close GeoCities, a Web site publishing and hosting service it bought in May 1999 at the height of the dot-com boom for around US$3 billion in stock.
The service will be shut down later this year. Visitors to the site now see a message that says new GeoCities accounts will not be available and gives them the option to sign up for Yahoo’s Web hosting service for US$5.98 a month.
It is not clear when Yahoo made the move, but a spokesman said in an e-mailed statement that the decision was recent.
GeoCities is not the only Yahoo service to get the ax — Yahoo Briefcase, Farechase, My Web, RSS ads, Yahoo Pets, Yahoo Live, Kickstart and Yahoo For Teachers all are being eliminated as well.
The search giant also recently outsourced Launchcast radio to CBS Corp.
“As part of Yahoo’s ongoing effort to build products and services that deliver the best possible experiences for consumers and results for advertisers, we are increasing investment in some areas while scaling back in others,” the statement said.
In a sign of its ongoing troubles, Yahoo said on Tuesday that it will lay off nearly 700 workers, the company’s third round of job cuts during the past 14 months.
The company earned US$118 million during the first three months of the year. That represents a 78 percent drop from net income of US$537 million in the year-ago period.
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said it is expected to issue a sea warning for Typhoon Fung-wong this afternoon and a land warning tomorrow. As of 1pm, the storm was about 1,070km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, and was moving west-northwest at 28 to 32kph, according to CWA data. The storm had a radius of 250km, with maximum sustained winds of 173kph and gusts reaching 209kph, the CWA added. The storm is forecast to pass near Luzon in the Philippines before entering the South China Sea and potentially turning northward toward Taiwan, the CWA said. CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張峻堯) said
PREPARATION: Ferry lines and flights were canceled ahead of only the second storm to hit the nation in November, while many areas canceled classes and work Authorities yesterday evacuated more than 3,000 people ahead of approaching Tropical Storm Fung-wong, which is expected to make landfall between Kaohsiung and Pingtung County this evening. Fung-wong was yesterday morning downgraded from a typhoon to a tropical storm as it approached the nation’s southwest coast, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, as it issued a land alert for the storm. The alert applies to residents in Tainan, Kaohsiung, Pingtung and Taitung counties, and the Hengchun Peninsula (恆春). As of press time last night, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Yilan, Miaoli, Changhua, Yunlin, Pingtung and Penghu counties, as well as Chiayi city and county had
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VIOLATION OF NORMS: China’s CCTV broadcast claimed that Beijing could use Interpol to issue arrest warrants, which the MAC slammed as an affront to order The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for attempts to intimidate Taiwanese through “transnational repression.” The council issued the remarks after state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) yesterday during a news broadcast aired a video targeting Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Puma Shen (沈伯洋), threatening him with “cross-border repression” and saying: “Stop now, or you will be next,” in what Taipei officials said was an attempt to intimidate not only Shen, but also the broader Taiwanese public. The MAC in a statement condemned the threat, accusing Beijing of trying to instill fear and self-censorship among Taiwanese and
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