Thanks Zeev. It looks like you have it possibly outperforming the Nasdaq by about 6%, from these levels towards these targets (from Nasadaq 1375 to 950 for almost 31%, MSFT $25.75 to $19 (post-split) for close to 26%).
During the bear market it has outperformed thus far by close to 14% (Nasdaq 5000 to 1375 being 72%, while MSFT from $120 to 51.50 [$60 to $25.75 post-split] is neary 57%). Another 4% divergence from peak to trough could put the Nasdaq at 81% and MSFT at 67.5%, for nearly a 13.5% dissconect. You would think that somewhere along the line (maybe during the upswings?), it would need to underperform a great deal as so not to become the market at some point. It may have to do with historically stable fat margins (both OS and app's), getting fatter (not on the surface, but as a result of Moore's law, in the separation of pricing power from HW vs SW in relation to units sold...).
It would appear also that that will have to end some day, in a increasingly tight IT environment, as they look to reduce their cost by every means. One only need to look at the average cost of a box, separate the operating system cost from it to realize the increasing percentage it is on it. $85 (not sure the exact number) on a $2000 box a few years ago would have been close to 4.5% of it, while now for (what's the average now?) a $1000 box it's a little over 9%. That's inflation in a deflationary environment. <g>
So Zeev, do you view open source as a real danger to them, or as some HW companies have been doing now like SUNW in offering "free" software (StarOffice as one example) bundled with with hardware (or at least the hopes of shifting mindset from commodity HW to commodity SW...) as a legitimate threat - or has it already begun via their opening up code to various Govt agencies?
Are they going to continue to thrive (margins), or die a very slow (15-25 years) death? There's a shift about to take place, I can just smell it...and I think it has something do with that long ago thought a few years ago about the centric vs netcentric arguemnt that was premature - but MSFT took full advantage of it while downplaying the threat while steering it ultimately to the .Net initiative.
And, since the next MSFT won't be the next MSFT (or, then again, if MSFT, INTC and CSCO devour all things storage, chip, network related and sofware maybe not..), do you think we'll see another company rise like it has (in absolute power as well as in wealth) within technology in our lifetime? If yes, and you think you know who, tell us....err PM me. <g>
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