Watch out, Mac-using analysts: Ballmer knows where you live

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Ian Betteridge

Via Joe Wilcox, comes this bit of Steve Ballmer’s speech to financial analysts:

“We have low share, by the way, in the investor audience. I can see the Apple logos versus the PC logos. So we have more work to do, more work to do. Our share is lower in this audience than the average audience. But don’t hide it. I’ve already counted them. I have been doing that since we started talking. (Laughter.) Anyway, we’ve got a bank of them right here in the middle. I know where they all are. One over here on the side. But anyway, that’s OK. Feel free as long as you’re using Office to go right on ahead.”

My guess is that the average financial analyst doesn’t spend less than $1,000 on a laptop…

 

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  • http://en-gb.facebook.com/RattyUK John Molloy

    The whole of his presentation yesterday was a bit weird. Almost paranoid. Microsoft seem completely obsessed with Apple.

    Steven Elop faired about the same too:

    “In absolute terms, the consumer revenue declined around 30 percent year-on-year. Now, there are three factors in the equation that calculates out to that. And this is always the case. It’s about the number of PCs that are shipped, sold to consumers; it’s about our ability to attach to those sales of PCs, and third, it’s about the price at which we’re able to attach. And what we saw in the consumer segment, around these three variables of the fundamental equation is this: First of all, obviously significant declines in PC sales. All off it was like a 6 percentline exclusive of net books it was a 20 percent decline of PC sales in those consumer markets. So that’s the first factor.

    The second factor is our ability to attach. Now, our ability to attach in the consumer segment was absolutely maintained. So there’s always discussion you know are people picking up free options on the internet and all of that, absolutely not affecting our business. We are maintaining our attach rates.

    However, we did see a decline in effective pricing, as macro economic conditions cause customers to essentially select lower-price skusmts, moving down the exphu ladder that was from the price perspective the plofg onto the business an new or transactional segment in absolute terms revenue here declined about 35 percent year-on-year. Now we do the same type of math, same three factors. In in this significant we saw significant declines in PC sales, north of 20 percent.
    We saw some softening of our ability to attach in this segment. As mid-market customers reduced their spend.
    Pricing, though, in this segment was effectively maintained through this period. So we were able to hold pricing.”

    Go Figure! – He seems to like the word “attach” though.

  • http://www.technovia.co.uk ianbetteridge

    Well, to be fair, it *was* an audience of analysts – and they all talk like that too :)

    Sales-gibberish always takes some working out…

  • http://www.onemanandhisblog.com Adam Tinworth

    One might say that he's attached to the word “attach”, in fact. ;-)

    (Sorry)