Transmeta-san

Rick A. Hohensee (rickh@Capaccess.org)
Thu, 13 Feb 2003 16:15:12 -0500


It will take Microsoft less that six months to go 90% Asian

I estimate that Microsoft can reduce it's state-side workforce by over 90%
in less than a year, reducing costs massively. The entire cost of being
Microsoft could be reduced by more than half. Imagine if GM had an
opportunity to cut it's costs in half in a matter of months. How long
could they stall the stockholders?

Faced with declining profits over the very long term, the ravenous
software giant is looking at alternatives to it's extremely expensive
American workforce. Since Microsoft has almost no crucial infrastructure,
as is typical of the software industry, and has generally been trounced in
ventures into hardware, where Microsoft's rapacious business practices are
less viable, it's costs are mostly labor, or the labor of "partners", and
it pays through the nose for intellectual workers in Washington State and
similar. Huge cost savings are readily available in India, China and
similar, where there is fairly good basic education and a relatively low
average income, and a huge and hungry talent base to cherry-pick.
Microsoft tends to grab up anything with an IQ between 110 and 120, which
is what Bill Gates considers genius. This strategy also plays well with
Microsoft's general strength-in-numbers approach to the software market
and product development. American estimates of the time it would take
Microsoft to "globalize" it's technical force tend to be much longer than
Asian estimates. Chinese and Indian authorities tend to talk in weeks on
such issues.

A globalization move by Microsoft should also effect many of it's
partners, also sometimes refered to as it's "lapdogs", and certain
ancillary ventures like Transmeta, which manufactures a CPU chip said to
be comparable in innovative value to the Windows Paperclip.

Rick Hohensee

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