Licensing is the story. All that other growth from services and maintenance comes from having new software business.
Things continue to be difficult -- software management teams and salespeople are not seeing a pickup in software buying.
Everything has gone against Oracle. This is almost the final straw.
The applications business continues to stumble and this quarter shows that. Oracle doesn't have the best applications products. That's why they want to buy PeopleSoft.
In one fell swoop, nearly $33 billion is getting rotated out of equity into cash and I do believe a good portion of that will find its way back into Microsoft.
It's very much steady Eddie. Microsoft showed nice growth and better levels of profitability.
Most software companies risk losing market share if their products get out the door late and behind competitors. If Vista is late, there obviously is no meaningful market share loss.
Xbox does have a material impact for Microsoft in the December quarter because of the holiday shopping season. The fact it was capacity constrained in December will probably create some headwinds for their overall quarter.
A lot of the shortfalls are being blamed on the onset of the war so investors are giving the software companies a pass this quarter.
Investors feel they are not going to step in a land mine -- that's brought money back to the sector.
