From: furballs@sequent.com (Paul Penrod)
Subject: Re: FCC will proclaim Microsoft is run by Communists! :)
Organization: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc.
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 92 17:37:13 GMT

In article <BzpBH3.Los@csulb.edu> sichermn@csulb.edu (Jeff Sicherman) writes:
>In article <1992Dec23.013422.24038@sequent.com> furballs@sequent.com (Paul Penrod) writes:
>>In article <BzoG15.21q@news.cso.uiuc.edu> walk@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu (Todd Walk) writes:
>>>helz@ecn.purdue.edu (Randall A Helzerman) writes:
>>>>Ever think that Microsoft is only able to devote 27+% of its income to
>>>>R & D because it has such a big market share and because its products are
>>>>so competative?  
>>>
>>>And do you know how big this market share is?  In 1991, MS received
>>>about 25% of the total profit of all software sold.  No other company
>>>is even close to this amount of profit per total market sales.
>>>
>>
>>Microsoft devotes the LARGEST amount of money percentage wise I
>>have seen in a high tech company. "only 27+% of it's income to R&D"
>>is a far higher percentage of it's income than most companies are
>>willing to even think about, much less put to practice.
>>
>>Once you get the lawyers and accountants out of the spending loop,
>>R&D money is what provides the products and the quality thereof.
>>That's what most business people never learn, and one of the
>>reasons Microsoft has become a great success story.
>>
>>JMHO...
>
>    Well, I would be interested in seeing how they calculate the figures
>since some of those accountants that manage to sneak into MS can have
>funny ways of calculating things, especially if those couple of lawyers
>tell 'em it's OK.
>
>    Anyway, MS's size and revenue is due a lot more to their presence
>at the dawn of the microcomputer age and having the cash coes of DOS
>and Windows to feed the other activities. Surely, you can't, in YHO,
>claim that all that R&D money has manifested itself in DOS or Windows,
>considering how many years they have had to improve them when guys
>with much less money have managed to produce better environments with
>less resources.
>

No, I wont claim that Microsoft is inovative. They aren't. But they
have demonstrated that you can take an established idea or theory
and reduce it to practice. They have also improved on existing
technology to a point, but I would not call DOS or Windows part of
that. That's software technology BTW.

>   In fact, I'm hard pressed to come up with anything that MS has truly been 
>an innovator on - with respect to major industry trends. They do seem to
>have the ability to develop and even 'perfect' some concepts, but all that
>R&D sure hasn't gone to nurturing any genius in Redmond.
>
>

There is very little in the computer industry that isn't some
warmed over idea from a decade gone bye. Borland, XEROX PARC, CMU
and IBM are among a few organizations that introduce new ideas,
concepts and technologies into the market place.

But in Microsoft's case, the R&D money seems to have gone into
improving an existing idea and committing it to practice, which is
more important that writing white papers.

JMHO...

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