Microsoft's Q1 Figures Plummet As PC Market Splutters & the World Waits for Windows 8

The financial earnings numbers keep piling up — and after a week of poor performances, the closing bell in the stock exchange is beginning to sound a bit like a death knell. Last night, Microsoft released its figures for Q1, which fell by 22 percent on the same time last year as the PC market tries to pull out of a massive wobble.

Microsoft’s Windows 8

At this point, after looking at all the figures, the wobble is beginning to look like a terminal skid on the black ice of tablet sales. But with Windows 8 in the works for next week, Microsoft is hoping to get itself back on track.

While there are a lot of positives to be taken from the figures — despite the fact that, in most business sectors Microsoft declined — everyone was focused on PCs. Specifically, they are wondering whether the Windows 8 OS will have enough umph-factor to create interest in a market that has gone tablet mad.

Indeed, most analysts suggest the timing of the Windows 8 release is a response to the growing popularity of tablets, since it includes new functionality that favors touch screens aimed at PC makers. Those PC makers are already talking up new ranges of laptops that will be able to double as tablets with detachable screens, or screens that fold down onto the keyboard. Is this where the Microsoft rebound will happen? Only time will tell.

Microsoft Q1

But returning to the figures; Microsoft was well below analysts’ expectations. Net earnings dropped by 22 percent, from US$ 5.74 billion this time last year, to US$ 4.47 billion for the quarter ending September 30 this year.

Revenues were US$ 16 billion, down 8 percent from US$ 17.4 billion in the same quarter last year. Revenues from Windows declined 33 percent to US$ 3.24 billion  — though if Microsoft had not deferred revenue related to Windows 8, that decline would be only 9 percent

Even the lucrative business applications division that develops and sells Microsoft Office products, which would normally be sustained by a buoyant PC market, declined by 2 percent, to US$ 5.5 billion in this quarter.

The Server & Tools business reported US$ 4.55 billion in first-quarter revenue, an 8 percent increase from the prior year period, driven by double-digit revenue growth in SQL Server sales and more than 20 percent growth in System Center revenue. This was also helped by the release of Windows Server 2012.

Standing back and looking at the numbers as a whole, they are in keeping with the figures of other major players in the market. IBM, which also reported earnings this week missed out on analysts’ expectations.

Microsoft’s PC Market

But for Microsoft, the real issue is how the PC market is going to hold up in the coming months and whether Windows 8 is going to help it pull it out of the doldrums.

The company is betting hard on this release — the biggest software product from Microsoft in years — with a US$ 1 billion global advertising campaign (already underway in the US) to counter act any negative feelings users may have about changes in Windows 8.

In fact, for this quarter Microsoft is using Windows 8 to explain many of its ills, which sounds a bit like placing too many eggs in the same basket.

While enterprise revenue continued to grow and we managed our expenses, the slowdown in PC demand ahead of the Windows 8 launch resulted in a decline in operating income. Multi-year licensing revenue grew double-digits across Windows, Server & Tools, and Microsoft Business Division products as businesses commit to our technology roadmap,” said Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

As Q3 Sales Slip, IBM Looks Beyond Hardware to Cloud, Analytics, Social

Big Blue released its Q3 numbers last night and it’s makes for grim reading. IBM revenues slipped below analysts' expectation as poor economic conditions around the world hit profits in American global corporations.

Hardware a Problem for IBM In Q3

Not that there is any real concern about the future of IBM. Mark Loughbridge, the company's CF0, stands by his predictions of a good year for IBM when it rounds up things at the end of the fourth quarter. That said, there is trouble in the kitchen. Hardware sales seem to be the principal problem this time around, even if figures in other IBM business segments were far from overwhelming.

Overall, the company reported a third-quarter profit of US$ 3.82 billion, down from US$ 3.84 billion a year earlier, with revenue sliding 5.4 percent to US$ 24.75 billion.

But if this were an "IT Christmas Carol," we might be citing the Ghost of Leo Apothekar-Past, as the drop of 13 percent in hardware sales that IBM experienced over the quarter is more than just a market hiccup.

Apothekar, you may remember, had tried to pull HP out of hardware last year, predicting that hardware was in for a rough ride. The move that cost him his CEO stripes at HP.

But it seems now that he was only reacting to the reality of a market that is steadily shrinking, as governments and large enterprises in Europe extend their IT replacement cycles and hold onto the hardware they have, in order to cut costs.

Global Problems

Indeed much of the revenue shortfall that we see in this set of figures was blamed on the economic woes in Europe, which translated not only into falling sales, but also fewer dollars for every sale, thanks to a weaker euro.

There were also signs of slowdown in the company’s technology-consulting services, but there were other problems as well. The problems included:

• Geography: It wasn’t just Europe that performed badly — the US and Australia didn’t do too well, either. Revenue in US was US$ 10.4 billion, down 4 percent from a year earlier. Europe, the Middle East and Africa earned revenues of US$ 7.2 billion, down 9 percent on last year. Asia-Pacific managed to rise by 1 percent to US$ 6.5 billion, showing that India and China, despite everything, are still strong performers.
• Software: This is generally considered one of the indicators of company health and this time around it didn’t do too badly, although it has performed better in the past. Revenues here were US$ 5.8 billion, with revenues from its middleware products like Tivoli, Lotus and WebSphere down 1 percent to US$ 3.6 million.
• Systems and Technology: This includes hardware and totaled US$ 3.9 billion, down 13 percent on this time last year. Revenue for systems sales and services not including retail systems were down 8 percent on the year. System Storage revenue decreased by 10 percent from a year earlier. IBM says it was hit by the sale of its point-of-sale technology to Toshiba, was well as the introduction of new mainframe equipment that hit earlier lines.

IBM’s Cloud, Analytics, Social Business

However, IBM has invested in technologies that are quickly becoming the wave of the future, and expects to ride out difficult times using this.

By 2015, it has said on previous occasions, it is expecting to add US$ 20 billion to its revenue through cloud computing, analytics, its smarter planet initiative and investments in emerging markets.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

E-Commerce Tracking Tips for Google Analytics Users

Do you have an e-Commerce website? If you do, you're most likely using a web analytics tool to gather actionable insight from your current customers. Beyond straight sales numbers, I use the various e-Commerce reports within the Google Analytics interface to determine where our customers are coming from and what marketing campaigns are paying off. I'm going to go through a method I use to help track these items.

But, first, if you are brand new to the idea of tracking Ecommerce on your website, I highly recommend using Google Analytics. It's free and pretty easy to navigate. The setup can be a little confusing, but Google provides a great help article with all of your instructions.

Campaign Tracking

The first step in successful tracking of what marketing campaigns are driving the most sales is setting up a custom campaign. Basically, you want to tag your links so that we can see which campaigns are bringing your site visitors, and in turn, sales. Google has developed their URL builder, which makes this pretty easy. For example, here is what a URL might look like for a newsletter we're sending out: http://www.webucator.com/go/course-of-the-month/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=webuNewsOct12

Of important note, look at the campaign variable, webuNewsOct12. Now, we can track how many sales were a result of this campaign.

e-Commerce Overview Report

Once logged into your Google Analytics account, you can navigate over to Conversions > Ecommerce > Overview > Source/Medium. As seen on the attached screenshot, you can see that our newsletter campaigns were our fifth biggest source of sales in the given time period. (Please note that most of the information is blurred out for privacy reasons, but you can still see the main point.)

This general report will give you that high-level perspective of which sources/mediums are helping your business grow. And again, tied back to the campaign variables you determined in the step above. Maybe you also see a source/medium you didn't know about? :) 

e-Commerce Product Performance

After viewing the Overview report, you might want to tie specific product sales to specific campaigns you are running. Right underneath that Overview report, you'll see the Product Performance report. Now this report will be tied to how you setup your initial e-Commerce tracking code on your site, and will show specific products that were purchased.

To add in a level of campaigns, head over to the specific category group you're interested in, and then click on the Secondary dimension tab. Under the Advertising group, you'll see your Campaign option. Take a look at the screenshot below:

I sorted the campaigns in alphabetical order and now I can see exactly what products visitors purchased from exactly which campaigns I started. This is a great avenue to see if there are any ways to either optimize current campaigns or start focusing your product messaging on different campaigns!

Campaign Tracking

Lastly, one very quick note on campaigns. If you are ever curious to which campaigns are simply bringing you the most traffic (after you've tagged your links), navigate over to Traffic Sources > Sources > Campaigns. This will give you a combined report of any AdWords campaigns you might be running coupled with any manual campaigns you setup with the URL builder.

And that's a wrap for this article! I hope you learned a few, new actionable steps for your Google Analytics account. If you have any questions on these steps, please leave them in the comments below and I'll get to them. And stay tuned for another Google Analytics blog coming up next month! Happy Analytics!

Editor's Note: Bob provides a great foundation for getting started with Google Analytics in his Google Analytics series.
 

About the Author

Bob Clary has over eight years of marketing experience. He is currently the Marketing Manager and Google Analytics Trainer at Webucator and is a Google Analytics Qualified Individual. Bob has also created Webucator's online Google Analytics courses.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com