Microsoft spends too much on R&D

Why doesn't this jerk just go by Sprint shares? Seriously... A mobile phone company? Because that's what MS needs- another side project that they can botch.

Seriously. Software is near 100% Research and Development. Manufacturing software doesn't cost a lot in comparison, when producing discs, and with electronic delivery, pretty much nothing. Microsoft count 35,000 of their 91,000 staff in product research and development, 38% of the total.

What they're asking for is to cut products or features from products. The leviathan as ever is Windows, with thousands of staff working on it. Want to neuter Windows 7? Really stupid idea.

Apple doesn't spend as much as MS on OS X simply because they don't have the funds. Microsoft's $8bn is 14% of revenues for the year according to their Annual Report.

It might be better to cut some of the 26,000 staff in sales and marketing!

Thats another keyboard ruined.
Thank heaven for voice recognition.
Microsoft spends to much on R&D...
that'll keep me chortling for days that will...

Clearly, the formula for success requires that MS innovate less, cannibalize their existing market, and churn current products into derivative "new" release versions. All is going well, then.

Theres New PINS, for One. However, once new O/S like NT6.1-5 came out, that means lots of software writing for Hardware makers. It'll be quite some time before hardware gets caught up to Ultimate. Every Step needing new software for hardware. One Can See with 2+++ Billion Transistors, that multi core was correctly held back, when Multi products out, probably high trany count will bring new O/S, to fill new pins, when they start accumulating, too.Its' Tough Long Winded Job.

Perhaps Craig Montgomery is confused about Microsoft's investment into R&D, because Microsoft R&D works on future solutions that will make phone companies as useful as dinosaurs in a marketing company.

$8bn and they came up with Vista?

LMFAO.....hahahahahahahahahahahah...

unbelievable....

They spend $8,000,000,000 on R&D, really? Makes you wonder where it all goes, considering the quality of their recent products.

the problem is how the money is spent.

Microsoft loves to waste money on silly things like a tabletop with a monitor built in that you can touch.

That's a nifty invention, but's not worth $100M in R&D costs. By the time it becomes feasible to mass-market, MSFT's patents will be halfway to expiring.

If MSFT focused on important R&D projects, it might have useful products to sell to willing consumers (instead of just forcing them to buy the next version of Windows because they have no choice).

That Craig moron needs to get a clue, and I find it ironic that he wants them to go into yet another market--including supporting R&D--to perform better. Furthermore, Microsoft is a far larger and more diversified company than either Apple or Oracle. They have R&D in areas far removed from their primary cash cow--far beyond just the low hanging fruit that myopic Montgomery can see. Maybe he's just a closet Apple fanboi and should invest in them instead.

I think the thing I find interesting about this is that he doesn't comment on their failed products that lose money continually. It's like they have to have a hand in everything, but really have a grip on nothing. I mean, the Zune was made in response to the iPod, the XBox to the PS2, etc. but none of the ideas were innovative like windows 95 (though, I guess theoretically that could be a take off of the apple OS). It would seem that if they try to innovate and leave some of the areas that they don't need to try to compete in, they might have better profit margins and turn out better products. Rather than divesting attention, it would seem that concentrating it would lead to better results IMO. I think that marketshare wise it looks like MSFT is on track in comparison to Apple as far as R&D goes. I mean, it has about 8-9X the budget and probably about the same marketshare for their respective OSes?

In some ways I think MSFT has the corporate image of GM in the 70s...old and bloated but still around because it's massive and has tons of cash. "Our products are great because we say so...continue to buy them blindly!" (Vista slogan) Also...it's a funny time to expect more from a stock with the state of the market or that a company so large can create revenues at a level that would increase share price with so many million or billion shares outstanding. Maybe he should have done more research before investing his money and understand what he was buying...

MS should spend more on R&D, but they should also focus 33% of their efforts into multi-threaded Operating system technology, so that we can take advantage of all the Duo/Quad core CPU's.

With that level of money I would have expected at least a couple of breakthroughs. They could have easily developed intelligent car driving software or completely re-written Windows to be cutting edge and rock solid. That is an amazing amount of money to spend with little to show for it. They could have also simply given $10M to 800 startups and had a better return. Sad.

How much of this $8B do you think is a way of reducing taxes with tax relief on R&D spending?
http://www.microsoft.com/uk/business/news/managing-costs/CBI-hails-research-and-development-tax-credit-19012700.mspx
Just like the 10,000 patents that they place in a holding company in Ireland (where no tax is due on patent income) to license their own technology back to themselves.
http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10005150.shtml

That's why you can't ask a shareholder to be any better than just... rich (and clueless.) They're all going to hell anyway, if not fed to gators in a zoo once the economy goes really bad.

Micro$oft blows $8 billion on "research and development"? Does it *really* cost that much to say, "Hey, what are Google and Apple doing? Let's copy them!"?
The only thing M$ has ever "innovated" is the Blue Screen of Death!
Or maybe all that money goes into shoving more DRM into their bloated products...

When you say microsoft spends 8 billion and google 1 billion it makes sense... because Micrsoft competes in every product out there that exists... they have thousands of products... does google have development frameworks like c,c# and silverlight? no. Does google have an OS?, no. Does google have an xbox? no? does google make video games for xbox? no etc...

so before we judge microsoft and compare them to other companies.. lets get some more facts