Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Thu, 13 Feb 2003 16:04:31 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Thu, 13 Feb 2003 16:04:30 -0500 Received: from fc.capaccess.org ([151.200.199.53]:53770 "EHLO fc.Capaccess.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Thu, 13 Feb 2003 16:04:28 -0500 Message-id: Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 16:15:12 -0500 Subject: Transmeta-san To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org From: "Rick A. Hohensee" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2074 Lines: 39 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 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/