Well Scott, is now the time to short MSFT?
As prominent as Java is becoming, Sun will have to continue in some form to support the huge code base that exists out in the real world. I just hope they don't dissolve before I get my certification!
It lost US$11 million in 2005.
It's hard to see how they could be in any near term trouble with numbers like these. With several billion in the bank, they post annual loses like last years for several hundred years.
That's a shame - when I was in college in the early '90s, Sun was the company to work for if you were doing a CS degree. Employees used to post about how exciting it was to work there.
What a ridiculous article, Sun may have lost some revenue to the foreign copy of Unix called Linux, but they're not about to go under. Their revenue is still over $10 billion (with a "B") per year. Add all the revenue up from every Linux company on Earth and it's not even $1 billion, nor will it be anytime soon. To put it in perspective, the largest Linux company by far Red Hat is only bringing in about $200 million a year, making Sun 50 times bigger in revenue, and much more diversified. Not to mention Sun has more cash on hand than Red Hat's entire market cap value! That means they could buy the whole company today, by simply writing a check. And the way RH shares are tumbling in value right now, that's not going to change anytime soon.
I remember all the shots that McNealy used to take at Microsoft. Who's laughing now?
The Innovator's Dilema is a book they decided NOT to read. Every executive from middle manager to CEO to shareholder should read it.
I think Sun's real problem is making the argument that their hardware is a good value. They used to have such a performance advantage that the pricing made sense. Now, I'm not so sure.
BTW, if you follow the sun when it sets to see where it went and keep walking, it will dawn on you.